Blue Like Jazz

BLUE LIKE MILLER

A Review of Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

For those of us struggling with what Christianity has become while still maintaining a close attachment to Jesus Christ, Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz comes as a rhapsodical, lyric ramble through various themes that leaves the reader asking, “Now why didn’t someone say all of this before?” His honest, no-nonsense style of telling things exactly the way he sees them is a far cry from the current crop of Christian authors. Much of what you will pick up in the Christian Conglomerate bookstore today trumpets the party line of “If you live your life just right, all good things will come to you.” Miller offers no such nostrums. Instead he muses on the meanderings of his pilgrimage, trying to navigate the treacherous path between what Christians claim to believe and what they practice.

In this unconventional revelation of Christian candor, Don Miller reveals things about himself that ring true in the hearts of many recovering fundies. He discovers that real Christianity is not what Christians have made of it. His book affirms the essentials of a relationship with Jesus Christ as the starting point of an authentic reconciliation with God. He smoothly moves into translating that reciprocal love of God into an authentic love for other people. Indeed, it is this embodiment of Christian love that sets his book apart from the mainstream Christian fare. While other books talk of unconditional love in an academic and propositional way, Blue Like Jazz takes the call of Christ at face value and shows us a wondrous panoply of characters like Tony the Beat Poet and Andrew the Protestor giving and receiving love in Christian community.

One would expect such an expose of the hypocrisies of Christians today to have a shrill, condemnatory tone but Miller avoids all of that. Instead he talks about the faults of fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity in a bemused, sympathetic way. Others who have left the fundamentalist fold did so with a bitter heart or regret at the wasted years. Miller tends to treat fundamentalists with a kind heart and understands their need for affirmation and security. That doesn’t mean his book provides it though. He states up front that the thing he didn’t like the most about jazz when he first listened to it is that it doesn’t resolve; it doesn’t come to a definite end with a neat little theme. Christian life is like that, he says. It doesn’t resolve and any one who wants it to wrap up neatly in a “they all lived happily ever after” style ending are in for either disappointment, disillusionment or despair. Instead, the book offers us a new way of looking at the experiences we all have. Rather than thinking we’ve failed and don’t measure up because our lives are less than perfect, Miller assures us that that is exactly the state we should expect to be in while we are living in this world experiencing the love of God imperfectly as flawed creatures improvising our way though life.

by Rick Presley

To read an excerpt from one of the most powerful passages of the book and a Q&A response with Don Miller, go to:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2005/003/4.62.html