The Imaginarium of J.M. Adkison

Breaking Jesus out of the formula

Published by J. M. Adkison under on 5:34 PM
Alright-so right now I am on a Donald Miller kick since I am doing this book review for Searching for God Knows What. Side Note: When I become an author, I hope people will one day say "so right now I am on this J.M. Adkison kick..."(that would be amazing). Anywho, I decided to put the review on my blog since I haven't been updating it much-but if you are going to read this-please read it at thelink.harding.edu that way I can get a lot of hits.

So here is the review, titled: Breaking Jesus out of the formula.


“Sometimes I feel as though I were born in a circus, come out of my mother’s womb like a man from a cannon, pitched toward the ceiling of the tent, all the doctors and nurses clapping in delight from the grandstands…My body falls back toward earth, the ground coming up quick, the center ring growing enormous beneath my falling weight. And this is precisely when it occurs to me that there is no net. As I wonder…Who is going to rescue me?”

And thus begins Donald Miller’s “Searching for God Knows What,” a radical book on freeing Jesus from a formulaic, rigid religion and the box we tend to put him in.
Donald Miller is not your average Christian author. In fact, Miller is about as odd and crazy-minded as writers come. This is not your grandmother’s sort of literature, unless your grandmother happens to be a bearded lady who can identify with Miller’s carnival-style parables. His first novel “Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance”, came out in 2000, but was met with little success. Lucky for him, his next novel, “Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality”, launched him into the New York Times best-seller list, which put him on the express lane out of anonymity. His next book to hit the scene was “Searching for God Knows What,” released in 2004.

Many may be wondering why someone would be writing a review for a book that came out five years ago, and that someone would respond that he was writing this review because not enough people know about it. “Searching for God Knows What” dares to ask the questions: What if the deepest longings of your heart were there for a reason? What if the Gospel of Jesus was not “safe” at all, but full of intrigue, passion−and romance? Not only does Miller try to take Jesus out of the box, he drenches the box in gasoline and lights it on fire afterwards.

Now what exactly is this “box”? The “box” is a set of limitations or formulas humans bind God to in order to make him fit comfortably in our nicely organized, daily scheduled lives. The box can be a formula that goes like this: a person struggles with life, some sort of calamity happens in this person’s life, and that calamity brings this person to Jesus. The end result is this person living happily ever after. It is the idea that coming to Christ is a step-by-step process taken out of the self-help book known as the Bible.

Yet, we all know life is actually a large collection of unknown variables waiting to disrupt perfectly planned schedules and as Miller so eloquently puts it: “It seems if there were a formula to fix life, Jesus would have told us what it was.”

Miller is in no sense attacking the institution of the church or Christianity. He is trying to get Christians to stop viewing God as a cuddly Santa Clause they can fit into their daily planners and see Him as an unpredictable being who wants his children to live outside their comfort boxes.

“I did’t have a relationship with God; I had a relationship with a system of simple ideas, certain prejudices, and a feeling that I and people who thought as I thought were right,” he says on page 31.

To say that Miller’s writing is “whimsical” would be nothing short of an under-statement. He writes with a dry sense of humor that is skilled in sending the reader into hysterics, making the reading both entertaining and enthralling. His ideas are quirky and very original, for example chapter seven is titled “Adam, Eve, and the Alien: How the Fall Makes You Feel” and chapter 14 is “The Gospel of Jesus: Why William Shakespeare Was a Prophet.”

One of the most attractive aspects to his writing is the simple fact Miller seems to write whatever pops into his head, and somehow brings these thoughts together to create a new way of looking at Christianity through an entirely different lens. However, this lens can often turn into a mind-whirling kaleidoscope as Miller is apt to lose you somewhere along his train of thought. Sometimes his ideas are so strange and random, you have trouble connecting the dots.

Yet, what really adds to the quality of this book is the genuineness the reader can sense in Miller’s writing. He does not pretend to be a all-knowing guru with the secrets to following God, he never fails to let Jesus have the lime light. He is just one eccentric man amongst a sea of people trying their hardest not to be eccentric, trying to make heads and tails of this art form called Christianity.

Read This!

Published by J. M. Adkison under on 7:43 PM
Alright-quickest blog ever-I know. But I am doing this book review for one of Donald Miller's books (don't know who he is? Then learn!) and I found this awesome quote:

"The most difficult lie I ever contended with is this: Life is a story about me."
-Donald Miller

Think about it.

Very Superstitious

Published by J. M. Adkison under on 5:11 PM
Alright, so I know I haven't blogged in, like, forever. But in case you didn't know, I've been a little busy with college life lately. Getting back into the groove a social life is hard work. Also, I wasn't really sure what to blog about. So, I got to thinking and pondered that age-old question "What interests me?"

And thus I came upon superstitions.

I find superstitions to be fascinating-I'm not superstitious my-self, but the fact that they exist fascinate me. What fascinates me is how strange corny they can be. For example, I once read in a legitimate history book on the medieval ages that mourners at a funeral made sure to keep black cats away from the coffin of their lost loved one. They feared if the cat ran across the coffin, then the corpse inside would spring back to life-but as a vampire! Put that in your oven, Stephanie Meyer!

But many of us have those little superstitions that we keep in our back pocket. For example: wearing a certain pair of dirty socks will win you the game, listening to a certain song will improve your writing, or the position of the stars and planets will control your love life. We all have those common superstitions-and even if we don't believe in them we at least acknowledge them-such as Friday the 13th, not walking under ladders and, oddly enough, the usefulness of bridesmaids. But you might often wonder-how on earth did we develop these superstitions? Well here is a list of how.

Friday the 13th-this day is almost considered something of a holiday or something, and even is look forward to. Hollywood and its horror films definitely help in notarizing this day. The origin of Friday the 13th actually lies within the Gospels. At the last supper, Judas was the 13th person attending the Passover meal. Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Folklore presumes that Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden on a Friday, the Floods came on a Friday, and unruly students praise Friday as the last day of the week.

Walking under ladders-Other than heavy objects falling on your head from a high-up ladder step, it is odd to think that walking under a simple tool for work can cause bad luck. Ladders, in case you didn't notice, create a triangle with the ground and the wall. The triangle symbolizes the Trinity, and walking through that triangle violates or agitates God or the spirits that "live" within the triangle. I did read that a simple way of repelling God's or the spirit's wrath is by crossing your fingers and making a sign of the cross as you walk under it-but since ladders aren't all that big in width, you might not have enough time.

Bridesmaids-Never thought weddings were superstitious? Think again, superstition practically invented these blissfully romantic events. In the olden days, when everyone from old Granny to little Jimmy feared the wrath of cantankerous, evil spirits that don't like it when the living are happy. The spirits have a sort of "It's my birthday and I can cry if I want to.." complex and enjoy making the living miserable. So, weddings, generally being festivities of happy occasion, are like magnets to these sort of ill-tempered ghosts. To stop the ungrateful dead from ruining the rather grateful living from having a good time, the Middle Age contemporaries invented the bridesmaid, which believe it or not, is not there to look pretty in front of everybody (but nowhere near as pretty as the bride). The bridesmaid is actually a decoy to distract the evil spirits from getting to the bride. Similarly, the groomsmen do the same thing. The veil is also suppose to hide the bride from the evil spirits. Hint to the evil spirits: Go for the one in the veil.

Breaking a mirror-We've all heard that breaking a mirror can cause seven years of bad luck. Well, here's why it would be seven years. During the olden days of witch hunts and Pope-control, people thought that looking in a mirror was looking at a reflection of your soul. By breaking the mirror, you for some reason harmed your soul. And it would take seven years for your soul to pull it-self back together. And with an injured soul, you would be easy for those nasty spirits mentioned back in the bridesmaid section.

Knock on wood-For some reason, this superstition has always annoyed me. It is so corny-with somebody going "Oh, knock on wood ha-ha." And I would always ask "what does that even mean?" Well, I found out. Back in the days before witch-hunts and Pope-control, a few tribes and nations believed gods lived in the trees. By knocking once on a tree-trunk, you asked for a favor. By knocking twice you said thank you. I still don't understand why people still say it.

Saying "Bless You"-This piece of superstition has actually earned its way into our culture's etiquette and good manners' file. Back in the good ol' Dark Ages, simple minded simpletons believed that when you sneezed, you were expelling demons from your soul. After you sneezed, you were congratulated with a "Bless you" and everybody thought you were really cool when you sneezed a lot. So, basically when allergy season came rolling around, the dorky kids with asthma were considered saints. However, when the Black Plague came skipping through town, the Pope mandated that people say "Bless you" because excessive sneezing was a sure sign you had the plague and you were about to die. So the dorky asthma kids go from sainthood to hospice care.

Hold your breath-So there is this one superstition that I followed for years when I was a kid. "Hold your breath when you go by a cemetery." It was more of a stupid kid's game than a superstition. It was actually rather bothersome cause I have several graves in my hometown area. And when your driving and you get stuck at a red light that is right next to a cemetery, you begin to ponder if this superstition is more trouble than its worth. Well, the origin of this one lies in the belief that the spirits of the dead wandering through the cemetery might hear you breathing, become jealous that you're still alive-and attack you. Sort of like the wedding scene-but unfortunately you can't keep a line of bridesmaids as decoys in the back of your car.

Even though we look back on the Medieval Ages as a time of stupidity, bloody wars and a bunch of dirty people living too close together-but you have to give them credit-without them we wouldn't have our very cool superstitions.
 

Lipsum

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