Blue Like Jazz

written by Donald Miller

This book came on recommendation from my friend Dave. Every Tuesday morning, Dave and I supervise the dropoff area at our kids' school while solving most of the world's problems in about 30 minutes. One of our favorite woes to discuss is how the church (universal) has become pretty dogmatic and in many ways irrelevant to the rest of society. Hence this book.

The author, Donald Miller, wrote this book as a commentary on "Christian spirituality" - which he carefully differentiates from what you and I think of as mainstream evangelical Christianity. He equates Christian spirituality to jazz music, saying that he never used to like jazz because "it doesn't resolve." But after exeriencing God in a multitude of ways outside of the usual boxy white-bread evangelical Christian paradigms, he comes to know and love Jesus in a different way. A way that still "doesn't resolve" but is embraceable nonetheless.

Of note:

• The premise of this book is sort of "Velvet Elvis lite." Which is pretty arrogant for me to say, actually, now that I think about it, since I haven't even read all the way through Velvet Elvis yet. (Jay has though - and isn't that almost the same thing?) Anyway, one of the themes is this: what you're used to thinking of as normal, right, Christian living might not be normal, right, or Christian.
• Donald Miller's style was refreshing to me for about the first 20 pages. Then it got annoying. The guy needs an editor. Badly. Some of the essays in the book read like a Junie B. Jones story.
• One of the biggest things in the book to resonate with me was how Miller describes his ineptness at living out biblical community. I feel like he is describing me as he compares his life to a movie with just one central character: "Life was a story about me because I was in every scene. In fact, I was the only one in every scene. I was everywhere I went. If somebody walked into my scene, it would frustrate me because they were disrupting the general theme of the play...the movie, the grand movie, was about me... that is the way I lived." That was, and unfortunately to a great extent, still is, the way I live.
• The other big thing I loved about this book is how he blasts the traditional notion that to be a Christian, you have to be a right-wing Republican, hate homosexuals and hippies, and never question or doubt. Who can live like that, really?