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Hipnotizando com palavras Nov 16, 2009
Donald Miller é desses raros artistas que hiptoniza com suas palavras.
Acabei de ler Searching for God Knows What com a sensação de que vai demorar para eu ler algo tão sereno e apaixonante. Não é a minha primeira boa experiência com os escritos de Miller. O mesmo aconteceu com Blue Like Jazz (sim, o dos Pinguins). Mas foi com ceticismo e pouca expectativa que iniciei esta minha última leitura, já que o Fé em Deus e pé na tábua não foi lá grande coisa. Expectativa superada pois, novamente, Miller foi surpreendente.
Mesmo lúdica, a mensagem que o escritor afirma desde o começo é o farol que direciona a escrita. Todo o livro fala basicamente que cristianismo não é fórmula, não é moral, não é teologia, é, acima de tudo, um relacionamento. Como é de praxe, Miller mistura as suas histórias, seus traumas e surpresas, desventuras e alegrias para comunicar essa mensagem de fé baseada em relacionamento. E como faz isso bem! E "fazer bem" não é sinônimo de erudição, ou de retórica bem trabalhada. Donald Miller fala de modo hipnotizante, a deixar o leitor sedento por histórias em sucessão que não cansam. No fundo, o que nos atrai nos escritos de Donald Miller é a intertextualidade que ele faz da nossa vida com a dele.
Já vi muitas críticas acerca de Donald Miller. Uma delas é que ele fica em cima do muro quando fala do lado conservador da igreja. Isso é verdade, Miller não levanta bandeira nos seus livros e isso é extremamente positivo, pois é característico dele literatura leve, bem humorada. Tomar partido de velhas brigas só prejudicaria aquilo que ele faz tão bem.
Há bons momentos em várias partes de Searching for God Knows What, mas o paralelo entre o relacionamento de Romeu e Julieta e o nosso com Cristo encerra esta obra com muito bom gosto. É livro que deixa a sensação de quero mais.
Pena que, mais uma vez, a editora escolheu mal a temática da capa. Dessa vez não foi aqui, com Pinguins, mas lá, com o circo. Diga-se de passagem, o trecho que narra a experiência de Don Miller no circo é um pouco tedioso. Ainda mais triste é o fato de que o livro não está disponível em português.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Different and refreshing Sep 13, 2009
Donald Miller has none of the usual apologist attributes; he lists no academic credentials in theology, science or anything else. But in Searching for God Knows What he presents a sincere and powerful case for his belief in God and in a Jesus whom he describes in a somewhat unorthodox way. Miller claims: "a lot of people don't like Jesus, or just ignore Him or have no use for Him, but I think the best thing a person can do is to read through the Gospels in the Bible and really look at Jesus, because if a person does this, they will realize that the Jesus they learned about in Sunday school or the Jesus they hear about or the skinny, Gandhi Jesus that exists in their imaginations isn't anything like the real Jesus at all ... one of the things you notice about Jesus in the Gospels, that He is always going around saying, You have heard it said such and such, but I tell you some other thing. If you happened to be a person who thought they knew everything about God, Jesus would have been completely annoying."
Reminiscent of Bonhoeffer's "cheap grace", Miller talks of "God-impostors": "the real problem with God-impostors is that they worship a very small god, a god who exists simply to validate their identities. This god falls apart as soon as you touch him, as soon as you start asking very basic questions about the sanctity of all human life, the failure of combat mentality, and the lustful love of power ... I left room open for another God, a God who might explain my existence, explain the complexity of my hands and feet and feelings and the very strange and mysterious fact that even as I type this I am breathing ... I feel there is a God who is very big and who understands everything. In the morning, when I get over these little moments of epiphany about how complex my construction is I begin to fear the God that is, because He made all this that is our existence and He understands its physics."
Miller covers a lot of ground in this book; he discusses the Bible, morality and religion not as an expert but with sincerity and sound knowledge. His presentation is refreshingly easy to follow and very enjoyable.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Redemption worth reading and realizing Aug 25, 2009
This book isn't just good, it is significant. As in "Blue Like Jazz" Miller continues to use his own heart as the focal player in this saga, so this time when he makes statements that come against religious systems and modern day musings he has paid the price to do so. In his experience religion doesn't work. His answer, without much in the way of formulas, thank God, is relationship. This is redemption worth reading and realizing.
0 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Still in the Box Aug 07, 2009
I too was a fundamentalist Christian once, just as Don Miller says about himself in Blue Like Jazz. I only read an excerpt of Blue Like Jazz, but from the soul-searching tone of that excerpt, I think I would like that book better than Donald Miller's book Searching For God Knows What. As someone who has grown up in conservative evangelical circles but grown beyond the "boxed-in" formulaic approach to Christianity, I read this book on my vacation hoping for some spiritual nourishment. Unfortunately, I had a viscerally negative reaction to his book. I found Donald Miller's approach to be full of the type of dysfunctional thinking he supposedly disavows in the "us versus them" thinking so prevalent in conservative evangelical circles. Don't read the book if you are a broad minded more theologically liberal Christian, who has already gotten out of "the box." You are already light years ahead on the path to enlightenment. Donald Miller may be more enlightened and more constructively engaged with the secular world than a lot of evangelicals, but as far I can appreciate, his thinking is way too "in the box" for me. I'm all for a more relational approach to Christianity and moving away from the emphasis on salvation through correct propositional knowledge, but Miller's book showed no insight into how much propositional baggage was in his supposed stripped down gospel. He made the reader expect something like a mystical relationship with Jesus. That was there, but mixed with the old formulas: substitionary atonement theology, a very facile understanding of the Bible, jabs at homosexuals, an exclusivist theology of salvation, a self-important view of evangelicalism, latent anti-feminist notions, a very high Christology, and lots of negative assumptions about liberals.
Don't get me wrong the book has lots of good things to say, and I hope that it is on the reading list of my very conservative evangelical friends, whom I love dearly. But I have spent the last 20 years of my life getting out of the box. I almost lost my faith in college because I realized that the intellectual foundation of fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity is a house of cards. I am a heart-felt Christian, with a deep personal faith in God. My relationship with Christ is the anchor of my being. I read the book hoping to deepen my faith, but by the end of the book I was reminded of my biggest gripe with evangelical theology: the view that only those who adhere to a certain beliefs about Christ will be saved and that all others will spend an eternity in hell.
The rough edges to this theology may be softened in Miller's book, but I don't think he fully grasps that this exclusivist theology of salvation is the underpinning for the dysfunction in evangelicalism that he is trying to move away from. Underneath Miller's catchy packaging is the same old view that only those who believe in a very precise view of Christ will be saved from hell. Since age ten, I have never believed this. From what I have observed in my four decades in the evangelical community, this exclusivist theology leads to the tendency of evangelicals to become self-righteous, overconfident, narrow-minded, combative, and even endorse ends justifies the means approaches to important issues, such as abortion. Christianity needs to have a better response to the diversity of the world. If you alone have the gospel truth, why listen to others? Why look for subtle beauty and meaning in the world when you have a clear blueprint to God? Miller wonders why there is not much art from the evangelical world. Conformity of thought is not very artsy.
Enough of my rantings against evangelicalism, I am all for a constructive move within evangelicalism towards a more mystical and intellectually sound spirituality. I do see a glimmer of convergence of thought between the emerging church evangelicals and more liberal protestant Christianity. There is an awakening to spirituality in both circles that ties us back to the Christ of antiquity. It's about a relationship with a mysterious God, who is truly beyond our neat formulas, but somehow accessible though Christ. I'm looking forward to hearing some more honest, engaging voices within evangelicalism. I was hoping Don Miller was one. For now, I'm happy in my UCC church, and I'll pick up some books by Eckhard Tolle and Marcus Borg for my next devotional readings Namaste.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Put on your thinking cap... and get ready for discussion Jun 16, 2009
This is a book that will make you think... deeply - about life, faith & spirituality, scripture, relationships, etc. There is so much in this wonderful book that I am re-reading it! It is one of the rare books I own (out of over 1,000) that I will read over again many times. It's like a favorite CD that you never get tired of listening to because you always discover something new. Better yet, read it with your spouse or friends. It will prompt some very thoughtful discussions.
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