Well known Christian author and speaker Donald Miller challenged his audience to contemplate this question when he spoke at Lipscomb Wednesday night: “Why do we not see Jesus?”
Miller, who led a discussion entitled “Where in the world is Jesus?” in Collins Alumni Auditorium, travels around the world to speak at universities, sharing his faith through real life experiences.
Answering his own question, Miller said, “The reason we don’t see Christ in the world is because we are not bringing Christ in the world.” Miller said the people of Christ must allow their faith to manifest itself in their daily activities.
Miller, the author of Blue Like Jazz, which was a New York Times bestseller in 2002, and several other books, visited Lipscomb two years ago and jokingly said he wanted to pick up the discussion from where he left off previously.
Miller challenged the audience with a deeper self-contemplation on the reasons “why we can’t recognize Jesus.”
Miller said the first issue is that “God is not attractive (in an American culture).” He supported this idea with the Biblical text in Isaiah 53:2-3 (NIV).
“He grew up like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.”
The second point Miller made is that “Jesus in not helping us to win validation in a false system of redemption.” As a result, “we associate our Christian identity with the winner, rather than associating our identity with Christ himself,” Miller said.
So, where in the world is Jesus? Miller said the answer to this question is easy: “Jesus is with us.”
Jordan McCool, a Bible and youth ministry major from Goodlettsville, Tenn., said he enjoyed hearing Miller speak.
“He has an excellent way with words,” McCool said, “and I think he is great.”
Rachel Craddock, an English major from Belpre, Ohio, said she had been touched by Miller’s writing and appreciated his words.
“I had never heard him speak before,” Craddock said, “but I read a few of his books, and they profoundly influenced my life. I appreciate his honesty, openness and vulnerability…which is hard to come by in people.”
Miller reminded his audience that ideas from the popular book Blue Like Jazz will hit the big screens in three local theaters April 13, and some of Lipscomb’s students will star in the upcoming film. Text “Blue” to 68398 for details about film showtimes.