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"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened." ―Donald Miller
In Donald Miller's early years, he was vaguely familiar with a distant God. But when he came to know Jesus Christ, he pursued the Christian life with great zeal. Within a few years he had a successful ministry that ultimately left him feeling empty, burned out, and, once again, far away from God. In this intimate, soul-searching account, Miller describes his remarkable journey back to a culturally relevant, infinitely loving God.
For anyone wondering if the Christian faith is still relevant in a postmodern culture.
For anyone thirsting for a genuine encounter with a God who is real.
For anyone yearning for a renewed sense of passion in life.
Blue Like Jazz is a fresh and original perspective on life, love, and redemption.
Confession
Coming Out of the Closet
When I was in Sunday school as a kid, my teacher put a big poster on the wall that was shaped in a circle like a target. She had us write names of people we knew who weren't Christians on little pieces of paper, and she pinned the names to the outer circle of the target. She said our goal, by the end of the year, was to move those names from the outer ring of the circle, which represented their distance from knowing Jesus, to the inner ring, which represented them having come into a relationship with Jesus. I thought the strategy was beautiful because it gave us a goal, a visual.
I didn't know any people who weren't Christians, but I was a child with a fertile imagination so I made up some names; Thad Thatcher was one and William Wonka was another. My teacher didn't believe me which I took as an insult, but nonetheless, the class was excited the very next week when both Thad and William had become Christians in a dramatic conversion experience that included the dismantling of a large satanic cult and underground drug ring. There was also levitation involved.
Even though they didn't exist, Thad and William were the only people to become Christians all year. Nobody else I knew became a Christian for a very long time, mostly because I didn't tell anybody about Jesus except when I was drunk at a party, and that was only because so many of my reservations were down, and even then nobody understood me because I was either crying or slurring my words.
o o o
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.
So much of me believes strongly in letting everybody live their own lives, and when I share my faith, I feel like a network marketing guy trying to build my down line.
Some of my friends who aren't Christians think that Christians are insistent and demanding and intruding, but that isn't the case. Those folks are the squeaky wheel. Most Christians have enormous respect for the space and freedom of others; it is only that they have found a joy in Jesus they want to share. There is the tension.
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.
o o o
For me, the beginning of sharing my faith with people began by throwing out Christianity and embracing Christian spirituality, a nonpolitical mysterious system that can be experienced but not explained. Christianity, unlike Christian spirituality, was not a term that excited me. And I could not in good conscious tell a friend about a faith that didn't excite me. I couldn't share something I wasn't experiencing. And I wasn't experiencing Christianity. It didn't do anything for me at all. It felt like math, like a system of rights and wrongs and political beliefs, but it wasn't mysterious; it wasn't God reaching out of heaven to do wonderful things in my life. And if I would have shared Christianity with somebody, it would have felt mostly like I was trying to get somebody to agree with me rather than meet God. I could no longer share anything about Christianity, but I loved talking about Jesus and the spirituality that goes along with a relationship with Him.
Tony the Beat Poet says the church is like a wounded animal these days. He says we used to have power and influence, but now we don't, and so many of our leaders are upset about this and acting like spoiled children, mad because they can't have their way.
They disguise their actions to look as though they are standing on principle, but it isn't that, Tony says, it's bitterness. They want to take their ball and go home because they have to sit the bench. Tony and I agreed that what God wants us to do is sit the bench in humility and turn the other cheek like Gandhi, like Jesus. We decided that the correct place to share our faith was from a place of humility and love, not from a desire for power.
o o o
Each year at Reed they have a festival called Ren Fayre. They shut down the campus so students can party. Security keeps the authorities away, and everybody gets pretty drunk and high, and some people get naked. Friday night is mostly about getting drunk, and Saturday night is about getting high. The school brings in White Bird, a medical unit that specializes in treating bad drug trips. The students create special lounges with black lights and television screens to enhance kids' mushroom trips.
Some of the Christian students in our little group decided this was a pretty good place to come out of the closet, letting everybody know there were a few Christians on campus. Tony the Beat Poet and I were sitting around in my room one afternoon talking about what to do, how to explain who we were to a group of students who, in the past, had expressed hostility toward Christians. Like our friends, we felt like Ren Fayre was the time to do this. I said we should build a confession booth in the middle of campus and paint a sign on it that said "Confess your sins." I said this because I knew a lot of people would be sinning, and Christian spirituality begins by confessing our sins and repenting. I also said it as a joke. But Tony thought it was brilliant. He sat there on my couch with his mind in the clouds, and he was scaring the crap out of me because, for a second, then for a minute, I actually believed he wanted to do it.
"Tony," I said very gently.
"What?" he said, with a blank stare at the opposite wall.
"We are not going to do this," I told him. He moved his gaze down the wall and directly into my eyes. A smile came across his face.
"Oh, we are, Don. We certainly are. We are going to build a confession booth!"
We met in Commons-Penny, Nadine, Mitch, Iven, Tony, and I. Tony said I had an idea. They looked at me. I told them that Tony was lying and I didn't have an idea at all. They looked at Tony. Tony gave me a dirty look and told me to tell them the idea. I told them I had a stupid idea that we couldn't do without getting attacked. They leaned in. I told them that we should build a confession booth in the middle of campus and paint a sign on it that said "Confess your sins." Penny put her hands over her mouth. Nadine smiled. Iven laughed. Mitch started drawing the designs for the booth on a napkin. Tony nodded his head. I wet my pants.
"They may very well burn it down," Nadine said.
"I will build a trapdoor," Mitch said with his finger in the air.
"I like it, Don." Iven patted me on the back.
"I don't want anything to do with it," Penny said.
"Neither do I," I told her.
"Okay, you guys." Tony gathered everybody's attention. "Here's the catch." He leaned in a little and collected his thoughts. "We are not actually going to accept confessions." We all looked at him in confusion. He continued, "We are going to confess to them. We are going to confess that, as followers of Jesus, we have not been very loving; we have been bitter, and for that we are sorry. We will apologize for the Crusades, we will apologize for televangelists, we will apologize for neglecting the poor and the lonely, we will ask them to forgive us, and we will tell them that in our selfishness, we have misrepresented Jesus on this campus. We will tell people who come into the booth that Jesus loves them."
All of us sat there in silence because it was obvious that something beautiful and true had hit the table with a thud. We all thought it was a great idea, and we could see it in each other's eyes. It would feel so good to apologize, to apologize for the Crusades, for Columbus and the genocide he committed in the Bahamas in the name of God, apologize for the missionaries who landed in Mexico and came up through the West slaughtering Indians in the name of Christ. I wanted so desperately to say that none of this was Jesus, and I wanted so desperately to apologize for the many ways I had misrepresented the Lord. I could feel that I had betrayed the Lord by judging, by not being willing to love the people He had loved and only giving lip service to issues of human rights.
For so much of my life I had been defending Christianity because I thought to admit that we had done any wrong was to discredit the religious system as a whole, but it isn't a religious system, it is people following Christ; and the important thing to do, the right thing to do, was to apologize for getting in the way of Jesus.
Later I had a conversation with a very arrogant Reed professor in the parking lot in which he asked me what brought me to Reed. I told him I was auditing a class but was really there to interact with the few Christians who studied at Reed. The professor asked me if I was a Christian evangelist. I told him I didn't think I was, that I wouldn't consider myself an evangelist. He went on to compare my work to that of Captain Cook, who had attempted to bring Western values to indigenous people of Hawaii. He looked me in the eye and said the tribes had killed Cook.
He did not wish me a greater fate at Reed.
All the way home on my motorcycle I fumed and imagined beating the professor into a pulp right there in the parking lot. I could see his sly smile, his intellectual pride. Sure, Christians had done terrible things to humanity, but I hadn't. I had never killed anybody at all. And those people weren't following Jesus when they committed those crimes against humanity. They were government people, and government always uses God to manipulate the masses into following them.
Both Clinton and Bush claim to be followers of Jesus. Anybody who wants to get their way says that Jesus supports their view. But that isn't Jesus' fault. Tony had come to campus a few days earlier, a bit sad in the face. He had seen a bumper sticker on one of the cars in the parking lot that read "Too bad we can't feed Christians to the lions anymore."
I prayed about getting in the confession booth. I wondered whether I could apologize and mean it. I wondered whether I could humble myself to a culture that, to some degree, had wronged us. But I could see in Penny's face, in Iven's eyes, that this was what they wanted; they wanted to love these people, their friends, and it didn't matter to them what it cost. They didn't care how much they had been hurt, and they certainly had more scars than either Tony or I, and so we bought the wood and stored it in my garage, and Friday night we went to the Thesis parade and watched everybody get drunk and beat drums and dance in the spray of beer. Tony and I dressed like monks and smoked pipes and walked among the anarchy, becoming soaked in all the alcohol spewing from within the crowds. People would come up to us and ask what we were doing, and we told them that the next day we would be on campus to take confessions. They looked at us in amazement, sometimes asking us whether we were serious. We told them to come and see us, that we were going to build a confession booth.
The next morning, while everybody was sleeping off their hangovers, Mitch, Tony, and I started building the thing. Mitch had the plans drawn out. The booth was huge, much bigger than I expected, almost like a shed complete with a slanted roof and two small sections inside, one for the monk and the other for the confessor. We built a half-high wall between the two rooms and installed a curtain so the confessor could easily get in and out. On our side we installed a door with a latch so nobody could come in and drag us away. Nadine painted "Confession Booth" in large letters on the outside of the booth.
As the campus started to gather energy, people walking along the sidewalk would ask what we were doing. They stood there looking at the booth in wonder. "What are we supposed to do?" they would ask. "Confess your sins," we told them. "To who?" they would say. "To God," we would tell them. "There is no God," they would explain. Some of them told us this was the boldest thing they had ever seen. All of them were kind, which surprised us.
I stood there outside the booth as a large blue mob started running across campus, all of them, more than a hundred people, naked and painted with blue paint. They ran by the booth screaming and waving. I waved back. Naked people look funny when they are for-real naked, outside-a-magazine naked.
Saturday evening at Ren Fayre is alive and fun. The sun goes down over campus, and shortly after dark they shoot fireworks over the tennis courts. Students lay themselves out on a hill and laugh and point in bleary-eyed fascination. The highlight of the evening is a glow opera that packs the amphitheater with students and friends. The opera is designed to enhance mushroom trips. The actors wear all black and carry colorful puppets and cutouts that come alive in the black light. Everybody ooohs and aaahs.
The party goes till nearly dawn, so though it was late we started working the booth. We lit tiki torches and mounted them in the ground just outside the booth. Tony and Iven were saying that I should go first, which I didn't want to do, but I played bold and got in the booth. I sat on a bucket and watched the ceiling and the smoke from my pipe gather in the dark corners like ghosts. I could hear the rave happening in the student center across campus. I was picturing all the cool dancers, the girls in white shirts moving through the black light, the guys with the turntables in the loft, the big screen with the swirling images and all that energy coming out of the speakers, pounding through everybody's bodies, getting everybody up and down, up and down. Nobody is going to confess anything, I thought. Who wants to stop dancing to confess their sins? And I realized that this was a bad idea, that none of this was God's idea. Nobody was going to get angry, but nobody was going to care very much either.
There is nothing relevant about Christian spirituality, I kept thinking. God, if He is even there, has no voice in this place. Everybody wants to have a conversation about truth, but there isn't any truth anymore. The only truth is what is cool, what is on television, what protest is going on on what block, and it doesn't matter the issue; it only matters who is going to be there and will there be a party later and can any of us feel like we are relevant while we are at the party. And in the middle of it we are like Mormons on bikes. I sat there wondering whether any of this was true, whether Christian spirituality was even true at all. You never question the truth of something until you have to explain it to a skeptic. I didn't feel like explaining it very much. I didn't feel like being in the booth or wearing that stupid monk outfit. I wanted to go to the rave. Everybody in there was cool, and we were just religious.
I was going to tell Tony that I didn't want to do it when he opened the curtain and said we had our first customer.
"What's up, man?" Duder sat himself on the chair with a smile on his face. He told me my pipe smelled good.
"Thanks," I said. I asked him his name, and he said his name was Jake. I shook his hand because I didn't know what to do, really.
"So, what is this? I'm supposed to tell you all of the juicy gossip I did at Ren Fayre, right?" Jake said.
"No."
"Okay, then what? What's the game?" He asked.
"Not really a game. More of a confession thing."
"You want me to confess my sins, right?"
"No, that's not what we're doing, really."
"What's the deal, man? What's with the monk outfit?"
"Well, we are, well, a group of Christians here on campus, you know."
"I see. Strange place for Christians, but I am listening."
"Thanks," I told him. He was being very patient and gracious. "Anyway, there is this group of us, just a few of us who were thinking about the way Christians have sort of wronged people over time. You know, the Crusades, all that stuff . . ."
"Well, I doubt you personally were involved in any of that, man."
"No, I wasn't," I told him. "But the thing is, we are followers of Jesus. We believe that He is God and all, and He represented certain ideas that we have sort of not done a good job at representing. He has asked us to represent Him well, but it can be very hard."
"I see," Jake said.
"So there is this group of us on campus who wanted to confess to you."
"You are confessing to me!" Jake said with a laugh.
"Yeah. We are confessing to you. I mean, I am confessing to you."
"You're serious." His laugh turned to something of a straight face.
I told him I was. He looked at me and told me I didn't have to. I told him I did, and I felt very strongly in that moment that I was supposed to tell Jake that I was sorry about everything.
"What are you confessing?" he asked.
I shook my head and looked at the ground. "Everything," I told him.
"Explain," he said.
"There's a lot. I will keep it short," I started. "Jesus said to feed the poor and to heal the sick. I have never done very much about that. Jesus said to love those who persecute me. I tend to lash out, especially if I feel threatened, you know, if my ego gets threatened. Jesus did not mix His spirituality with politics. I grew up doing that. It got in the way of the central message of Christ. I know that was wrong, and I know that a lot of people will not listen to the words of Christ because people like me, who know Him, carry our own agendas into the conversation rather than just relaying the message Christ wanted to get across. There's a lot more, you know."
"It's all right, man," Jake said, very tenderly. His eyes were starting to water.
"Well," I said, clearing my throat, "I am sorry for all of that."
"I forgive you," Jake said. And he meant it.
"Thanks," I told him.
He sat there and looked at the floor, then into the fire of a candle. "It's really cool what you guys are doing," he said. "A lot of people need to hear this."
"Have we hurt a lot of people?" I asked him.
"You haven't hurt me. I just think it isn't very popular to be a Christian, you know. Especially at a place like this. I don't think too many people have been hurt. Most people just have a strong reaction to what they see on television. All these well-dressed preachers supporting the Republicans."
"That's not the whole picture," I said. "That's just television. I have friends who are giving their lives to feed the poor and defend the defenseless. They are doing it for Christ."
"You really believe in Jesus, don't you?" he asked me.
"Yes, I think I do. Most often I do. I have doubts at times, but mostly I believe in Him. It's like there is something in me that causes me to believe, and I can't explain it."
"You said earlier that there was a central message of Christ. I don't really want to become a Christian, you know, but what is that message?"
"The message is that man sinned against God and God gave the world over to man, and that if somebody wanted to be rescued out of that, if somebody for instance finds it all very empty, that Christ will rescue them if they want; that if they ask forgiveness for being a part of that rebellion then God will forgive them."
"What is the deal with the cross?" Jake asked.
"God says the wages of sin is death," I told him. "And Jesus died so that none of us would have to. If we have faith in that then we are Christians."
"That is why people wear crosses?" he asked.
"I guess. I think it is sort of fashionable. Some people believe that if they have a cross around their neck or tattooed on them or something, it has some sort of mystical power."
"Do you believe that?" Jake asked.
"No," I answered. I told him that I thought mystical power came through faith in Jesus.
"What do you believe about God?" I asked him.
"I don't know. I guess I didn't believe for a long time, you know. The science of it is so sketchy. I guess I believe in God though. I believe somebody is responsible for all of this, this world we live in. It is all very confusing."
"Jake, if you want to know God, you can. I am just saying if you ever want to call on Jesus, He will be there."
"Thanks, man. I believe that you mean that." His eyes were watering again. "This is cool what you guys are doing," he repeated. "I am going to tell my friends about this."
"I don't know whether to thank you for that or not," I laughed. "I have to sit here and confess all my crap."
He looked at me very seriously. "It's worth it," he said. He shook my hand, and when he left the booth there was somebody else ready to get in. It went like that for a couple of hours. I talked to about thirty people, and Tony took confessions on a picnic table outside the booth. Many people wanted to hug when we were done. All of the people who visited the booth were grateful and gracious. I was being changed through the process. I went in with doubts and came out believing so strongly in Jesus I was ready to die and be with Him. I think that night was the beginning of change for a lot of us.
Iven started taking a group to a local homeless shelter to feed the poor, and he often had to turn students away because the van wouldn't hold more than twenty or so. We held an event called Poverty Day where we asked students to live on less than three dollars a day to practice solidarity with the poor. More than one hundred students participated. Penny spoke in Vollum Lounge on the topic of poverty in India, and more than seventy-five students came. Before any of this, our biggest event had about ten people. We hosted an evening where we asked students to come and voice their hostility against Christians. We answered questions about what we believed and explained our love for people, for the hurting, and we apologized again for our own wrongs against humanity and asked for forgiveness from the Reed community. We enjoyed the new friendships we received, and at one time had four different Bible studies on campus specifically for people who did not consider themselves Christians. We watched a lot of students take a second look at Christ. But mostly, we as Christians felt right with the people around us. Mostly we felt forgiven and grateful.
Sometime around two or three in the morning, the night we took confessions, I was walking off the campus with my monk robe under my arm, and when I got to the large oak trees on the outskirts of the font lawn, I turned and looked at the campus. It all looked so smart and old, and I could see the lights coming out of the Student Center, and I could hear the music thumping. There were kids making out on the lawn and chasing each other down the sidewalks. There was laughing and dancing and throwing up.
I felt very strongly that Jesus was relevant in this place. I felt very strongly that if He was not relevant here then He was not relevant anywhere. I felt very peaceful in that place and very sober. I felt very connected to God because I had confessed so much to so many people and had gotten so much off my chest and I had been forgiven by the people I had wronged with my indifference and judgmentalism. I was going to sit there for a little while, but it was cold and the grass was damp. I went home and fell asleep on the couch and the next morning made coffee and sat on the porch at Graceland and wondered whether the things that happened the night before had actually happened. I was out of the closet now. A Christian. So many years before I had made amends to God, but now I had made amends to the world. I was somebody who was willing to share my faith. It felt kind of cool, kind of different. It was very relieving.
Anonymous
Posted May 30, 2009
I am a conservative Christian living in the Bible Belt. Don Miller is basically a hippie living on the West Coast. At first his hippie style irritated me, but the more I read the more I realized he was actually a much better Christian than I am. Like Jesus, he goes out into the world and lives with people, loves them, and shares the gospel with them. His theology is sound. This book would appeal to a college student or young adult trying to find his or her way in the world. For an older person (like me) it's a little less comfortable to read, but perhaps even more valuable.
12 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.JediMonk
Posted January 10, 2011
I don't know how a person could read this and be the same after. It's like getting an email from God Himself.
6 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 8, 2008
In a day and age where the traditions of organized religion seem to turn off more people than it turns on comes a book reinforcing the values of the Christian way of life, while keeping its base in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Spanning his college years and beyond, Don Miller¿s Blue Like Jazz is a telling tale of finding God in the strangest of places: from an atheistic college to the ordinary, everyday people in the grocery store line ahead of us. Miller writes from an honest, straightforward perspective on the aspects of Christian spirituality¿in all areas of life¿with enough humor and wit to keep even the most laidback of readers entertained.
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted July 16, 2009
This book was inspiring and funny but most of all it was validating. For years I have read books that were all about what my relationship with God was supposed to look like and I always felt I ran short of His expectations. This book validated my feelings and my relationship with God as I always thought it was versus what "church" told me it was supposed to look like. I don't have to strive for perfection and always fall short. I was saving the world at the cost of my soul and the sacrifice always felt too much. When you give to others you can drain your own spirit and Donald Miller helped me to go back to enjoying my relationship with God as a friend instead of the idol I created. My daughter recommended this book to me and I in turn have sent it to others. You'll love this book!
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 7, 2007
Donald Miller¿s memoir Blue Like Jazz is an inspirational piece that any reader who has struggled with their faith in God will enjoy. Miller talks about his transitions through his Christian faith in a way that makes it extremely easy to relate to. He creates a sense of friendship with the reader and tells his stories as if he has nothing to hide. One example of Miller¿s honesty is in the beginning of the memoir. He is talking about being a boy around the age of ten and how he started to sin. He goes through an entire conversation with a teacher about a missing assignment. He adds in little side notes, tips for lying to authority. The whole scene is comedic but at the same time, difficult to imagine writing down. Few people want others to know of their deceptive sides, however, Miller shows his with no fear. His tone throughout the memoir makes him a reliable narrator who readers want to listen to. ¿I sinned only in bits at first- small lies, little inconsistencies to teachers about homework and that sort of thing. I learned the craft well, never looking my teacher in the eye, always speaking quickly, from the diaphragm, never feeble about the business of deception.¿ Miller describes his journey through faith in a way that motivates readers. One section from the book that stands out is where Miller is reading the Bible. He is up to the part in Luke where Jesus is being crucified and he describes how he feels. ¿And I remember sitting at my desk, and I don¿t know what it was that I read or what Jesus was doing in the book, but I felt a love for Him rush through me, through my back and into my chest. I started crying,...¿ The feelings that Miller expresses here are so strong, and so well presented, that it made me, as a reader, want to feel them too. I wanted to be this close to Jesus and to love him in a way that needed no explanation. It motivated me to become more religious and open with Jesus. Miller also uses comedy to show how he used to live his life. Many of his conversations with friends are humorous, but they still get across a serious message or point. In other parts of the memoir Miller puts in small comics that he made to describe how he feels. In one part of the story, he is feeling alone. He is secluded from his roommates and the outside world completely. He makes a comic about a man named Don Astronaut. Don Astronaut goes out into space in a ship, but there is an accident and he is cast out into the vast, open universe. He has a special space suit that can keep him alive. Don orbits the Earth for weeks, months, decades. All alone. Then, finally, Don Astronaut dies ¿a very lonely and crazy man - just a shell of a thing with hardly a spark for a soul.¿ The pictures in the comic make this story quite funny, but the ending scene still sends a dark and serious message of what Miller was feeling at this time in his life. Miller¿s Blue Like Jazz is comparable to Anne Lamott¿s Traveling Mercies. Both authors use comedy to reflect emotion or events. They also both show their imperfections. Miller and Lamott do not want readers to pick up their books and think that they are being preached to by someone who believes they are ¿holier than thou¿. They want everyone to know that they went through their fair share of questioning, of non-believing, of shunning God. They did not wish to forgive enemies immediately, or listen to the word of God with open ears and no resistence. They had questions about faith and God and heaven, and that is okay. This is another way that they motivate their readers. They show that it is not a horrible thing to have questions about your faith. The only important thing is to love. Donald Miller¿s Blue Like Jazz is a great read for any reader, in any stage of their life. The ideal audience for this book is a person who appreciates humor to lighten tough subjects but still likes to think about the deeper meaning of things. Miller tackles childhood, college, and adult life and in each sta
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 4, 2011
I read this book with my small group at church my junior year in highschool, and since then ( now freshman in college ) there has still been a lasting impact on my life and the lives of the girls that read it. we, learned so much from this book and i would recomend it for anyone!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I absolutely loved Don Miller's Blue Like Jazz! Eventhough I am a fresh confused believer, I enjoyed this book every step of the way. I just finished reading this book as a gift from my teacher, and I don't regret picking it up a random day and deciding to read a book that seemed strage. I loved the Don Rabbit story that I showed it to a best friend of mine! This book wasn't just a Christian-looking book to me, it was one of those reads that had you thinking for hours and you know that if you pick it back up, it won't matter because you won't loose yourself you would just open up more and listen to Don's thoughts. I felt like one with his thoughts because at times I would too understand somewhat. The Book is very open minded and realistic. It is not one of those story books and that's why I enjoyed it! It taught me some good short lessons I opened up to more. I had no idea why I was reading it but it's just one of those things you enjoy reading and understand ,yet you don't know how or why. You should give it a shot and read some...it's actually good, don't let the blue cover fool you. Thanks Don for the wonderful sensation of love and unthought of battles your book portrayed! :D
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 26, 2009
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Wow - this is so honest, open and sincere. It shows how God puts people in your life to show, teach, and encourage. It's not pretentious or overwhelming but rather encouraging and motivating. Go slowly through the last few chapters and soak up every word.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted May 14, 2008
When I first started to read this book, I really did not enjoy it. Miller¿s use of short and choppy sentences combined with his rapid idea changes made it hard to see the bigger picture. However, once I got used to his writing style, I realized that there was indeed a method to his madness. By writing Blue Like Jazz in this weird way, Miller was mixing background information, so we could get to know him, with his message, and using his personal experiences to tell the reader what Christianity is really about. He tries and succeeds at telling us that Christianity is an individual experience and a priest can¿t tell you how to be a perfect Christian no ore than I can. He is also telling us that it isn¿t about being perfect according to someone else, its about doing it in your own way, an individualized approach to Christianity. My only problem with this book was that I am not a religious person and, although he took an alternative approach to teaching Christianity, I find that I am not quite accepting of the ideals. It wasn¿t bad, but it wasn¿t great.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted November 27, 2007
I did not start my introduction to Donald Miller with Blue Like Jazz but upon reading fell in love with his honesty, humor, and perspective on Christianity. I highly recommend this book for Christian's and non-Christians. I think believers can all use a raw reminder of the responsibility we are called to as followers.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Originally posted on my blog: The Bibliophile's Corner
If you have not read Blue Like Jazz, put that on your list of books to read this year. I put it off for far too long and now that I’ve read it, I’m pretty sure this is going to be a book that I re-read at least once a year. I absolutely love reading and hearing of people’s personal, religious journeys. This is by far one of the most honest, funny, touching, and brilliant journeys I’ve ever read.
This book is split into twenty chapters. Why am I telling you this? Well, because each chapter is specific to a certain step in Don’s journey. And for review purposes, I am going to tell you my favorites:
Beginnings (Chapter 1): I once listened to an Indian on television say that God was in the wind and the water…”As with every journey, the beginning is the most interesting. What spurs this journey? Where does this journey end? This book starts right off with Don questioning who God is to him, the first time he became aware of his sinning, and the guilt that overwhelmed him from the sinning. Quite a beginning.
Confession (Chapter 11): “We are going to build a confession booth!” I just re-read this chapter because I love it so much. When you think confession booth, you think ‘Oh, I have to confess my sins’. But no! In this confession booth, the people running it confess to you and apologize and ask for forgiveness. This was probably the most touching part of this book.
Alone (Chapter 14): “And Don Astronaut orbited the Earth for fifty-three years before he died a very lonely and crazy man–just a shell of a thing with hardly a spark for a soul.” The reason I love this chapter so much is not so much for the words as it was for little cartoon bit. Yes, a cartoon bit of Don Astronaut orbiting Earth in a suit that keeps him alive. But Don is alone. In space. Trapped. In space. Um. Sad and scary.
Jesus (Chapter 20): “I remember the first time I had feelings for Jesus.” I think it is fitting for the last chapter to be about Jesus. Since that is where the journey ends…or rather begins again? New beginnings and things.
There is so much more that I could share with you, but I don’t feel like writing a SparkNotes version of BLJ at this time. Maybe one day.
The only thing that didn’t sit well with me when it comes to this book is the subtitle. I know! That’s probably the lamest thing to be picky about. But it says: “Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality.” While I was reading this book, I felt like there were quite a few religious thoughts actually. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I just found it a bit misleading and would not want other people to go into this unprepared.
I still absolutely recommend this book.
thebooksharer
Posted February 15, 2013
back up and ride the waves of Grace! watch how simple everything becomes... get off the the Christian treadmill....experience the intimate journey of a hungry and thirsty soul as its lover leads it to living water... and the joy LIBERTY longed for, in sweet surrender to his GRACE alone... Christ is our goal! easy breezy in the end....
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted December 5, 2012
I heard about this book some years ago but just got around to reading it. It was worth the wait and then some. I don't think I would have appreciated it as much when I was younger. It perfectly typified and answered some of the questions and struggles between maintaining a Christian faith in a nonreligious atmosphere and communicating God's love to others. It also made me feel a lot more comfortable and helped me come to terms with my more liberal, usually Democratic stance in the Bible Belt.
As I told my friends, it's great to read it now and take to heart the hard lessons Don learned at my current age. I enjoyed the straightforward storytelling style, as if he was talking to a friend, and the countless real-life examples that he used to illustrate his points. There were many times when I felt he was narrating my own thoughts.
I would recommend to anyone wanting a new perspective on Christian spirituality or spirituality in general.
AllieEmmert
Posted November 27, 2012
The best kind of books are the ones that make you cry and laugh out loud, the kind where the pages are torn and wrinkled from coffee spills that you keep on your shelf and return to over and over again. Donald Miller’s book, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, has been a great edition to the shelf. He takes the reader on his journey from Texas to Oregon, where he along the way experienced living with hippies, attended an atheist college, and lived with a group of men from his church. Throughout this journey, Miller discusses Christianity, love, and faith in a real and raw manner. Blue Like Jazz is no ordinary book; it doesn’t follow the rules and standard book guidelines. This treasure is more of a journal or diary of Miller’s insight and outlook on Christianity as God takes him through the crazy journey that is life. Donald Miller and his way with words had me flipping through the pages where he speaks of his loneliness to his faith in God. Miller and some of his decisions and experiences give the stereotypical hypocrite name to Christians and can catch some Christian readers off guard. I suggest to the reader to be open minded when reading this book and truly dig in and think about what Miller has to say. His thoughts and insight are raw and may be objective to Christian readers, but he answers many questions that we as people ask ourselves on a daily basis. I highly recommend Blue Like Jazz to those questioning their faith in God, and ‘old timer’ Christians as well. Blue Like Jazz is a great book of insight on: faith, love, and God to any Christians no matter where they are on their journey with God.
HeeYJae
Posted June 4, 2012
Hee Jae Y.
The book, Blue Like Jazz is a story about Don Millers' journey of cutting away the distance that he felt with God. Don Miller talks about his thoughts, as well as his experiences as he attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Even as Don Miller zealously followed Christianity, he found that as time passed, he ultimately felt empty and disconnected with God and Jesus. He embarks on a journey to find his way towards understanding both Christianity and God.
I believe that the book was not very interesting. It also really confused me when he tried to find the solution by helping and giving to others. Although this is a truly great deed, and it is a form of love, the core of Christianity, it makes no sense for me that he went from doubting his belief in Jesus to giving and helping others. It just seemed like a very illogical jump to me. Although helping charities and giving to the poor are good acts of love, I don't feel that these acts are what grounds and founds faith. The one thing I did like however, was the casual way he wrote the book. When he 'spoke' through the book, it was a lot more relatable and less formal.
HeeYJae
Posted May 28, 2012
World Religions Book Review
by Brandi B.
Blue like Jazz is a great book for questioning your own religion. For teenagers that are curious and even adults, Don Miller writes about a variety of topics on this very notion. Why do we need faith, how do we live life as a Christian? Even as Miller was a practicing Christian he knew something was missing. He knew that Jesus was God but he didn't know if he fully believed it in his heart. There are multiple chapters in this book where Miller is dealing with different aspects of his Faith, especially at Reed College. Reed is a college that people at his old church would say was extremely immoral. When Miller started attending, he met up with some Christians at the school who were essentially an "underground" group of believers. They contemplated seriously of what it meant to live their life for Christ.
The aspect of Miller's time at Reed that I found most fascinating was during the college's weekend party. What Miller and his friends decided to do was set up a Confession Booth in the campus. They expected to be harassed and verbally/physically abused but surprisingly people came into confess real things. And change happened after this. Their activities gained more respect and more involvement from other students. This isn't to say that the entire school changed, because it didn't, but that the Christian faith can find a "seed" anywhere. This is a frightening idea though because it is easy to be comfortable and just deal with our own issues. We all have issues. But to move beyond this is a huge step. It comes from a true change and dedication inside and the daring to move beyond the fear and into faith. That's kind of what this whole book is about, but it is also Don Miller writing about a non-religious but highly spiritual perspective on Christian Faith and that this is so important today..
TomWL5
Posted May 8, 2012
Don Miller is an excellent writer! He has a very artistic way of painting a story. I loved the book and it is very inspiring!
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I don't know that I have ever read a book like Blue Like Jazz before. Author Donald Miller is a best-selling American author and public speaker based out of Portland, Oregon who focuses on Christian spirituality as "an explanation for beauty, meaning, and the human struggle." He is also the author of Searching for God Knows What and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.
Miller writes, “There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz. And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere. Of course, I had always known He was, but this time I felt it, I realized it, the way a person realizes they are hungry or thirsty. The knowledge of God seeped out of my brain and into my heart. I imagined Him looking down on this earth, half angry because His beloved mankind had cheated on Him, had committed adultery, and yet hopelessly in love with her, drunk with love for her.”
Blue Like Jazz is the coming of age story of the author as he struggles with his own ideas of religion and the new world he encounters away at Reed College. This isn't your parents "Inspirational Christian Reading" book either, this is a visceral piece full of honesty and truth. Blue Like Jazz is easily one of the best Christian experience books I have ever read. Donald Miller is an extremely talented writer. Blue Like Jazz will make you laugh out loud at the same time it will ask you tough questions.
Read with caution! Highly recommended.
Chelsea11
Posted December 6, 2011
"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve . . . I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.¿ In the book ¿Blue Like Jazz¿ Donald Miller writes about what it is that happened to change his mind about jazz, but more importantly, God. It is all about Miller¿s unique path to Christ. He uses strong amounts of honesty such as, he knows that God is real, but also knows something is missing. He talks about the issues of Christianity that a lot of people deal with but don¿t actually speak about.
One of the issues Miller comes across in this book is college life. The college he attends is anything but Christian. Between the high number of atheists, and the extreme party life, I found it interesting that this is where his journey to faith was sparked.
A constant theme throughout the book was the idea that instead of blaming the world for our problems, first we must look in the mirror. Before becoming a true Christian, Miller makes clear the fact that he must be better from the inside out. This idea could shed a light to many of us today.
Donald Miller emphasizes the idea of spirituality instead of religion. Toward the end of the book a radio-host asks him to back up Christianity. Interestingly, he refuses and claims that Christianity means something different to everyone. He did say though, that he could talk about Christ and what Christ has done for him. I highly recommend this book, Christian or non-Christian, it gives anyone a new perspective on faith.
Anonymous
Posted December 6, 2011
Donald Miller¿s book, Blue Like Jazz, questioned about the idea of what it means to be a Christian. Miller wrote about the faith in a variety of topics on coming to faith, why to have faith, how Christ can transform a person, what to do with the faith and how to live life as a Christian. In Miller¿s book, several of his chapters deal with the different aspects of his faith during his time at Reed College. Reed College had people from his church and other believers that said that the school was ¿most likely to not believe in God.¿ When Miller started to attend, he met up with a group of Christians that were strong believers. They talked about the meaning to believing and living for Christ. One of his friends believed that feeding the homeless meant more than just donating money to a homeless shelter, but that it is to actually go out and feed the homeless, to give them food directly, to sit and talk and have a meal with them. I believe that the Christian faith is about living a different life than others, that we as individuals cannot change the world if we don¿t change our attitudes or behavior. I recommend this book to people who are struggling to understand Christ and how they can involve this faith into their lives.
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Overview
"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened." ―Donald Miller
In Donald Miller's early years, he was vaguely familiar with a distant God. But when he came to know Jesus Christ, he pursued the Christian life with great zeal. Within a few years he had a successful ministry that ultimately left him feeling empty, burned out, and, once again, far away from God. In this intimate, soul-searching account, Miller ...