My Two Cents on Blue Like Jazz

Donald Miller’s work, Blue Like Jazz is one of the most refreshing works I have read in some time on Christian spirituality. Miller relates his journey through life and into the life of faith. Miller’s story of faith formation is unorthodox in that Miller shares personal stories of many experiences and acquaintances and their conversation through the years spanned in this book.

Unorthodox and yet at the same time the very sort of fresh spiritual wind that renews the heart’s passion of intimacy with Jesus Christ. Miller’s work is the kind of work that in my thinking would upset the balance of religious homeostasis in many ultra-conservative systems. Miller’s Blue Like Jazz is not an orderly account of how one young man came to know about Jesus and then pledged membership a local congregation.

What Miller presents to his readers, and what the Bible seems to indicate about the journey of a relationship with Jesus is that this walk is at best messy full of inconsistencies, weak moments and full of people who are hungry for God and have been turned away by the stodgy mindedness of sectarianism. I do see Miller’s work as an appeal to grapple with the lines drawn in the sand of denominationalism and decide what is essential for the life of faith. How many more people will sectarianism destroy?

Miller opens his work with an Author’s note that summarizes the central focus of this book: I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’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.

Then in twenty easy to read engaging chapters Miller extrapolates on various spiritual themes, such as faith, redemption, grace, change, belief, confession, church, romance, community, money, worship, love, and Jesus. You walk away from this book refreshed in your journey and ready to be kind of people that Jesus has re-created us to be.

In the quote above from the author’s note, Miller mentioned a jazz musician he observed playing his heart out. Watching others do what they love captured his attention. It is this living out what we love, the love put into our hearts by an encounter with Jesus that should set apart Christ’s followers from everyone else. Like Miller writes, “sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it your self.”

We are given the great task as the church to live out the command of mutual love (Jn. 13:34). I believe that Miller enlightens us to a needed task in the universal church today to rediscover what Paul wrote to the Galatian churches about what mattered, and that is “faith expressing itself through love” (Gal. 5:6). Are we demonstrating to “outsiders” a love for Jesus that is contagious or portraying something else entirely. Something else that is more akin to bondage to fear, doubt, ingratitude, and defeat?

I would definitely recommend Miller’s work to all church members. We need to grapple with our self-absorption which Miller rightly asserts is sin and be re-acclimated to the awe and grace that attracted the first followers and that still ignites in the hearts of a few love struck disciples not afraid to be a little unorthodox and weird to point them to Jesus Christ.

Article Source: http://youth-ministry-resources.com

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