I didn't expect to like this book. I thought it would probably be shallow liberal experiential Christianity. For the first third of the book, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Miller had some good things to say. He pointed out some serious flaws with traditional conservative Christianity and got to the heart of the loneliness that many people, myself included, often feel.

But after a while, I saw that my expectations were right to a large degree. There was almost nothing on the importance of Scripture. Everything was based on feeling — feeling love for yourself, feeling love for others, feeling that God loves you. There's even a chapter on how good Miller felt after he apologized to a bunch of students for the Crusades. In short, it was all about how to feel warm and fuzzy and part of the group. There was nothing on how to grow in knowledge or how to be separate from the world.

Mixed with all this was a strange brand of legalism. Miller made a lot of noise on how it's OK for Christians to smoke, cuss, drink and other such things as long as they fast and tithe. He feels that grace should be shown toward those in the drug culture, toward liberals, toward homosexuals, etc., but shows none at all toward those in typical evangelical churches, Republicans, rich people. He seems to think we can live however we wish as long as we give some money to the poor and love overt sinners. (Giving money to the poor and loving druggies is important, but it's not a substitute for a relationship with Jesus Christ.)

I think it's a pretty sad commentary on the state of the church today if this book is considered valuable.