Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
by Donald Miller
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Book Summary Information
Author: Donald MillerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-07-17
ISBN: 0785263705
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780785263708
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
Book Review: Not really inspirational, but very practical and applicable, which might be better
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought Blue Like Jazz back in December. I remember the specific day I bought the book, actually. The day I bought it, December 14th, I was attending a performance by Glenn Beck, the talk radio personality, in Akron. I had bought two tickets, one for me, and one for my mom as her Christmas gift. While I knew that Mr. Beck had a deep faith in Jesus (he is a Mormon), I wasn't really expecting to hear much religiosity in the performance he was going to give. It was a "Christmas Show" that was going to be about the true meaning of the holiday. Naturally, I expected him to mention that the real meaning of Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ, but I didn't expect to get much out of the event spiritually. This show turned out to be one of the most emotional events of my entire life. The first half of the show was Glenn telling humorous stories about his family and friends, but the second half was Glenn telling his personal, devastating story about his mother committing suicide. She committed suicide when he was thirteen years old. As Glenn said, his mother believed that she didn't have another chance in life. That she had done all she could, and failed. I feel like that sometimes. It has never come to the point where I am anywhere near suicide, but sometimes I just feel like I have no idea where I am going in life, and my actions in the past have condemned me to a pointless, empty existence. The truth is, we all have a second chance. And a third. And a fourth. And however many are necessary. That chance is with Jesus Christ. I cried my eyes out in that theater that night. Not only because of the emotions I felt from the sadness of the story, but also the meaning that Glenn had somehow weaned out of this horrible event. It made everything bad that has happened to me seem inconsequential, in some ways. This day was one of those "mountain top" moments for me as a Christian. You know how it is, you feel great, like you are going to truly start living for God, going to church every week, reading the Bible every day, spreading the gospel, and just living a life of righteousness. I can't speak for others, but, for me, these mountain top moments don't really last very long. When I got home from Akron that night, I set Blue Like Jazz out on my table, declaring that I was going to read it the next day. For some reason, I fell off the mountain top in the middle of the night, and the book kept on getting pushed back so I could read other, meaningless books. I still remember Glenn Beck's performance very vividly, and I also remember how I thought that reading Blue Like Jazz and other inspirational books could really help to complement the amazing message that I heard that night. Turns out that other things must have been more important.
I finally picked up Blue Like Jazz last night. Three months after I bought a book that I was extremely excited to read, I was just now starting it. The buzz I had heard about this book was, well, overwhelming. It had been recommended to me by a bunch of fellow Christians, and I had also heard from a few Christians that were really put off by the books popularity. In fact, one of my friends who attends Cincinnati Christian University even told me that the students down there had a running joke that "if you haven't read Blue Like Jazz, you aren't really a Christian." While I found this joke amusing at the time, I also felt a little bit like most of the people subscribing to this joke really hadn't given the book a chance, which is one of my biggest problems with the large mass that is Christianity. The book is a collection of essays by Donald Miller, and it's title has a subtitle that says, "Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality." I liked that line. It made me want to really read the book, considering how I always say how I love God and Jesus, but I really don't like "religion." As a book, the writing really wasn't all that it was cracked up to be, to be totally honest. It is a collection of essays, so the book sometimes seems like it has no semblance, and the author is just rambling. However, while reading the novel, I found that Donald Miller was saying a lot of things that were exactly true for me, as well. His views on grace, church, romance, being alone, and community almost exactly reflected my feelings on these matters. It was one of those weird moments when you are reading a nonfiction book, and you begin to realize that you are basically reading a biography of your own life, and that is when the book takes on so much more meaning than it could have before. I don't want this post to go on forever, but there are a few parts of the book that I highlighted, because I felt they were very good, important points that I wanted to address. Address them somewhat to myself, and if others wanted to listen (you), then that was cool, too.
One of the first moments in the book that truly compelled me was the moment when Miller began to talk about what many people refer to as "original sin." This is a very controversial viewpoint. If you want a nonreligious view on this subject, I would suggest looking into Sigmund Freud. Freud had a lot of good, true ideas, but I do believe there is a point in his work where he basically went off the deep end. In all, I believe that humans are naturally bad. Miller refers to what I am talking about as a "sin nature" that is present in all of us. In the novel Miller is talking about the American system, and if everything would be okay if we had no checks and balances or no police system to make sure everything was okay. Miller says, "If we get caught, we will be punished. But that doesn't make us good people; it only makes us subdued. Just think about the Congress and Senate and even the president. The genius of the American system is not freedom; the genius of the American system is checks and balances. Nobody gets all the power. Everybody is watching everybody else. It is as if the founding fathers knew, intrinsically, that the soul of man, unwatched, is perverse." Humans need something to guide them through life. Whether it is just a physical presence, like the police, or it is an emotional, spiritual presence like Jesus, we all need something to subdue our natural sin nature. This nature is deeply ingrained within us, and it is extremely tough to overcome, I am sure that we all know that. No matter what problems you have dealt with in your life, you know how tough it is to avoid that one thing that you know is bad, but yet is so tempting because the pleasure it will give you, or it is the "cool" thing to do. I don't believe that everyone is a murderer without something to hinder their nature, but I do believe that without something to believe in, our society would devolve into something that none of us would want to live in. I guess it was comforting to read this because a lot of people I know think that Freud was a total nut job, and that just is not true. While I disagree with Freud on a lot of things (including all his views on religion), my conscience makes me agree with him on this basic issue of original sin. It is a scary thought, but it is something that we all must face.
Another way that I totally engaged with this book was in the way that Miller talked about how we question ourselves intellectually about religion, when we really shouldn't be using our rationality to explain our faith. Miller says, "...she believed that all things that were true were rational. But that isn't the case. Love, for example, is a true emotion, but it is not rational. What I mean is, people actually feel it. I have been in love, plenty of people have been in love, yet love cannot be proved scientifically. Neither can beauty. Light cannot be proved scientifically, and yet we all believe in light and by light see all things. There are plenty of things that are true that don't make any sense. ...she wanted God to make sense. He doesn't." This quote really applies to my struggle in faith, because I constantly find myself questioning my beliefs based on things that I, say, learn in school, or see on television. Miller refers to this process in his novel as trying to turn God into math. It just doesn't make sense. God should not need to be explained to us in any way. It is very tough to keep your faith when you are constantly bombarded with things that supposedly contradict it wherever you go. Whether it is the origin of the universe, or evolution, or other tripe, none of it matters. As long as you believe in God, believe in Jesus as your savior, just savor the benefits that you receive from your relationship with Him.
One of my biggest uncertainties about my faith has been grace. Grace, to me, seems basically like a blank check that God has give to all of His believers. Instead of a blank check for money, though, this blank check is for sin. Sin all you want, God's never-ending grace will always be there to catch us. Don't get me wrong, I love this idea, but I think it gives us false security sometimes. In the chapter on grace, Miller says, "I used to get really ticked about preachers who talked too much about grace, because they tempted me not to be disciplined." In reality, seeing grace just as a temptation to sin is about as ungodly as a person could be. God does have a never-ending grace for all his believers, but he obviously doesn't expect us to take advantage of it. Grace is really difficult to understand. "For a very long time, I could not understand why some people have no trouble accepting the grace of God while others experience immense difficulty," Miller states in his book. It is tough for me to accept grace from God. After I commit a sin, I will ask forgiveness, and truly desire it, but I never go to sleep that night feeling truly forgiven, even though I know I should. Miller completely exposed my exact feelings on grace when his friend told him, "...you are not above the charity of God...it was that I believed I was above the grace of God." As Miller writes, our role in our relationship with God is "to humbly receive God's unconditional love." It is all about acceptance and humility. There are two other great quotes from Blue Like Jazz: "Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God's love will," and "In exchange for our humility and willingness to accept the charity of God, we are given a kingdom. And a beggar's kingdom is better than a proud man's delusion."
With my recent feelings about resentment toward church and organized religion, one of my friends made a comment about how he thought the most important thing about faith was, other than the Bible, Christian fellowship with all of your friends. I completely agree with that statement. The fact is that if I hadn't been friends with all the great people I was lucky enough to befriend in high school, I don't know where I would be right now. It is thanks to their friendship and constant caring that I have developed an ability to withstand peer pressure and fight for what I believe in. Yes, I have had problems with straying from my faith since I have been in college, but I have overcome them, and I truly believe that this is thanks to the awesome friendships that I have had in my life. In the chapter on community, Miller states that "Jesus does not want us floating through space or sitting in front of our televisions. Jesus wants us interacting eating together, laughing together, praying together. Loneliness is something that came with the fall." (The television one is going to be particularly tough for me to deal with.) Miller also writes that "...without people I could not grow - I could not grow in God, and I could not grow as a human." I think that I have truly realized the importance of friendships during this year, since I have moved back home. As I have said before, I really want to get out of here, to be around my friends all the time again. I feel like I am my best when with friends, and I hope that I also bring out the best in my friends when I am around them. Nothing is better than being able to talk to a friend about a problem you are having. Whether it has to deal with faith or not, a friend is always the best person to go to. I used to think that when I had a question about God or the Bible, I should ask a preacher, but since I have become so independent with my beliefs in God, my best resource will be my friends who can truly identify with my problems and try to help me through, and, best of all, be there with me as I try to correct the problem. Miller talks a lot about being friends with people who do not know Jesus as their savior, and how he felt more comfortable around them. I totally identify with this, but I think that this is caused by churches and organized religion, not by the people themselves. Miller writes that "My Christian communities had always had little unwritten social ethics like don't cuss and don't support Democrats and don't ask tough questions about the Bible." This basically eliminates discourse within Christian society, and that is one of the worse things that can happen to any society, let alone a religious society that is based solely on interpretations of written text. I see what Miller is talking about when it comes to having "secular" friends, and feeling more comfortable around them. When I am around my friends from work, I definitely feel more free to say whatever I want, but then I always question myself as to if that is really a good thing. The main point that I agree with from this subject is that your "secular" friends will definitely be less quick to judge. Some would even argue that your Christian friends love you in a conditional way, while secular friends would love you unconditionally, but I don't agree with that statement. I have numerous Christian friends that I know love unconditionally, and I like to think that I love unconditionally, and don't judge people. Lately, I have found myself becoming more liberal on many social issues, just because I don't think it is right to be so unaccepting and discriminatory to a large group of people. Basically, I think it is good to have friends from both sides of the aisle, but my ultimate goal would be to show God's love to the ones who do not know him yet. To fuse their openness with God's love would be quite a creation, maybe the perfect friend. I strive to be this good of a friend, and I know that I fail a lot, but with future events starting to loom on my life, I am starting to put forth a much larger effort toward my friendships, and I am making sure that, with my new ones, I make no beginner's mistakes that I made with many friends in the past.
The best quote from Blue Like Jazz comes from the last chapter. In summing up his book, which is tough, Miller focuses on Jesus, the man, and what he means, or should mean, to all of us. Miller, when speaking of a man who would cry at the mention of Jesus' name, says that "I would like to know Jesus like that, with my heart, not just my head. I felt like that would be the key to something." I think that is the key to everything, and that is my ultimate goal. To know Jesus only with my heart, and take my head completely out of the equation, because it is my head that constantly screws me up and ruins everything that my heart might be feeling. This is true for all my relationships, not just my relationship with Jesus. Our brains can be our worst enemy sometimes, and, if possible, we need to ignore them and, as DHT would say, "listen to your heart." After all, to become a Christian, you must accept Jesus into your heart, not your mind. Your heart is what matters to Him, ignore everything else, at whatever cost.
Summary of Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. . . . I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened." In Donald Miller's early years, he was vaguely familiar with a distant God. But when he came to know Jesus Christ, he pursued the Christian life with great zeal. Within a few years he had a successful ministry that ultimately left him feeling empty, burned out, and, once again, far away from God. In this intimate, soul-searching account, Miller describes his remarkable journey back to a culturally relevant, infinitely loving God.
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