Blue Like Jazz

I never liked jazz music because it didn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes and he never opened his eyes.

After that I liked jazz music.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.

I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.

That's the opening note to Donald Miller's delightful book, Blue Like Jazz, which I would like to highly recommend to pretty much all of you. It is subtitled 'Non-religious thoughts about Christian spirituality', and hit me like a breath of fresh air after all the twisting and turning my mind has been through. It was kind of an indulgence to be carried along by the charm of his narrative (it's kind of the story of his life, arranged thematically rather than chronologically, in rather rambling fashion, just relating whatever little anecdotes come into his head), just allowing myself to do what he suggested and put my mind to one side for a time and give my heart some time to know God again.

Gah, I would very much like to share the experience of this book with you kids, but it's kinda hard to describe it except by quoting from it. Hm, here's a part some of you might like:

When I moved downtown to attend Imago-Dei, the church Rick started, he was pretty serious about loving people regardless of whether they considered Jesus the Son of God or not, and Rick wanted to love them because they were either hungry, thirsty, or lonely. The human struggle bothered Rick, as if something was broken in the world and we were supposed to hold our palms against the wound. He didn't really see evangelism, or whatever you want to call it, as a target on a wall in which the goal is to get people to agree with us about the meaning of life. He saw evangelism as reaching a felt need. I thought this was beautiful and frightening. I thought it was beautiful because I had this same need; I mean, I really knew I needed Jesus like I need water or food, and yet it was frightening because Christianity is so stupid to so much of our culture, and I absolutely hate bothering people about this stuff.

...In a recent radio interview I was sternly asked by the host, who did not consider himself a Christian, to defend Christianity. I told him that I couldn't do it, and moreover, that I didn't want to defend the term. He asked me if I was a Christian, and I told him yes. "Then why don't you want to defend Christianity?" he asked, confused. I told him I no longer knew what the term meant. Of the hundreds of thousands of people listening to his show that day, some of them had terrible experiences with Christianity; they may have been yelled at by a teacher in a Christian school, abused by a minister, or browbeaten by a Christian parent. To them, the term Christianity meant something that no Christian I know would defend. By fortifying the term, I am only making them more and more angry. I won't do it. Stop ten people on the street and ask them what they think of when they hear the word Christianity, and they will give you ten different answers. How can I defend a term that means ten different things to ten different people? I told the radio show host that I would rather talk about Jesus and how I came to believe that Jesus exists and that he likes me. The host looked back at me with tears in his eyes. When we were done, he asked me if we could go get lunch together. He told me how much he didn't like Christianity but how he had always wanted to believe Jesus was the Son of God.

He just kind of chats away like that, talking about his friends and stuff. It's kinda cool and postmodern, and at times quite poetic. Also terrifically funny. There's definitely parts I could take or leave, theologically speaking, and there's even some bad grammar and spelling and stuff in it, which is kinda weird but kinda suits the style. The guy is about 30 I gather, and writing mostly about the experiences of his early 20s. It's just cool down-to-earth real life sort of stuff. Including plenty of angst about the institutionalised church (but, I think, chanelled in a helpful direction - yay!).

So I was speaking at this twenty-something ministry, speaking to about fifty or so people on Sunday nights at a church in the suburbs, all the while dying inside. I wasn't even attending the main worship service anymore. The pastor who was in charge of the college group asked me why I wasn't coming to church. He was kind and sympathetic and said he missed seeing me there.

Tony the Beat Poet [=one of his mates] says I am not good with diplomacy. He says I speak my mind too much and I should consider the ramifications of my words. I can be a real jerk without even realizing it. I told the guy it was hard for me to go to church without getting angry, and I think he took that personally. I tried to explain how I felt, but I was speaking a different language. I felt stupid, too, like some bitter idiot all wet and wanting everybody to cater to me, to my ideas about who Jesus is and was and the way He wants us to live. [sound familiar anyone?]

I have a copy, but it's currently on loan, and I have an accumulating list. But it's only $19 at the Christian Superstore! I could go on quoting from it for quite some time, but you'd probably all better get back to your lives. But seriously, it's worth a read.