Miller says that we tend to take the Bible and create formulas for everything. (Think alliterated, three point sermons - five steps to... and eight ways to...) But the Bible isn't a book of formulas. It's a book about relationships. People who have called on God and people who have run from God. We learn how to have a relationship with God through the relational experiences that others have had with him in the past.
Here are a few quotes and thoughts:
"If the gospel of Jesus is just some formula I obey in order to get taken off the naughty list and put on a nice list, then it doesn't meet the deep need of the human condition, it doesn't interact with the great desire of my soul, and it has nothing to do with the hidden (or rather, obvious) language we are all speaking. But if it is more, if it is a story about humanity falling away from the community that named it, and an attempt to bring humanity back to that community, and if it is more than a series of ideas, but rather speaks directly into this basic human need we are feeling, then the gospel of Jesus is the most relevant message in the history of mankind." p. 45
Becoming a Christian is more like falling in love than agreeing with a list of principles. p. 46
"The battle we are in (i.e., the cultural battle in the US between conservatives and liberals) is a battle against the principalities of darkness, not against the people who are different from us. In war you shoot the enemy, not the hostage." p. 190 (italics mine)
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 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. p. 200 (GJ's note: Paul stated that nothing was more important than knowing Christ - Philippians 2:9)
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