On My Shelf: Life and Books with Patrick Miller

On My Shelf helps you get to know various writers through a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their lives as readers.

I asked Patrick Miller—pastor, cohost of the Truth over Tribe podcast, and coauthor of Truth over Tribe: Pledging Allegiance to the Lamb, Not the Donkey or the Elephant—about what’s on his bedside table, his favorite fiction, the books he regularly revisits, and more.

What’s on your nightstand right now?

A lamp and definitely not my iPhone. If it were, I doubt I’d muster the requisite attention to pick up David Foster Wallace’s magisterially monstrous Infinite Jest. Yes, I admit this is a flex. Literally. The book is uncomfortably heavy. And likewise so is its story. But . . . if Ecclesiastes were transposed into modern fiction, it would be something like Infinite Jest.

Wallace weaves a sprawling story of drug addicts, terrorists, tennis prodigies, and legless spies with unparalleled gallows humor. It all circles in on a single question: What if the greatest threat to a good life isn’t what you fear but instead what you love? Written a decade before the first iPhone, Infinite Jest follows the shockwaves caused by entertainment terrorists who discovered a video so enrapturing that all who watch it cannot pull themselves away from the screen—not to eat, drink, or use the bathroom. What they desire most kills them softly. They perish in the ecstatic embrace of entertainment technology.

Need I say more?

Well, perhaps one more thing. What I’ve found most moving about Infinite Jest isn’t Wallace’s prescient predictions but his unwavering, painfully honest exploration of how our self-expressive, self-obsessive, self-satisfying age contorts us into worshipers of ourselves. As one spy observes,

Your temple is self and sentiment. . . . In such an instance you are a fanatic of desire, a slave to your individual subjective narrow self’s sentiments; a citizen of nothing. You become a citizen of nothing. You are by yourself and alone, kneeling to yourself.

I see myself in the addicts who can’t help but worship themselves and their own desires. Like the preacher in Ecclesiastes, they try to sate themselves on every known satisfaction, only to discover vapidity and isolation. You become what you love in Infinite Jest, as you do in real life. So you better keep careful watch over your affections.

What are your favorite fiction books?

It’s hard for me to pick a “favorite” in any genre, so allow me instead to share a few recent favorites.

Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus is set in 15th-century Russia during a plague outbreak. It follows the life of a homeless healer whose miraculous gifts earn him little but hatred—and yet he never stops loving. The story is enchanted and enchanting. As such, it’s a red pill for anyone living in our secular, materialistic, disenchanted age. It woke my soul to the truth that reality is porous. The spiritual is real.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is the intergenerational story of a Korean family living under Japanese occupation at the turn of the 20th century. At the center is a familial eucatastrophe, resolved by an act of self-sacrificial love by a Korean pastor whose short but generous life becomes the fumes on which his post-Christian family feeds—until there’s little left but fate’s cruel dice. A question lingers throughout: Was his presence itself a happenstance of fate? Is life a great Pachinko game? Or is there something more?

Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead is basically what you’d get if Charles Dickens grew up in a trailer park. If you, like me, grew up adjacent to such poverty, you’ll appreciate the story of a young man who drew every wrong card and yet by pluck and luck drew his life out of destitution.

What biographies or autobiographies have most influenced you and why?

I’ve always been a sucker for a twofer, and Carol A. Berry’s Learning from Henri Nouwen and Vincent van Gogh offers just that: a moving narration of two lives bound together by a shared ability to see beauty where others saw dereliction. One was a painter. One was a priest. Both men moved toward pain, not away from it. Van Gogh saw light in the suffocating mines of the Borinage. Nouwen saw glory in the ruined residents of L’Arche. Both men were complex, and Berry doesn’t shy away from the rough edges of their stories. Nonetheless, as I read, I never felt far from the heavenly One who chose to become an earthy, homeless peasant because he saw beauty in lowliness.

What are some books you regularly reread and why?

I rarely reread entire books; instead, I return to key chapters and essays. So let me share one: the second chapter in N. T. Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God, “Knowledge: Problems and Varieties.” From that titillating title, I’m sure your mental tastebuds are already watering. In my first semester at Covenant Theological Seminary, I can assure you mine were.

But if not, allow me to offer an appetizer: that chapter is the single best crystallization of an epistemological framework that has permanently shaped my thinking: critical realism. At its core (and this is an oversimplification), critical realism is a rejection of both subjectivism and objectivism. In their place is the idea that in humans both are compatible: (1) humans are subjective and prone to fallibility and (2) there’s an objective world with which every subject can correct his subjective missteps and confirm his correct observations. Thus, knowledge of anything is a spiral between subject and object. Knowledge of both God and history (two objective realities) is therefore not only possible—it’s the responsible, humble work of every thinking person.

In pastoral ministry, I’ve found this framework helpful for pastoring people buffeted by the waves of both relativism and empiricism. To the objectivists who deny Calvin’s insight that sin affects the whole human—mind and reason included—I show the reality of their limited, fallible, subjective knowledge. Epistemic humility breaks the spell of objectivism and opens people to historical and spiritual realities they’d otherwise discount, like the resurrection.

To those subjectivists hopeless about knowing anything objectively true—people who see through everything and end up seeing nothing at all—I show the reality of an objective, real world around them, to which they have access through thoughts, reason, and their senses. Epistemic hope breaks the spell of postmodern malaise. It opens them to the possibility that we can not only encounter God but be changed by him.

What books have most profoundly shaped how you serve and lead others for the sake of the gospel?

Can I say Tim Keller and move on? Before and after his passing, Keller has been my steady companion in ministry. Center Church shaped how I think about ecclesiological mission. His unpublished Preaching the Gospel in a Post-Modern World taught me how to read the Bible as a unified story, centered on Christ’s saving work. His lengthy study on prayer introduced me to the ideas of revival and renewal (later published as Prayer). The Prodigal God set me free from a legalistic faith, and Counterfeit Gods introduced me to the concept of heart idolatry. While The Reason for God was a bulwark shortly after my conversion, his later Making Sense of God gave me the apologetic tools I needed to engage our secular college town thoughtfully. For me, Keller has been (and will continue to be) a spiritual feast.

What’s one book you wish every pastor would read?

I began this list with a tome, so let me end with a folio: George Mueller’s Answers to Prayer. I encountered this book when I was support-raising for my first stint in college ministry. My timing was abominable. The 2008 recession had just hit the Midwest, where I lived, and most people were tightening their purse strings, not loosening them. Worse yet, I’d become a Christian in college and lacked a robust network of potential donors. So I was cold-calling friends, most of whom had low-paying internships just out of college. Within a month, I’d exhausted my contact list and only raised a quarter of the required funds.

I didn’t know where to turn or what to do. I suspected this was, perhaps, a sign from God that I wasn’t called into ministry. Then a friend gave me a copy of Answers to Prayer, Mueller’s autobiography. Mueller strings together personal stories detailing how he launched and maintained multiple orphanages without asking for a single shilling. Instead, he simply prayed when they had needs, and God provided. Mueller’s point wasn’t that God will give us anything we ask for if we ask hard enough. His point was that Jesus wants followers who’ve cast aside self-reliance to instead cast their hope on his grace, power, and strength.

I realized God wasn’t calling me away from ministry but preparing me for a different kind of ministry: one rooted in total dependence on him. So I got on my knees and prayed every morning for God to provide. I told him I trusted him to do so in his own time and trusted him even if he decided not to do so. Over the next year, people I hardly knew began to reach out and offer small gifts. An elderly widow living on social security promised to donate $25 per month. A non-Christian who felt inexplicably compelled to give to something promised $30 per month. Slowly but surely, God answered my prayers and I entered ministry knowing everything I had wasn’t a consequence of my own promise or hard work. It was all God.

In our managerial age, I think all pastors (myself included) need continual reminders that ministry is, in the final analysis, a work of God, not of man. Relying on the Lord in prayer for the small and great things is the primary means by which we keep ourselves humble and resolute. He’s a good father. He provides the good things we need. He withholds that which would do us harm. So we must always trust in him.

What are you learning about life and following Jesus?

Infinite Jest follows the story of several recovering addicts who attend AA meetings every evening. So I’ve been thinking a lot about AA. The first step in its 12-step program is to admit you’re totally powerless over your addiction. When it comes to my idols, I’m increasingly realizing that, on my own, I am powerless over them. Yet, when I sin, I still often tell God, “I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time.” Of course, that’s not a wrong desire. God has given us a will and we should use it frequently. But these days, I’ve changed the prayer: “God, I’m sorry. I’m totally powerless over this. Will you give me the strength to change?”

That prayer humbles me. But it’s also the only prayer I know that truly prostrates my soul before his mercy seat and acknowledges the fundamental reality that apart from him I have no good and can do no good.

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