Why Donald Miller is a Sellout and Why It Doesn’t Matter

People change.

For good or for bad we are all in this process of change. No one stays in exactly the same place. Every day we are reinventing who we are based off of who we want to be and how much work we are willing to put in to get there.

Donald Miller changed.

I remember staying up late at night on the carpet of my bedroom, pouring over the scribblings of the wild and reckless man who traveled across the country in a van. He questioned everything.  And he was asking the same questions about God and religion that my gut was afraid to ask. Instead of eroding my faith it made it stronger because I was able to be honest with myself and with reality. I learned to think logically and poetically about the universe around me.  Miller was the one who wrote stuff like “I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn’t. It’s a chocolate thing.”  Or “The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: life is a story about me.”

So I was half surprised when I received yet another one of those emails in the inbox “RSVP Now for The Five Elements of a Money Making Website.

But my email didn’t throw it in spam because it recognized it was from the mentor of my soul, Donald Miller.

Don?!?! What happened to you?

I felt like I was watching a great lion waltz out into the center ring of a circus, all doped up on Dramamine. I remembered him as the king of the beasts but now he was being shamed and monetized.  He was a kid on Sunday morning uncomfortable as hell because his grandmother made him button the top button. I knew he wanted to be freed.

 

How did it come to this, Don? Did we fail you?

 

The Don who was the underground indie rapper of authors, throwing the bird to the publisher and writing the contents of his soul, was now strutting around hoity toity business conferences explaining sales strategies.  He needs rescue.  

I imagine myself as some strange version of the ghost of Christmas past, or Jemaine Clement appearing as David Bowie. I break in on Donald Miller just as he’s about to click send on his Mailchimp campaign for search engine optimization hacks.

 

“Come with me, Donald, I want to show you something”

And we wisp through time and space I take him to the moments when he felt truly alive. We float in space and watch as he explores and underground cave with his buddy Brick. We stop in on his bike ride when he is halfway across the country, feeling dead tired and wanting to give up. We visit the sunrises and the awkward dates, the trials and the triumphs. We watch him catch a dream to provide mentors to a fatherless generation and we watch him beat down the innumerable obstacles like he’s Apollo Creed on crack.   Then I take him back to his desk.

 

 

“Don, you inspired millions of people because you told them that they needed to leave their boring lives and tell a story worth telling. Today there is a girl spending her life fighting the sex-trade in the Philippines because of your writing. There is a man living in a van in Chile who sold it all and followed Jesus because he read your book.  Look in the mirror, my good friend, and ask yourself if this is really the life you always wanted. And if not, leave”

I don’t know how poor Don would answer, but it doesn’t really matter. The point of this blog post isn’t to say that Donald Miller got boring and lost my interest, instead it’s to say that he has the right to do so and that I’ll be forever thankful for the influence his writing has had on me.

It was the same Donald who also said “I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.” 

 

 

Musicians change all the time. Mumford and Sons faked everybody out with Wilder Mind by completely abandoning the trademark way they abuse their poor guitars. Childish Gambino hardly raps at all on his new album, but tries to be James Brown instead. 

 

 

To stay the same forever of record sales or fan-base loyalty is to be a slave. Even Don has the right to become the boring online business professional if he wants to.

And I am thankful for the part he played in my life for a while.

All of the heroes in my story have only been guideposts. They have wakened my soul and pointed me onward to living life fully alive. I have drifted from some friends, not out of malice, but because they weren’t going the same direction anymore. I have stopped listening to some bands and I might just have to unsubscribe from business Don’s web seminars. 

But you know who is my one unchanging hero? The rugged pilgrim-poet, Jesus. Every new fact I learn I love him more. Each book he puts out in my life is better than the last. His musical style changes but it puts last year’s album to shame. 

I will always follow him deep into the wooded places of the soul. He revives me like no one else. He is wild and unsafe. He asks dangerous things of me. 

When He speaks it is the sweetest poetry I have ever heard. It startles me awake to the sanguine beauty of the universe. 

Around the world I hear accounts of his actions and he blows my mind. He is better than I ever thought he could be. Don pointed me to him for a while, in this next season God might use someone else. 

Jesus, if I ever grow up I want to be like you. 

 

 

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.