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| Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality | 
 enlarge | Author: Donald Miller
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Category: Book
List Price: $14.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (459 reviews)
Sales Rank: 976
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 0785263705
Dewey Decimal Number: 277.3082092
UPC: 020049024874
EAN: 9780785263708
ASIN: 0785263705
Publication Date: July 17, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Reads like a child's book report September 19, 2008
I started this book last night and have made my way through about a quarter of it, so I admit this isn't a full review of the complete work (I will complete this review when I finish the work). That being said, so far, I am not impressed. I kept hearing that this book was an absolute gem, that it would change the way I think, that it was the new "On the Road", and that it would awaken in me a new Christian spirituality. Well, maybe not those exact words, but that's the general idea. Within the first three chapters, this book reveals itself for what it is: a vehicle to promote liberation theology and a liberal theology in general.
Miller has some valid points, for example, that Christians are called to help the needy and that we spend most of our time thinking about ourselves rather than others, but he seems to think that promoting social justice and welfare programs was the whole point of Christ's incarnation and sacrifice, not to heal our relationship with God and to think of Him first, our neighbors second, and ourselves last. His theology is sloppy, inconsistent, and shows a lack of understanding concerning 2000 years of Christian teaching. In interviews, he makes the statement that he is a writer, not a pastor, but one needs to realize that when one writes a nonfiction work on a topic, that the author takes on the role of a teacher in many ways for the topic he has chosen. It's fine that Mr. Miller admits he is not a theologian or an expert, but that doesn't stop him from making claims and giving criticisms of a theological nature. As I mentioned, I have not finished the book yet, so I don't know if his teachings become more solid or not.
In addition, it was obvious that part of Mr. Miller's goal in writing this book was to sway people to join a political party. He is highly critical, and in some instances absolutely slams, the Republican Party for not "giving a crap" about the message and mission of Jesus, and (as a member of the GOP myself) I can openly and easily admit that some of it is deserved; the Compassionate Conservatism we heard about a few years ago seems to have been swept up by the vacuum cleaner. However, Miller never shows equal criticism for the Democratic Party (there is no need to go into detail here, as this is a book review and not a political debate). For a man that spends a good portion of his book decrying institutions, he seems to pull his punches with the ones he likes.
Finally, many say this book is "conversational" in its delivery. I disagree. It reads more like a child's book report. Short, choppy, awkward sentences abound, stuff like: "I went to a play on a date once. Plays are good. Dates are good too. Dates where you go to a play are sometimes good too. You should pretend you like plays and make happy noises if you go on a date to a play." I am paraphrasing here, but that is the general idea. I kept expecting Miller to say his favorite food is pizza and he has two cats, a dog, and a sister.
I will finish this book, if for no other reason than to give it a chance, but I am not hopeful of much improvement or some great insight. If someone has told you how great this book is, be suspicious.
 Best "Christian" Book I've Read September 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
What an awesome book! This is the best book I've ever read that could be called Christian. It is totally honest and funny. I hope every Christian will read this book.
To the reviewer who says that Donald Miller used a bunch of cuss words in his interview with The Door Magazine, I say that he is lying. I read the interview, and he used one cuss word (not many) that had to be blanked out. I don't think anyone should cuss but that doesn't make him any less Christian I don't think.
Blue Like Jazz August 15, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a book well worth reading. It is appropriate for late teens and early twenties since it covers life in a university. It has a great spiritual depth and we have used is as the basis of study in a small group of men. I recommend it highly.
 Shallow or Even Faulty Theology, Powerful Analysis on Humanity August 13, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
When I read Don Miller's thoughts on human personality and relationship, it is not exaggerating to rate them as powerful as those of C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoffer and Francis Schaeffer. But to run an apple-to-apple comparison, I would pick Lewis in this case for a comparison study, because Miller is not a minister. While Lewis is excellent in using illustrations and allegories to get his points across which might be ambiguous and challenging to understand, particularly when one is not familiar with the literatures he used as references, Miller, while equally personal, sharp and hilarious, is surprisingly and impressively much more articulate in conveying and in the presentation of his observation and analysis from his own experience and interaction with his acquaintances. He nails it when he speaks about human depravity, loneliness, and money (somewhat naive, but still worth pondering),
"I remember a particular midnight, three weeks into our stay, walking into a meadow surrounded by thick aspens and above me all that glorious heaven glowing, and I felt like I was part of it, what with the trees clapping hands and me feeling like I was floating there beneath the endlessness, I looked up so long I felt like I was in space. Light. No money and no anxiety" (p.199).
"When I was in love, I hardly thought of myself. When I was in love, there was somebody in the world who was more important than me. I think being in love is an opposite of loneliness, but not the opposite. There are other things I now crave when I am lonely, like community, like friendship, like family. [The words alone, lonely and loneliness] say that we are human; they are like the words `hunger' and `thirst.' But they are not words about the body, they are words about the soul.
When you live on your own for a long time, however, your personality changes because you go so much into yourself you lose the ability to be social, to understand what is and isn't normal behavior. There is an entire world inside yourself, and if you let yourself, you can get so deep inside it you will forget the way to the surface...the soul needs to interact with other people to be healthy.
And what is sad, what is very sad, is that we are proud people, and because we have sensitive egos and so many of us live our lives in front of our televisions (I might add Internet, blogs, computers, and video games), not having to deal with real people who might hurt us or offend us, we float along on our couches like astronauts moving aimlessly through the Milky Way, hardly interacting with other human beings at all" (p.151-152, 154, 172).
With this said, however, Miller's theology, which I consider as a close representation of the theology of the emergent church, is shallow, if not faulty. It is a humanistic, anthropocentric theology, where the gospel has been turned into a social gospel, and Christianity as a means to turn the world into an utopia at the expense of neglecting the fundamental issues of sin, the attributes of God; particularly the justice and holiness and glory of God, the authority of Scriptures and the cross of Jesus Christ, the latter being the linchpin of the gospel. He did so by eliminating these and substituting them with a false notion of the love of God, which is common in the emergent camp (the name Brian McLaren usually pops up when the word "emergent" is mentioned).
One might challenge my statement about Miller's theology and accuse it as if I were beating a dead horse considering the sub-title of the book is "Non-religious thoughts on Christian Spirituality." However, this sub-title both sounds like an oxymoron and is inconsistent with what Miller actually does. How can one write about Christian Spirituality without being religious? These two are inseparable. Moreover, despite "non-religious" claim, he does talk about the Bible, God, Jesus Christ, prayer and love. How can one write about these altogether and not be religious? Impossible. Perhaps Miller is trying not to scare anyone away by not giving a religious impression on his book, but it doesn't work. If it is Christian, then it must be religious. He tries not to sound religious but he can't help sounding religious as he discusses Christianity, yet ironically, by violating this non-religious claim by writing religiously anyway about Christianity, he doesn't present Christianity rightly as the Bible teaches, but a heavily diluted version of it, so thoroughly diluted that it barely resembles orthodox Christianity that the Bible teaches. From this perspective, this book is a mess. Though Miller does an excellent job in describing the problems with humanity as well as with the so-called fundamentalist Christianity, but sadly he does not go to the bottom of them, that the true gospel points out and the remedy thereof. Consider for examples,
"Loneliness is something that happens to us, but I think it is something we can move ourselves out of. I think a person who is lonely should dig into a community, give himself to a community, humble himself before his friends, initiate community, teach people to care for each other. Jesus does not want us floating through space or sitting in front of our televisions. Jesus wants us interacting, eating together, laughing together, praying together. Loneliness is something that came with the Fall. If loving other people is a bit of heaven then certainly isolation is a bit of hell, and to that degree, here on earth, we decide in which state we would like to live.
... I should have people around bugging me and getting under my skin because without people I could not grow in God, and I could not grow as a human. We are born into families,... and we are needy at first as children because God wants us together, living among one another, not hiding ourselves under logs like fungus. You are not a fungus... you are human, and you need other people in your life in order to be healthy" (p. 173).
Just like Lewis, Miller is a great writer-psychiatrist-philosopher, but a horrible theologian. My suggestion is to read Miller with caution, disregard his views on theology, learn from his analysis on humanity and combine it with John Piper's Desiring God.
Great Book August 7, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is one of the most profound books on spirituality I have ever come across. For those who are questioning your faith and feel there is nothing in Christiandom that can help you find the answers to why you feel so miserable, why things don't seem to be going your way, this is the book for you. It has no answers, per say, but it does tell of one man's quest to find the living God and some of the revelations he came to while on that quest. A must have for any Christian library.
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