A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
By: Donald Miller

“People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen.”

If I were going to summarize the book in one quote, there ya go.

In short, it’s a book that explores what it takes to make a good story and challenges you to reflect on your ‘own story’. It attempts to remind us all that our lives are meaningful and should be lived that way, that sacrifice trumps comfort. However, he essentially leaves out the ‘ why life is meaningful’ part. (perhaps intentionally?)

Donald Miller wrote Blue Like Jazz, then made it into a movie, and then wrote a book about how he made his book into a movie. (Basically.) I purposely did not read Blue Like Jazz. And after seeing that one of the blurbs on the back of this book came from Rob Bell, I admit I came into this book assuming I’d be reading heresy.

So now, after having read it, struggling to keep my preconceived ideas hidden away, here are my reflections.

Partway through the book I wondered if Don’s oft-referred friend Bob was Bob Goff. We find out, yes, it is indeed the case. And that presented an entirely new lens to see this book. Because I read Bob’s book ‘Everybody Always.’ And these too books read very similarly: Both books are compelling you to live more purposefully. Both authors are pretty good, funny storytellers. Both include remarks that seem rather pointless (in this book it was a lot of conversations he had with his friends, and all the times they were smoking pipes). They also both like to speculate about what God thinks, feels, or says.

I’m still processing how to feel about this book. I can’t really criticize the author for failing at something they never set out to do. Without knowing exactly his goal for this book, I apologetically may end up doing that, but I press on.

I like this book better than ‘Everybody Always’ partly because Don’s life is more relatable and his ‘conceptions’ seem more attainable. If we really wanted to, we could hike the Inca trail or bike across America. We can’t fly our children to 29 countries and interview world leaders or build a mansion-lodge in the Canadian wilderness that we have to own a plane to get to. I think his analogies to story-writing are compelling in application. Everyone reads books and watches movies. We are created in the image of the Creator so ‘creating’ our own stories makes sense to us. But I think Miller is still confused on his own thesis:

On the one hand he says, “It makes me wonder if that was the intention for man, to chase sticks and ducks, to name animals, to create families, and to keep looking back at God to feed off his pleasure at our pleasure… it’s as though God is saying, ‘Write a good story, take somebody with you, let me help.’”

On the other hand he says, “Job understood the story was not about him, and he cared more about the story than he did about himself. He said to me I was a tree in a story about a forest, and that it was arrogant of me to believe differently. And he told me the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree.”

On one hand he says “[in heaven] I’ll sit with God and we’ll remember my story together and then he’ll stand and put his arms around me and say, ‘Well done,’ and that he liked my story. And my soul won’t be thirsty anymore.”

On the other hand he says, “I told God no again, but he came back to me and asked me if I really believed he could write a better story—and if I did, why didn’t I trust him?”

So which is it? Is it God’s story, or is it ours? Does God only care that we find pleasure in our own stories? Or are we called to something greater than pleasure? If Don just means to remind us that we have a responsibility to take action and live meaningful lives on purpose, to live a life worthy of the Lord, then that’s great, I have no issue. But, like Bob, he is careless with his words and presents something that could easily be perceived and acted upon in the opposite way.

I can’t help but think of these words from the book ‘You Who?’ by Rachel Jankovic: “If we try to write our stories like the world does, composing our little plot points and shaping ourselves into what we think it would be neat to be, but we love Jesus, this is just making him one more interesting plot point about us. We put our bumper sticker that says “Jesus – lover “on our little lifestyle car... But Christ will not be managed or contained like that. If he truly bought you with his blood, he did not do so in order to get a sponsorship position in your life. He’s not here to look good next your brand. He bought your life, and you are his.”

and

“It doesn’t matter how long or thoughtful or detailed the story you were writing is. If it is written by a character in the story rather than the Author of the story, it can only ever be tiny; it will always be minuscule by comparison. You cannot, as a character, out-write the Author of you.”

and

“When we tell each other over and over that whatever we do is precious and wonderful and glorious because God loves us, we demonstrate how little we understand ourselves and our Creator.… Jesus Christ came to this earth, struggled, suffered, and died so that you might die… Jesus Christ died so that you might die, and he lives so that you might live… There will be no resolution to the struggles in your life if you do not willingly give your self-fashioned identity to Christ that it might die…There is no hope for you that is not Jesus. There’s nothing interesting about you if it is not resurrected in him. There’s nothing defining about you that cannot live in Christ. Your selfishness is dead. Your lust is dead. Your need to be unique is dead. Your envy, greed, obsessions, guilts– they are all dead. Dead and gone in Christ. Stop trying to tidy them up and make them mean something, because they never will.”

Because THAT’S what our story is. And again, whether intentional or not, Don is writing with a very strong ‘God is my sponsorship’ kind of vibe instead of ‘we need to die to ourselves and live for the glory of God because Jesus’s death and resurrection is my life’ kind of vibe.

God doesn’t say ‘well-done’ because we write good stories and live happy lives. He says ‘well-done my good and faithful servant’-because we are faithful to his truth and obedient to his Word.

I get that Don specializes in memoir writing. And who am I to judge his story and his feelings and his spiritual journey? And that is true. The subtitle of this book is ‘What I learned while editing my life.’ He’s sharing what he discovered. But it’s naïve to think that is the only goal of his book. He wants to spur others on to find meaning in their lives as well. And if he’s not leading people to where there is ACTUAL meaning, then that’s not very helpful or hopeful.

He seems to be content writing to the broader audience of those who may believe in God and those who just believe in a voice or a force outside themselves. But a meaningful life on earth is actually meaningless if it’s not lived in anticipation of eternity.

He presented a practical, relatable, important challenge to spur others on to good deeds and purpose, creatively and accessibly comparing it to movie-making. And there are good things to glean from these pages. But in the end, the message was blurred with ambiguity and the potential to turn significance into illusion if we get these questions wrong- who are we living for and why do our lives have meaning?