Blue Like Jazz… Reflections
Jim Babka on May 17th 2008
Recently, a friend lent me a book and said, “Here. When I read this book, I thought, ‘Oh, Jim will really like this.’” The book was “Blue Like Jazz: Non-religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality.”
I’d been encouraged to read this book back in 2006, while staying at a friend’s house. I started the book, but didn’t really care for it. Since then I’d heard positive things about Blue Like Jazz, and it was a valued friend who recommended it, so I gave it a second try.
Here’s what I learned: It’s often the case that the last thing you’ll find at church is God. “Religion” is a turn-off and a drag.
That might sound strange, coming from a Christian. But the author, Donald Miller, is strange, in a normal kind of way. His writing is not an impersonal, instruction manual. It’s a highly personal testimony. And just like jazz, it’s improvisational.
I spend most of my time reading non-fiction books, trying to learn new things — to connect dots, build heuristics, and discover ideas I can use. At first, this book felt like an indulgent, time-wasting diversion. As it turns out, I just needed to keep going because I was getting to know the author in a highly personal way. As I read, I found myself relating to him. In a word, this book was “real.”
Christianity, in the eyes of most people reading this blog post, is a systematized, corporatized, and ghettoized institution, run by a group of people who want to profit from it. Blekx!
There’s a big difference between spirituality that permeates your life, providing a sense of direction and meaning, and institutions, that are committed to preservation, profit, and power. And it’s “post-modern” Christians who are waking up to this distinction.
Since reading Blue Like Jazz, in a completely separate set of events, I had what you might call an “ironic religious experience” — or at least a series of “A ha! moments.” I too discovered that, “Organized Religion is the problem,” or… “Religion tends to corrupt, and Organized Religions corrupt absolutely.”
I believe Miller outlines part of the remedy for Organized Religion in some wonderful passages I’ll quote in a future blog post (stay tuned).
But to sum up, I discovered that I want my faith to be more like Jazz music. That means practiced in small, improvisational settings, content to explore, enjoying the feelings evoked, and satisfied that not everything gets resolved.
That’s not how I’ve lived my life over the last decade or so. I’ve wanted an explanation for everything! I wanted to be sure I was right. But the pursuit of knowledge, usually exhilarating, can also be exhausting — never quite satisfied. And systematizing everything sucks some of the life or beauty out of that which is special to you. Go to college to turn your favorite hobby into a career, and you’ll see what I mean.
Anyway, after trying it a second time, I would now recommend Blue Like Jazz.
Hardball delenda est.
Filed in The Belfry, The Bookshelf
Not a bad book. I’d give it a B+.
Two fun facts on the book. 1) It was written several years (maybe 10?) before it became popular. Don Miller wrote it, sold a couple hundred copies, and the book basically was forgotten. Then years later, out of nowhere, people start recommending it to their friends and it goes viral. Best seller, and Miller’s rolling in it. We should all be so lucky. 2) For the first 20 or so years of my life I spent every summer with my family at Black Butte Ranch, where Miller spent a summer working. Given the span of time that I was there, the two of us must have been there at the same time at some point. I kind of like the idea that he served me hot dogs and soft drinks before he hit it rich.
Thanks for sharing!
[...] a previous post, Blue Like Jazz Reflections, I suggested that Organized Religion was bad — a turn-off. Well, this blog post is for [...]