Students turn out in force to hear Christian author Don Miller
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Students and others filled most of Collins Alumni Auditorium on Wednesday, Oct. 11, to hear Portland-based Christian author Don Miller, making his second appearance in a row on the Lipscomb campus.
Miller, whose down-to-earth writing style and bluntly honest observations about politics, society and organized religion have captured the fancy of many in the next generation of Christians, was in prime form Wednesday evening as he commented on the effect of America’s commercialization on our spirituality.
Young people today are bombarded with 3,000 advertising images each day according to some studies, Miller said. Constant marketing has created a craving for a “hyper reality” that makes “what is real and true less fascinating.”
That can be rough on an individual’s spiritual life, as we begin to expect God to make things better and better, faster and faster.
That’s not the way the Bible shows God working, Miller told the audience. Even apostles such as Peter and Paul lived lives full of difficulty, turmoil and persecution, even after their life-changing encounters with God. So why do we expect everything in life to turn up roses after we accept God into our hearts?
Recounting a story about a toddler who pitched a fit because she couldn’t have chicken nuggets for dinner, Miller pointed out that it was easy for us to see that the toddler’s father was right to deny her chicken nuggets no matter how loud she screamed. “But do we believe that about God?” he asked.
Miller’s book of essays and commentaries, Blue Like Jazz, brought him to popularity in 2003. His other books include Searching for God Knows What, Through Painted Deserts and his recently released To Own a Dragon, which explores his own childhood growing up without a father.
Miller also spoke in chapel on Wednesday where he outlined the basic premise of his book Searching for God Knows What. All humans are created to require love and affirmation from outside of themselves, he postulates. We originally received that love from God, but after the fall of man, we were cut off from God’s love and began looking for it from each other, he said.
As imperfect humans, our ability to provide that love is faulty and that creates a survival-of-the-fittest competition for love and greater standing, which causes all sorts of problems from day to day selfishness to wars and crime.