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This is no argument against the church. The church absolutely needs to hold a different standard than God. God doesn’t have to vet his leaders like the church does. Can you imagine interviewing Moses for the job of lead pastor, listening to him stammer out a bunch of excuses in response to the inquiry about that pesky murder in his past, and then the elders making a gut decision to give him the job anyway? So I don’t have a problem with the church having a higher standard than God. But if we lead people to believe they cant be used by God to save lives even though they aren’t a fit for professional ministry, we are making a huge mistake, and it would be an interesting debate as to whether we are being guided by the Bible in our thinking. God can use anybody he wants. Anybody, anytime. He displays this over and over in the scriptures. Donald Miller ☀

When theologians throw out anomalies that threaten their paradigms, they respect their interpretation of truth more than truth, or worse, believe their interpretation of truth is actually truth. They use terms like Biblical and heretic to convince themselves and others that their interpretation is the real truth and others are a threat to “the gospel” or to God Himself. This sort of language isn’t helpful or respectful of anomalies, not to mention it’s behavior indicates a genuine intellectual threat that should be taken seriously, not dismissed as heresy. What we are encountering in Christian culture today is a paradigm in crisis. Will there be a shift in the way we understand truth or read the Bible? Time will tell. But it would be arrogant of us to dismiss the anomalies. Dismissing anomalies rather than addressing them may be good for existing structures, including financial structures and power structures, but it isn’t good for truth. This does not mean anomalies have to be accepted, but rather carefully addressed in a reasonable manner. Donald Miller ☀

Talk show hosts cannot afford to be objective. They must make people angry. They must take sides. They must make you believe that something that belongs to you is being taken away. That’s the fastest way into your pocketbook. You will pay them to defend you from an enemy that may or may not exist. They can’t afford to be objective. They want your money so they have to make you afraid. They must oppose a certain and named enemy, and that enemy must be evil. If they don’t do this, nobody will listen and they won’t make money. We are drawn to sensationalism. Pastors and church leaders who are well known often do the same thing. Not all of them, but many. If you aren’t a Calvinist, you are evil. If you are emerging, you are evil. Only a fool would believe such a thing. But these pastors are not fools. They don’t even believe it themselves. They just get fools to believe it and those fools buy their books and watch their sensational YouTube videos. We’ve all been had. The truth is not so black and white. Consumers are tricked into thinking the way they think but we musn’t be consumers. Critics see the difference. Creators create a new and better reality. Donald Miller ☀

No culture in history has been more distracted. If you are wondering why there are no more C.S. Lewis’ in the world, no more stories as good as Tolkien’s, no cathedrals as great as the gothic’s, no music as moving as Pachelbel’s, it may be because the writers of these books, the tellers of these stories, the architects of these buildings and the composers of these symphonies are sitting on their couches watching television. I wonder what’s on tonight. Donald Miller ☀

The problem Christians face is the Bible is not attempting to answer how questions. And if it is, it’s a terribly written book and not practical in any way in terms of addressing how to succeed, how to get married, how to be more sexy, how to lose weight, how to organize your finances or how to build a business. Instead, the Bible is a why book. The Bible is answering much larger questions: Why do we exist, why do we not feel loved, why is there pain in the world, why has God left us and so forth. Are there exceptions? Sure. The Proverbs has some wisdom on how to live, and there are other examples, but they are few. So the question is, are you trying to answer small questions with your life or big questions? If you are trying to answer small questions (how do I turn earth into heaven because there is no greater epic for me) then the Bible fails. But if you are trying to answer larger questions (all of this will someday go away, and life is short, so what is really important in light of this) then the Bible is a book for you. American culture is a how culture. We ask almost exclusively how questions, because our commercialized culture is not interested in why. If we really started asking why questions, our entire economy would collapse, and honestly, we wouldn’t care because once we answered the why questions, we wouldn’t want all that stuff in the first place. So what does the Bible say to the Average American? Among other things, it says this: You are asking the wrong questions. Donald Miller ☀

Things that bring us pleasure are often good. Scratch that, they are often great. But most of our addictions bring us extreme pleasure without the cost of conflict. Porn brings us pleasure without the conflict of relationship. Alcoholism brings us a release of stress without having to deal with our issues. Overeating (my personal favorite) reduces stress and robs us of our dreams, dreams that MUST cost us conflict. In the workbook I’m creating for the Living a Better Story Seminar, I’ve added an exercise to the conflict section in which participants write down their addictions and habits and connect them directly to a false sense of instant gratification, thus stealing our dreams. So the question I’m asking myself lately, is how are my habits robbing my dreams? When the credits roll in my life, when the story is over, will I have been numbed out to the pain of life, the pain that was asking me to seek help, find healing, or press forward toward a better ending? So how are your addictions and habits robbing you of a better story? Donald Miller ☀

Years ago I read a book called Country of my Skull, about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. The TRC was a commission put together by Nelson Mandella to hear cases of crimes against humanity committed under apartheid. Mandella asked Bishop Desmond Tutu to head up the commission. When asked what sort of people Tutu wanted to serve with him, he answered he wanted victims, people who knew firsthand the atrocities of apartheid, those whose lives had been ripped open, who’d lost families and loved ones. But what he said next would change my life forever. Tutu said he did not just want the victims who had stayed victims, but he wanted victims who had forgiven the guilty, who had the moral character to give of themselves when they had every right to be angry and vindictive. These people, Tutu said, are the most capable to help others heal, because they have the education of empathy, they know what pain feels like, and can guide the bitter into forgiveness and strength, and the guilty into reconciliation. He called these people wounded healers. Donald Miller ☀

I do not believe there is specific, magical power in communion or church attendance, but I do believe communion is a way to interact with God (just as sharing a meal is a way to interact with friends) and that there is power in the meditative aspect of the act. That is, there is power in the interaction, the power to be influence by the person (or Deity) with whom we are spending time. But this is very different than a belief in magic. I think baptism has symbolic power, and it’s a profession of faith, but unlike many denominations (I could be wrong) I don’t believe there is specific power in the act of being baptized to redeem a person. But these are terrific rituals. These rituals ground us to a greater reality, and guide us through life like points on a map. Donald Miller ☀

Advertisers often play on something psychologists call Loss Aversion. Loss Aversion is an aspect of Prospect Theory, a theory that seeks to determine why people make certain decisions. Loss Aversion suggests people are more motivated to avoid losing something than they are to acquire something new. For instance, in a study done on a street in Las Vegas, passers by were given a twenty-dollar bill and then given the opportunity to double their money by betting on a single card. They could walk away with the twenty, or double their money. Most participants chose to walk away from the game, keeping the twenty-dollar bill they had just been given. But when the game was changed and the participants were given forty dollars, only to have twenty taken back a moment later and then given a chance to win back the twenty taken from them, nearly all participants decided to take the same risk and get back what they had lost. In other words, when they had something and lost it, they were more inclined to try to get it back. It isn’t only advertisers who play on this psychological phenomenon, it’s politicians and talk-show hosts and nearly anybody trying to convince anybody of anything. How many times have you heard the phrase “take back our country” or, within the church “take a stand for Biblical theology” or this kind of language. The idea is to convince a group of people they are losing ground. This creates a powerful response in whatever demographic feels like they are losing something. Environmentalist motivate us by emphasizing the loss of physical paradise, and the conservative right motivates us by emphasizing a loss of freedom. Regardless of where you stand, we can all agree these are powerful motivating forces. Donald Miller ☀

The average American encounters 3000 commercial messages each day. Whether this is a radio commercial, a magazine ad, a logo on the side of a coffee cup or a billboard we pass on the highway, these images and messages are designed to cause to you think of your life as incomplete, and desire the product they are selling to make your life complete again. A standard formula used in many commercials is twofold: 1. To illicit a thought in the viewer that there life is not satisfactory and then 2. To convince the viewer there life could be made satisfactory with the introduction of said product. If you hear theses messages 3000 times per day, your brain becomes programmed to think in this pattern. Rather than being satisfied, a person begins to believe there life is lacking, whether it is actually lacking or not. The idea is to convince you that you aren’t going to be happy unless you purchase something. And make no mistake, this is a powerful manipulative tool. Some experts have referred to advertising as the “relentless propaganda on behalf of goods in general.” R. Crisp argued in an article in the Journal of Business Ethics that advertising overrides a consumer’s autonomy of decision making in the creation of desires, correlating an unbreakable link between products and the fulfillment of stimulated desires.” In other words, advertising is designed to hijack your brain by dictating what you desire. Donald Miller ☀

I want to keep my soul fertile for changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it’s time for them to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not read the same page recurrently. Donald Miller ☀