My wife and I recently read a book called Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller. It certainly ranks among the strangest books I’ve ever read, but that didn’t stop it from becoming one of my favorites. This is the kind of paradoxical book you hate reading but you can’t put down.
I’m not sure I can do justice to this book by merely describing it, so let me give you a few excerpts.
From a chapter titled Faith: Penguin Sex:
The goofy thing about Christian faith is that you believe it and don’t believe it at the same time. It isn’t unlike having an imaginary friend. I believe in Jesus; I believe He is the Son of God, but every time I sit down to explain this to somebody I feel like a palm reader, like somebody who works at a circus or a kid who is always making things up or somebody at a Star Trek convention who hasn’t figured out the show isn’t real.
Later in the same chapter:
Tony and I were … talking about belief, what it takes to believe, and he asked me how I believe in God.
I felt silly trying to explain it, even though Tony is a Christian. I felt as if I were saying I believed in Peter Pan or the Tooth Fairy, and yet I don’t believe in Peter Pan or the Tooth Fairy. I believe in God, and as I said before it feels so much more like something is causing me to believe than that I am stirring up belief. In fact, I would even say that when I started in faith I didn’t want to believe; my intellect wanted to disbelieve, but my soul, that deeper instinct, could no more stop believing in God than Tony could, on a dime, stop being in love with his wife. There are things you choose to believe, and beliefs that choose you. This was one of the ones that chose me.
In a chapter titled Grace: The Beggars’ Kingdom:
Rick tells me, looking back, that he was too proud to receive free grace from God. He didn’t know how to live within a system where nobody owes anybody else anything. And the harder it was for Rick to pay God back, the more he wanted to hide. God was his loan shark, so to speak. Though he understood that God wanted nothing in return, his mind could not communicate this fact to his heart, so his life was something like torture.
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. I counted myself as one of the ones who had trouble. I would hear about grace, read about grace, and even sing about grace, but accepting grace is an action I could not understand. It seemed wrong to me not to have to pay for my sin, not to feel guilty about it or kick myself around. More than that, grace did not seem like the thing I was looking for. It was too easy. I wanted to feel as though I earned my forgiveness, as though God and I were buddies doing favors for each other.
Later in the same chapter:
I love to give charity, but I don’t want to be charity. This is why I have so much trouble with grace.
A few years ago I was listing prayer requests to a friend. As I listed my requests, I mentioned many friends and family but never spoke about my personal problems. My friend candidly asked me to reveal my own struggles, but I told him no, that my problems weren’t that bad. My friend answered quickly, in the voice of a confident teacher, “Don, you are not above the charity of God.” In that instant he revealed my motives wer not noble, they were prideful. It wasn’t that I cared about my friends more than myself, it was that I believed I was above the grace of God.
Lick Rick, I am too prideful to accept the grace of God. It isn’t that I want to earn my own way to give something to God, it’s that I want to earn my own way so I won’t be charity.
As I drove over the mountian that afternoon, realizing I was too proud to receive God’s grace, I was humbled. Who am I to think myself above God’s charity? And why would I forsake the riches of God’s righteousness for the dung of my own ego?
From a chapter titled Jesus: The Lines on His Face:
The first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is a music birthed out of freedom. And that is the closest thing I know to Christian spirituality. A music birthed out of freedom. Everybody sings their song the way they feel it, everybody closes their eyes and lifts up their hands.
Well, I could keep quoting this thing for pages and pages, but I’ll stop there. I’ve mostly quoted from serious parts, but there’s a lot of humor in the book too. The main thing I want to show from these quotes is that the author tries to keep things as real as possible. He’s willing to admit his weaknesses and explain how Christian spirituality helps him overcome them.
Whether you’re a Christian or not, you may think you know what Christianity is all about—I know I thought I did. This book challenged every perception I’ve ever held about Christianity, and it would probably do the same for just about everybody.