Christians 101

Donald Miller and Blue Like Jazz

I first heard about the clamor around Donald Miller’s book, Blue Like Jazz: Non-religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, through an evangelical friend of mine. I was leafing through the pages on the “for sale” desk at Chapel Hill Bible Church in North Carolina, “Yeah, everyone’s reading it. It’s the new thing. My mom even bought it.” She and many others. As of today, Blue Like Jazz was ranked #147 on Amazon.com books (compare that to Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas written after Blue Like Jazz ranked at #1,913). As a 33-year old prominent Christian author, Wikipedia has even created a spot for him. He’s been interviewed in numerous Christian publications, and sales from his other books aren’t so shabby either.

Blue Like Jazz is about Miller's relationship with Jesus, and his desire for others to have that same type of journey. He begins the book:

I once listened to an Indian on telelvision say that God was in the wind and the water, and I wondered at how beautiful that was because it meant that you could swim in Him or have Him brush your face in a breeze. I am early in my story, but I believe I will stretch out into eternity, and in Heaven I will reflect upon these early days, these days when it seemed God was down a dirt road, walking toward me. Years ago He was a swinging speck in the distance; now He is close enough I can hear His singing. Soon I will see the lines on His face.

But there's also a strong undercurrent of social justice in Miller's writings. His website Blue Like Jazz features a photo collage of city skylines, portraits, and a protest where one of the most visible signs reads, “That’s right Mr. Bush, we’re against you.” The site also has an “activism” page with links to MoveOn, the ACLU, Amnesty, and many others. He writes:

Christ's endless concern for the poor, oppressed and neglected displays something of the heart of God. And so there may be no greater reward than joining in his concerns by donating our time to organizations which are working diligently to see the wrongfully imprisoned set free, the hungry fed, the oppressor brought to justice, and the sick made well. While few of the organizations listed [MoveOn, ACLU, Amnesty] are specifically Christian organizations, each of them seems to be participating, at least to some degree, in the concerns of our God. Our calling is not to isolate and then help, but to join our fellow men serving the poor and oppressed, whether they share our specific political and religious views or not.

I'll end with another excerpt from Miller, taken from Blue Like Jazz (pps 18-21). Here Miller is on a journey – a journey which may sound strikingly familiar to many progressives across the country:

Earlier that afternoon, the afternoon I got together with Tony, my friend Andrew the Protestor and I went downtown to protest a visit by the President. I felt that Bush was blindly supporting the World Bank and, to some degree, felt the administration was responsible for what was happening in Argentina. Andrew and I made signs and showed up a few hours early. Thousands of people had already gathered, most of them protesting our policy toward Iraq. Andrew and I took pictures of ourselves in front of the cops, loads of cops, all in riot gear like storm troopers from Star Wars.

Andrew’s sign said “Stop America’s Terrorism” – he spelled terrorism wrong. I felt empowered in the sea of people, most of whom were also carrying signs and chanting against corporations who were making slaves of Third World labor; and the Republican Party, who gives those corporations so much power and freedom. I felt so far from my upbringing, from my narrow former self, the me who was taught that the Republicans give a crap about the cause of Christ. I felt a long way from the pre-me, the pawn-Christian who was a Republican because my family was Republican, not because I had prayed and asked God to enlighten me about issues concerning the entire world rather than just America.

When the president finally showed, things got heated. The police mounted horses and charged them into the crowd to push us back. We shouted, in unison, that a horse is not a weapon, but they didn’t listen. The president’s limo turned the corner so quickly I thought he might come tumbling out, and his car was followed by a caravan of shiny black vans and Suburbans. They shuttled him around to a back door where we watched through a chain-link fence as he stepped out of his limousine, shook hands with dignitaries, and entered the building amid a swarm of secret service agents. I was holding my sign very high in case he looked our way.

The president gave his speech inside the hotel and left through a side door, and they whisked him away before we could shake hands and explain our concerns. When we were done, I started wondering if we had accomplished anything. I started wondering whether we could actually change the world. I mean, of course we could – we could change our buying habits, elect socially conscious representatives and that sort of thing, but I honestly don’t believe we will be solving the greater human conflict with our efforts. The problem is not a certain type of legislation or even a certain politician; the problem is the same that it has always been.

I am the problem.

I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.

The thing I realized on the day we protested, on the day I had beers with Tony, was that it did me no good to protest America’s responsibility in global poverty when I wasn’t even giving money to my church, which has a terrific homeless ministry. I started feeling very much like a hypocrite.

More than my questions about the efficacy of social action were my questions about my own motives. Do I want social justice for the oppressed, or do I just want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don’t have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself. I am not browbeating myself here; I am only saying that true change, true live-giving, God-honoring change would have to start with the individual. I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read “I AM THE PROBLEM!”

That night, after Tony and I talked, I rode my motorcycle up to Mount Tabor, this dormant volcano just east of the Hawthorne District. There is a place near the top where you can sit and look at the city at night, smoldering like coals and ashes beneath the evergreens, laid out like jewels under the moon. It is really something beautiful. I went there to try to get my head around this idea, this idea that the problem in the universe lives within me. I can’t think of anything more progressive than the embrace of this fundamental idea.

posted by Elizabeth @ 12:10 PM