By Searching by Isobel Kuhn

Posted on 2023-12-01 by thelittleman

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
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My Journey through Doubt into Faith

As I threw the final items into my bag for our two-week trip overseas, I haphazardly grabbed this book off my shelf thinking it was one of the many short books on prayer that I own. Light plane fare, I thought: just what I’d need to help keep my focus where it ought to be.

A book on prayer this is not, but rather the memoirs of Isobel Miller’s girlhood and pre-marriage years, long before she became a famous missionary to China. This book recounts Isobel’s long and difficult years in Canada, trying to her make her way in life as a teacher, through the minefields or romance, and into a Christian maturity that always seemed out of reach. She struggles, she doubts, she grows, and through it all she takes us readers along for the ride.

This process of recounting the years of growth in honest, open-faced detail assures readers that the woman who’d written all those marvelous books on faith and who’d lived an exemplary life of sacrifice among the Lisu tribes of Southwest China didn’t arrive miraculously on the scene, flawless and holy. No, the chapters in this book affirm that she, like any saint, has traveled the same miserable, lonely, heartbreaking paths we all walk, and that “by searching” for God and his will in it all, she made her way rightly.

I love the way Kuhn threads some allegorical language through the early parts of this book, based on this verse by John Oxenham:

To every man they’re openeth
A Way, and Ways, and a Way.
And the High Soul climbs the High way,
And a Low Soul gropes the Low,
And in between, on the misty flats,
The rest drift to and fro.
But to every man, there openeth
A High Way and a Low.
And every man decideth
The Way his soul shall go. (5)

Although the young woman had given her life to Christ and had at one time pursued that High way, she found herself often distracted by the cares of this world—romance, dancing, and literature being her main trappings—and thus far too often lost and uncaring on those “misty flats.” She warns her readers of this dangerously comfortable place:

After the stretched muscles of climbing, to find oneself on the level is very relaxing and pleasant. Therefore, The Misty Flats are attractive to foot, eye, and pallet at the beginning. There is no hint that the pretty mist will gradually close in and bring darkness. There is no suggestion amid the gray chatter of the populace throng that there are slippery places, which are going to bring hurt… And above all, there is never a hint that the end of the flats is the visitation of the Lord and the judgment of sin. Yet all that is the real truth. (11)

These “slippery places which are going to bring hurt” are illustrated in her own life, for at one point when she found herself so distraught over her life choices, she nearly attempted suicide (14)! That’s not quite an image we conjure up when we think of famous missionaries!

One of the methods Isobel experienced for overcoming her many distractions and slowly climbing her way out of those Misty Flats was to transplant herself, to move to a new place away from the familiar surroundings and friends that she’d allowed to commandeer her attention. She quotes F.B. Meyer:

Nothing strengthens us so much as isolation and transplantation… Under the wholesome demand, his soul will put forth all her native vigor… It may not be necessary for us to withdraw from home and friends; but we shall have to withdraw our heart’s deepest dependence from all earthly props and supports, if ever we are to learn what it is to trust simply and absolutely on the eternal God. (F.B. Meyer, 28)

Because she wrote about literature being a danger to her, and because reading and writing are an important hobby in my own life, I feel it’s important to quote her conclusions about the romance novels that were so much a danger to her. This sentiment speaks much to the issue of escapism, and it’s safe to say she learned a lot about this danger to one’s Christian walk from J. Hudson Taylor (a person hero of hers and one of the reasons she ever moved to China—another hero and reason was James Frasier). Here she writes particularly about its danger to marriages, as it sets women up with false expectations:

I never did read the modern sexy novels, but chose clean, exciting love stories. Very often these were not really true to life. Life does contain moments of adventure, but these times are interspersed with long periods of plain, unvarnished hard work. The real things of life are attained at these monotonous levels, so to speak, more than they are at the high peaks of excitement. People who in their reading feed on the lurid and melodramatic are not prepared for the long stretches of routine work which fill every life. I believe this is partly responsible for many broken marriages today. Young people think married life should be all moonlight and thrills, and they balk when they find themselves on the level stretches of plain, ordinary working together, which actually are the real life and backbone of a home. (47-48)

Ultimately, Isobel gave up a great deal to set her focus on the work God gave her to do. She got involved in several ministries geared towards working women, though she never lost her heart for China and set that as her ultimate goal. Having learned so much from the writings and example of Hudson Taylor, she was definitely bent towards “faith missions,” that brand of missions that suggests it’s faithless to ask others for financial support but faith-filled merely to depend on God. I’ve got my own opinions on the matter, of course, but even she admitted there was a fine line between faith and foolishness in this mindset. I love this passage about “missionary heroics”:

To give up a salary and live like Hudson Taylor would be heroic—the strongest kind of appeal to me at that time. It was many years later before a quiet article in the CIM’s private News Bulletin alerted me to the danger of missionary heroics. The article pointed out that just because a line of action is difficult, painful, or dangerous does not necessarily prove that it is the will of God. (131)

Isobel’s example stretched on for many years. After she met and married John Kuhn (not of Green Bay Packer fame) and moved to work with the unreached tribes of China, she continued to speak and teach and write, and she took many trips back home for furlough as well. About these trips, she makes a comment about a mindset that is still alive and well, that foreign missions is a waste of time and money, since there are so many lost souls here in the Americas too. She writes this pithy response:

Often, on furloughs, I have heard the impatient remark, “Why go to the foreign field? There is lots to be done here at home!” There most certainly is. And there are lots of Christians at home—but are they doing it? (150)

I really enjoyed this surprising autobiography/memoir and found it a very grounding read for me while I traveled, helping me maintain my outlook on future ministry. I loved the book so much, in fact, that through it all I couldn’t help but picture a single girl in our church, herself in her late-twenties and unsure of God’s will for her life. I see in her the same fire and determination to serve God with her life as I saw in Isobel Miller, yet also the same doubts and fears of singlehood, distractions, and feelings of uselessness. Immediately upon returning home, I gifted this book to her, and I pray that Isobel’s story might spark something new in my friend. I pray that it encourages her to journey through that doubt into faith by searching constantly for the pleasures of God.

I guess I pray the same for you, if you decide to pick up this great little book. I highly recommend it.

©2023 E.T.

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