Some thoughts from a great writer.

I have been a fan of Donald Miller's since Blue Like Jazz first appeared. I love the way he explains what it means to be a Christian - in very unchurchy ways. So here are a few of my favorite thoughts - of his! These are from "Searching for God Knows What."

On knowing about God or knowing God:

Jesus says there will be people who will heal other people, but when they die He is going to say He didn’t know them. It is somewhat amazing to me, once again, that all of Christianity, all our grids and mathematics and truths and different groups subscribing to different theological ideas, boils down to our knowing Jesus and His knowing us.Apart from the booby trap of getting redemption from believing we are right and they are wrong, there is the booby trap of believing we gain access to God by knowing a lot of religious information… Scripture says the nature of sin is deceptive, so deceptive that a person’s mind can be carried away, and he will have no idea he has become something arrogant and proud and offensive until one of his friends slaps him on the back of the head. And I wonder about... how much of my faith I apply in a personal way, deep down in my heart on the level where I actually mean things. I know there are selfish motives mixed with my faith, that this community of faith is the jury of peers and they applaud when I know a lot of fancy theological stuff, and that can really screw a guy up. I learn more and get more applause and learn more and get even more applause. To describe people like me, Jesus would use the word hypocrite, which at the time, was a term used to describe Greek actors. Those on the scene must have found the similarities quite humorous—the exaggerated language, the proud countenances, the broad and showy mannerisms. How obvious it must have been to Jesus that his was all a sham. They don’t even know me, He must have thought. They don’t even know my father.

The tough thing about Christian spirituality is, you have to mean things. You can’t just go through the motions or act religious for the wrong reasons… this thing is a thing of the heart. It’s intimacy with Christ, rather than a dog and pony show is the center ring of the circus...it’s a trick of Satan to ge us to go through religious motions divorced of their relational significance. It is the trick of Satan to get us to perform religious actions without meaning them.If we are going through religious motions to get people to think of us as religious, praise us, and all that, we are receiving out redemption from a bunch of people who are going to be dead in fifty years. This is a shabby replacement for an eternal God.