Blue Like Sad: Father Longing in Don Miller's To Own a Dragon

When I was growing up, my dad received Father's Day cards from kids all over the neighborhood. No, they were not his children, checking in from broken homes all around the block. They were from boys growing up in homes without men, who saw something fatherly in my dad. Those Father's Day cards reminded me that, even if I did not know all the reasons why, we had something good at our house, something other kids wanted.

I thought about those Father's Day cards as I read To Own a Dragon: Reflections on Growing Up Without a Father (NavPress, 2006) by Donald Miller and John MacMurray. The book is almost guaranteed to be a best-seller, since it is written by Miller, one of the gurus of the "emerging church" movement of liberalizing evangelicalism and the author of the runaway bestseller Blue Like Jazz. This book is different though. Miller's other books try to be theological and "relevant," but often fall short. In his other books, Miller tries to engage theological debates but often does not even understand terms (the "inherency of the Bible" issue, for instance, or the debate between Calvinists and "Armenians"). He tries to be socially relevant, but can not seem to see the difference between "social justice" and partisan Republican-bashing.

There is very little of that here. Instead, the book is a sad look into the thoughts and affections of a thirty-four year-old man who seeks to understand a "father wound" left by an absent dad. The result is a mix of some good insights, some bad answers, and, occasionally, some somewhat ugly theology.

Father Knows Best

Miller traces some of his thoughts on this subject to a television documentary on elephants. The program mentioned an elephant's need for an older elephant to show the youngster the ways of elephant life. Miller writes that he "began to wonder if those of us without dads aren't making mistakes in our lives we wouldn't make if we had a father to guide us" (34). He continued, "I wondered if people who grow up with great fathers don't walk around with a subconscious sense they are wanted on this planet, that they belong, and the world needs them" (34).

What kinds of ways would a father help a son? "Is there practical information we are supposed to know about work, women, decisions, authority, leadership, marriage, and family that we would have learned if there were a guide around to help us navigate our journey?" (34) And so the author sets out to catalog what he never learned from a father, to try to be the elephant to guide other young men. The book moves chapter by chapter with sections on spirituality, submission to authority, decision-making, work ethic, education, and, of course, sex.

Miller admits that he has been passive in his choices, often believing life "was something you had to stumble through alone" (33). After moving to Oregon, however, Miller found something he had seldom had: a mentor. Bible teacher and professional photographer John MacMurray models manhood and fatherhood for Miller, as Miller lives with the MacMurray family and sees his mentor close-up. Miller writes, "For the first time in my life, I saw what a father does, what a father teaches a kid, what a husband does around the house, the way a man interacts with the world around him, the way a man-just as does a woman-holds a family together" (43).

And even though Miller, at times, would have preferred to come home drunk and play his music as loud as he liked, he realized that "playing your music as loud as you want and coming home drunk aren't real life" (43). He writes, "Real life, it turns out, is diapers and lawnmowers, decks that need painting, a wife that needs to be listened to, kids that need to be taught right from wrong, a checkbook, an oil change, a sunset behind a mountain, laughter at a kitchen table, too much wine, a chipped tooth, and a screaming child" (43).

It is here that Miller says he rethought his "suspended adolescence" (34) and started out toward manhood.

More than Equipment

Aside from Miller's implication that drunkenness ("too much wine") is part of life, he is on to something here. He at least recognizes the vacuity of responsibility-fleeing males, many of whom are found in the pews of Christian churches. Unfortunately, Miller begins to lose his way as he tries to define terms. In communicating manhood to younger boys, Miller decides he "had to accept the terms ‘man,' ‘manliness,' and ‘manhood' as biological terms, and while the sales tactics played on emotions, what I had to focus on was facts" (104).

Miller plays this out in his recounting of an interaction with 900 male high school students. When asked to define what a "real" man is, many of them respond with "somebody who provides for his family" or who "is honest, he doesn't lie" (105). Miller turns these back, suggesting that these answers speak of what a man does, not what makes a real man. Instead, he tells them, a real man is "a person with a penis" (106). He looks the students in their eyes and tells them, "You are men. Some of you have never heard this before, but I want to tell you, you are men. You are not boys, you are not children, you are not women; you are men. God has spoken, and when God speaks, the majority has spoken. You are a man" (107).

To the extent that Miller is demonstrating that all males are held accountable to be men, he is right on target. Every "person with a penis" is indeed called on to act like a man. But is Miller really approaching a biblical definition of manhood when he distinguishes between what a man does and what a man is? Does the Bible not speak of manhood specifically in the terms some of these students provide (Matt 7:9-11; Eph 6:4; 1 Tim 5:8)? And, as Miller himself has shown, are there not virtually generations of "persons with penises" who have acted like anything but men-leaving "father wounds" in their collective wake?

Who's Your Daddy?

As he watched his mentor interact with his son, Miller realized that what he was looking for was more than just the physical presence of a father. What he longed for was belonging. "By that I mean I wanted a father to take ownership of me, to care about me more than he cared about anything else in the world, or, for that matter, anybody else in the world" (52), he writes.

This led Miller to reconsider his idea of God as Father.  "This idea of God fathering us was new to me, and while I confess I liked it, I didn't know if I could buy in," Miller acknowledges. "I liked the idea of God up in heaven, offering guidance and counsel and reward in my life. And I liked the idea I hadn't been completely abandoned" (61).

Miller writes clearly and poignantly about some aspects of God's Fatherhood: his provision, his concern for his children's best interests. Miller's God evidences none of the disappointing characteristics of so many human fathers. And even though the idea of a fathering God "feels creepy" (65) to Miller at times, he grasps a central biblical message when he quotes MacMurray telling him that "if God is our Father, we've got it good. We've got it really good" (63).

Miller's book would have answered many more questions for a fatherless generation, though, if he had spent more time with God's self-revelation of his Fatherhood. He confuses the question when he asserts that "though some of us grow up without biological fathers, none of us grows up without our actual Father" (62). This is especially so when he admits that his fatherless reader may be "a Muslim or a Jew or an agnostic or just (one who prefers) not to think about it" (38).

Miller does not probe the truth that God is Father indeed to those who have "received the Spirit of adoption as sons" (Rom 8:14-17). Yes, the Bible teaches that, as Baptist pastor-theologian Herschel Hobbs once put it, God is "fatherly in his attitude toward all men," but he is Father in truth only through the sonship of Christ Jesus. The hurting fatherless reading Miller's book face the same call Jesus' first followers faced: to find identity not in genetic descent (Matt 12:46-50) but in being "sons of God" through union with Christ (Gal 3:28-29).

In fact, Miller's central thesis obscures one of the scariest truths of the New Testament. In one sense, none of us are really "fatherless." Jesus teaches that outside of Christ, we do have a father, the devil (John 8:39-47). And, like the elephant in Miller's documentary, he teaches us quite well what it means to share his nature and to walk in his ways.

The Rest of the Story

Miller is on more solid ground when he offers practical insights, which are plentiful through the book. His discussion of authority, just by its inclusion, is a helpful corrective to an entire generation of men who resent the very idea of hierarchy. He wisely suggests that men should not glean wisdom from men who themselves evidence a refusal to submit to authority. He rightly warns that making decisions means hard work, and gives welcome guidance on relying on counsel-especially that of Scripture (for example, the Book of Proverbs). Not surprisingly, he doesn't downplay the moral aspect of human sexuality. Refreshingly, he affirms the moral nature of work, as well as its existence as a grace gift of God.

Perhaps it is because he is writing about authority and humility, but To Own a Dragon does not evidence the anti-authoritarian sarcasm of his previous books toward conservative evangelical Christianity. There are not the caricatures (at best) or near false-witness (at worst) of the motives of evangelical leaders and ministries. Maybe this is the influence of MacMurray on this project. Or maybe it is a growing and maturing Donald Miller. In either case, one can hope this attitude might be the rule for Miller's future writings instead of the exception.

 A Father, On Earth as in Heaven

Evangelicals reading Miller's book might best benefit from its first-person testimony that fathers can and must instill worth and meaning into the lives of their children, especially their sons. Miller honors his mother for keeping him in church, for valiantly trying to fill both parental roles, and for doing everything within her power to raise him to be, well, a man.  But, despite all this, Miller says he needed a father to assure him: "I was here on purpose, and I had a purpose, and that a family and a father and even a world needed me to exist to make himself and themselves more happy [sic.]" (51).

Evangelicals should also find in Miller's testimony one more reminder that, in Christ, God is indeed "Father to the fatherless and protector of widows" (Ps 68:5). Our desire for an earthly father is to point us toward a heavenly Father, just as the earthly father is to reflect the love, care, and provision of the heavenly Father. The gospel proclaimed by our churches needs to point to the adoption into the household of God, a bowing of the knee "before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named" (Eph 3:15).

Not Just Breathing Smoke

To Own a Dragon is not the book to teach a man how to be a father, or a son to love his dad. It is what it is, one man's reflections on growing up fatherless. His answers sometimes are not what we need, but we need to hear the questions, because they are being asked all around us by men without the platform or eloquence of Donald Miller. Some of them cannot look us in the eye, hiding behind a ball-cap or an unruly swath of hair.

This is a sad book, but it is a sadness we need to hear. The title comes from Miller's belief that he knows as much about what it is to have a father as he knows about what it is to own one of the dragons he read about in his childhood fairy tales. We need to hear this man's story, but we need more than this to confront the dangers of father hunger. We need a more robust announcement of the gospel, even when that means saying some hard things to fatherless non-Christians. A generation of lost young men may not know what it is to own a dragon, but the Bible tells us that a Dragon owns them (Rev 12). That is what is really at stake when fathers abandon their children-the gospel itself. And that's even sadder than Miller's tale, even bluer than jazz.