This is essentially a memoir. That’s the first warning I want to give. The book digs into Miller’s evolving thought-life but is not a book of essays or philosophy.

Second, this book does not age well. It is so much of its time that I can only laugh at the language Miller uses at times, and cringe most of the other times.

His references to Mark Driscoll and Joshua Harris, though passing, sort of define the book for me. Here are two men who tried to remake Christian culture because they got frustrated with the way things were. They were well-supported by people who wanted Christianity to be relevant, and tried to be counter-cultural in the way that appealed to counter-cultural people. But where are they now? One’s demise and utter, deep spiritual failures are the subject of an extremely popular podcast (The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill), and the other has now turned a complete 180. Both refuse to give up their power because, and this is just my guess, they care more about their ability to lead others to a truth than to find the truth themselves.

So where does Miller fit into this? He too tries to be different, and tries to speak God and Jesus in a new language that won’t scare off the new, unchristian American audience he was entertaining. I admire his efforts to use language and culture to talk about Jesus in a new way, but in the end he is so much of his time that the book is already aging and losing a it’s zest. What is underneath that zest is subpar prose and a few anecdotes that I would be willing to call meaningful.

I leave this thought for the end, perhaps because it is bold of me, but a white boy using jazz as a metaphor is revealingly naive. And just like a white boy, his prose is too clunky, uncontrolled, and disconnected to earn the name of jazz.

My nonreligious thoughts on this book.

===
Donald Miller's Most Frequently Discussed Topics:
1. The danger of being self-absorbed.
2. Himself.

==
He makes a really good point about how truth shouldn't be defined by what's trendy. Then at every turn, he pats fundamentalism on its dorky little head, because can you believe those Christians who, like, memorize Scripture on a (*gag*) schedule? That's not authentic, man.

===
Fun game: eat a Skittle every time Miller mentions that he's smoking a pipe.
Pro tip: buy a jumbo bag.

===
I kinda hope someone hugs Donald Miller today. He needs it.

===
But goodness, he also needs to stop obsessing over whether or not his future wife will want to see him shirtless. Dude, calm down. And your habit of kissing your pillow in the morning "as if it were a woman, a make-believe wife?" Didn't really need to know that.

===
I will never look at Emily Dickinson the same way again.

"I saw Emily Dickinson step out of a screen door and look at me with dark eyes, those endless dark eyes like the mouth of a cave, like pitch night set so lovely twice beneath her furrowed brow, her pale white skin gathering at the red of her lips, her long thin neck coming perfectly from her white dress flowing so gently and cleanly around her waist, down around her knees then slipping a tickle around her ankles---" and are you feeling as uncomfortable as I am yet?

If getting a crush on Emily Dickinson is "a rite of passage for any thinking man," then dear God, please help me not marry a thinking man, amen.

==
My best Donald Miller impression:

"Guys, guys, guys. I just had this MAJOR epiphany about myself. I'm just really super selfish. Like, I know marriage is great and all, but I just can't imagine having a woman around ALL THE TIME. Wouldn't it be great if I could get married, but my wife could have her own house, and she'd only come over when I felt like shaving? That's...probably not normal, right? Man. I have intimacy issues. Or maybe I'm just really selfish. I should probably stop being so self-absorbed. The world isn't about me. Me, me, me, me, me. That's all I ever think about. But I am not the center of the world. It's not MY world. I don't know why I think that. Why do I think it's all about me? Must be my intimacy issues. Guys, have I mentioned how selfish I am? Welp, guess the only thing to do is indulge in some major introspection and continue to plumb the depths of my tortured soul. Maybe then I will find out why I'm so focused on myself."

===
In the midst of their college's 3-day orgy (errr, Ren Fayre), he and his friends set up a confession booth for all the drunk, high, naked students. Oh, but heh, small detail: Miller and his friends are the ones confessing. For the Crusades.

===
My second-best Donald Miller impression:

"Institutions suck. Churches are institutions. Find a church that isn't super institution-y. Oh, but Reed College? Best institution EVAH. People say it's godless, but dang if those drunk, high naked people aren't more Christ-like than my fundamentalist friends. Like, my one friend talks like Elmer Fudd, and if he went to church with me, someone would snicker at him behind his back, and that is a tragedy of epic proportions. But Reed College? There is literally not ONE soul at Reed College who would even *think* something bad about my friend. Ugh, Christians suck sometimes. Hippies are freaking awesome ALL THE TIME. Also, I once went to a Unitarian church and yeah, I didn't love the fact they ignored the Bible, but they accepted people, and that's just the best, huh?"

===
Emergent Goop would be a good band name. Also a better title for this book.

===
To sum this all up, here is a conversation I had the pleasure of overhearing.

Friend: Oh, you're reading "Blue Like Jazz?" Is it any good?
Roommate: Hmm. Do you want the long version or the short version? The short version? No. The long version? Hell, no.

^ I think Donald Miller would appreciate her use of "hell." (It was authentic.)

===

P.S. Too snarky? Just compensating for the 240 pages of emotional mush I just read. I feel better now.

Originally this got three stars, now it has one. The more I think about this book the more I realize that it is nearly as noxious as most evangelical attempts at converting someone. What makes Miller really any different from the whorish looking teenage girls mentioned further down? Whorish teenage girls probably wouldn't do much to convince me I should be a Christian, but in the right frame of mind (where I excise parts of my brain and forget to be critical) his descriptions of loneliness, feeling like the whole world is an inauthentic rotting pile of shit, and feeling anchorless and rudderless in life I could conceivably fall for the message of this book.

This book is deceptive, and I'm not sure if it is intentional or not, but it still is deceptive.

Below I start the review with a story about two born-again Christians, one who I don't talk much about. This one was of the annoying breed of BA Christians, and he used an argument favored by practitioners of deception all over the world, the one where appeals are made to similarity between himself and the target. That was a shit sentence. What I mean is he would make arguments like this: "Man, I get that you don't like God, I was just like you, I was studying Environmental Science, and enjoying college, smoking lots of pot, just like you, I believed in Darwin, but then Jesus came to me and I realized Satan put fossils in the ground to deceive us." (how I wish I was making this up, this is really something he said).

What this guy and Miller are doing is trying to make me relate to them, and then see that I need to take the same path they did, because if they couldn't find a way out of their problems (emotional or intellectual), then how could I who am just like them.

I thought of Miller as the non-obtrusive Christian, but I think he really is just a more subtle version of his friend. The non-obtrusive Christian I think just really liked that religious people were paying him to skateboard. I remember one of the times we were talking to him he brought up evolution and Darwin, and started asking questions about what he had read in a book on Creationism and what Darwin really said about certain things. I didn't know much about Darwin or Evolution, so I couldn't really answer him except with what I 'felt' was true', I think he was genuinely interested in finding out if what he was being taught was true, or if it was bullshit.

Deep down I don't think Miller really cares if what he believes is bullshit, he's just searching for things to prop up his belief structure.

On Easter evening in 1999 my friend Mike (I'm so tempted to call him Mike the Goth or fill him with some hyperbolic characteristics that would make him sound cooler than any person could really be, but I won't succumb to Miller's influence) were hanging out at an almost empty coffee shop in town when two guys about our age approached us. At the time I was finely attuned to when someone was making an approach to hawk Jesus, in upstate New York it happened fairly often (more on this a little later), in New York City it doesn't happen in the same way. Now this skill set can pick out someone making an approach asking for spare change.

I don't know what Mike was wearing, probably something all black, or black with military pants. I know that I was wearing my Amebix t-shirt that had a guy crucified on the front, and 'No Gods, No Masters' on the back. I wore it because I was a shit who liked to passively get a rise out of people, and it was Easter--or Zombie Day as I had wittingly started calling the earlier in the day when Mike and I were heading to a store meeting at Kinko's.

So anyway there we were, and these two guys approach us, and the one starts talking to us, making small talk, and I go into shutdown mode, knowing what is coming. Mike keeps answering the guys questions. The other guy who isn't doing much of the talking looks like he is about to explode with excitement, he just wants to say something, and after a minute or two he just blurts out, "Hey, what do you think of Jesus?" I say nothing. Mike starts blurting out Crass lyrics like "I am no feeble Christ not me, he hangs in glib delight..." and "Jesus died for his own sins not mine". Mike seems to be enjoying himself, the Christians seem to be enjoying themselves in some perverse way, and I'm really fucking embarrassed. I will them away but my powers of mind control are absent because by some occult means they end up taking a seat at our table. We talk to them for the next hour. Well Mike talks to them, I sometimes give one word answers to a question if I'm asked directly, but I just stare at my coffee cup and listen.

To make a boring story shorter, they all talked, and they tried to get us to sign up for the eternal Jesus plan of salvation insurance, Mike had some fun with them, and every few minutes they would all start kind of talking like normal people, until usually the excitable one would once again shot back with some kind of Jesus thing.

A week or so later, maybe more, but not much more, Mike and I were back at the same coffee shop (where we were everyday at some point), and the guy who didn't talk about Jesus quite so much in the conversation showed up and asked if he could join us. We all talked, I was a little more involved in the conversation, and the Jesus guy (sorry I don't remember his name) turned out to be a pretty decent guy, and didn't really talk about Jesus at all.

A couple of more times the decent Jesus guy showed up and asked to join us and then sat and talked with us for an hour or so. I didn't mind if he showed up, he was actually a fairly interesting guy, and he was a Christian, but kind of in the same way that I was a vegetarian at the time. I really cared about not eating or wearing animals and if asked I'd talk about why I felt that way, but I never felt the need to ask someone eating a hamburger if they knew they were eating a cow. I'd like it if everyone stopped eating meat, but I wasn't going to preach to someone, they would do what they liked. He was kind of the same way, he never pushed Jesus on us in these conversations.

Instead we found out that he was part of this group called Word of Life, which is a Christian all year camp / school for kids to be trained to be evangelical missionaries. The group itself I hold in very low regard, but this particular guy was just a normal individual without a pathological need to share and convert (he may have gotten that part erased from himself over time). He lived at this place, and part of each day he studied the bible and was trained to go out and spread the word of Jesus, and the other half of the day he skateboarded. Seriously, he skateboarded and worked on getting better at this Bible boot camp in order to 'infiltrate' the skateboarding youth culture that hadn't been to receptive to the good word so far.

I kind of think of Donald Miller as this guy.

As an aside, one of the other battle tactics of the Word of Life was to bring young girls to Saratoga Springs on a Friday or Saturday Evening in nice weather and unleash them from their vans on Broadway. Lots of people are out on the main drag of town in nice weather, and Saratoga is a kind of artsy town, and one of the only towns with a vibrant downtown that people come to, so these girls would be unleashed on the streets to convert people to Christ. On a particular Friday evening I was sitting on a planter in front of a coffee shop that had recently banned me from their premises, reading the brand new collection of short stories by David Foster Wallace Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, when the live action show I'll call Brief Encounters with Hideous Nubile Girls started. I saw the small army of young girls (probably around 15 to 18 years old), unloaded out of the van, and disperse to conquer the hordes of heathens out of the street. All of the girls were wearing very revealing (or slutty) clothing and their approach was to go up to men and start flirting with them, before changing to conversation around to Jesus. It was one of the most surreal things I saw, not legal girls flirting with guys in their late twenties and older and then trying to convert them. Jailbait for Jesus. I don't know if they won any conversions, but they had no trouble getting guys to keep talking to them.

Forgive me Jesus I have sinned once again in a really long and rambling tangential personal story in what should be a book review.

I wanted to hate Donald Miller. I didn't though. I think that he is terribly misguided and unconsciously (or unintentionally) dishonest but I think he's probably got his heart in the right place. Of course I'll say that because he's pretty much the same person I am, but where I have wrestled with dis-belief in all things for most of my life he wrestles with belief. We are both reclusive, self-obsessed and overly self-conscious. We both have a similar sense of moral outrage at the world, and seem distrustful of institutions, and even ones that basically profess what we believe. He's a Christian who finds churches stifling and judgmental; I've been at separate and overlapping times a punk, an anarchist, a philosophy student and a vegetarian who for the most part has been unable to bear being in the company of others who shared my level of interest or commitment. He would leave church early just so he didn't have to talk to people afterwards, I'd bring pre-calculus homework to punk shows my band played in and then sat off to the side doing that once my band had played just so I didn't have to deal with the people.

I relate to him as a person, and there is something likable about him in the book. (He's probably a much more likable person than I am.)

In the comments to Ben's review of this book, I said I couldn't wait to rip Miller a new asshole in my review. I'm not going to do that, the book didn't turn out to be nearly as awful as I wanted it to be. But I was ready for it to be, and the first chapter nearly did me in with his description of having his first real interaction with God. I quote it below:

My slot-machine God disintegrated on Christmas Eve when I was thirteen. I still think of that night as 'the lifting of the haze,' and it remains one of the few times I can categorically claim an interaction with God. Though I am half certain these interactions are routine, they simply don't feel as metaphysical as the happenings of that night. It was very simple, but it was one of those profound revelations that only God can induce. What happened was that I realized I was not alone in my surroundings. I'm not talking about ghosts or angels or anything; I'm talking about other people. As silly as it sounds, I realized, late that night, that other people had feelings and fears and that my interactions with them actually meant something, that I could make them happy or sad in the way that I associated with them. Not only could I make them happy or sad, but I was responsible for the way I interacted with them. I suddenly felt very responsible. I was supposed to make them happy. I was not supposed to make them sad. Like I said, it sounds simple, but when you really get it for the first time, it hits hard.

I was shell shocked.

This is how the bomb fell: For my mother that year I had purchased a shabby Christmas gift--a book, the contents of which she would never be interested in. I had had a sum of money with which to buy presents, and the majority of it I used to buy fishing equipment, as Roy and I had started fishing in the creek behind Wal-Mart.... (some stuff about opening gifts)

...So in the moonlight I drifted in and out of anxious sleep, and this is when it occured to me that the gift I had purchased for my other was bought with the petty change left after I had pleased myself. I realized I had set the happiness of my mother beyond my own material desires.

This was a different sort of guilt from anything I had previously experienced. It was a heavy guilt, not the sort of guilt I could do anything about. It was a haunting feeling, the sort of sensation you get when you wonder whether you are two people, the other of which does things you can't explain, bad and terrible things.

The guilt was so heavy that I fell out of bed onto my knees and begged, not a slot-machine God, but a living, feeling God, to stop the pain. I crawled out of my room and into the hallway by my mother's door and lay on my elbows and face for an hour or so, going sometimes into sleep, before finally the burden lifted and I was able to return to my room.

One, this is called becoming an adult in your awareness to other people, as opposed to a child who has difficulty in cognitively having mature interpersonal thoughts (but good for you to think about others, there are lots of people who may never mature enough to realize that what they do or don't do can effect other people). I don't want to belittle anyone's experience, but doing a shitty thing and then feeling guilty about it doesn't need a God in the sky to make that happen; I also think that if I was in the midst of being that close to the omnipotent creator of the whole fucking universe, or feeling so terrible, I wouldn't be falling in and out of sleep; but then again at thirteen I couldn't sleep on my back, because once I lay on my back I'd think that this was the position I would be put in a coffin when I died and the final position I'd ever be in, and that would make me feel claustrophobic, as if I was really in a coffin, and then I'd realize I was going to die, and I'd start calculating how much of my life I'd already lived (this would later become calculations on how much of my life I'd wasted so far), and then I'd think about everyone else I knew and loved dying and I'd keep thinking about this until I stopped laying on my back and distracted myself with other thoughts. (Forgive me again Father for I have once again sinned in transgressing the bounds of book reporting).

Miller also says things in the book that sound all emo, and kind of poetic and cool, but which are just wrong. And this would be fine if this was poetry, but he's using these wrong facts to justify believing in God (and for God's existence in an indirect way). Here are the two that really jumped out at me:

"My belief in Jesus did not seem rational or scientific, and yet there was nothing I could do to separate myself from this belief. I think Laura was looking for something rational, because she believed that all things that were true were rational. But that isn't the case. Love, for examaple, is a true emotion, but it is not rational. What I mean is, people actually feel it. I have been in love, plenty of people have been in love, yet love cannot be proved scientifically. Neither can beauty. Light cannot be proved scientifically, and yet we all believe in light and by light see all things."

Light is a scientific concept, what light is, how we see, even types of light that we don't have the capabilities to see with our naked eyes. It sounds romantic to say that light isn't understood, a mystery, and that as a result it's like God but this doesn't hold any water.

We hear a little more on this general theme in a second argument with a false premise just two pages later:

In this book Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton says chess players to crazy, not poets. I think he is right. You'd go crazy trying to explain penguins. It's best just to watch them and be entertained. I don't think you can explain how Christian faith works either. It is a mystery. And I love this about Christian spirituality. It cannot be explained, and yet it is beautiful and true."

I'm pretty sure penguins don't exist for our entertainment, and as for the further claims of it being a complete mystery that one would go crazy trying to unravel, there are people who do study penguins and have a fairly good understanding of why they do what they do (the penguins being talked about here, are the mating habits of penguins, you know like in March of the Penguins, which is mysterious and beautiful, but not as something utterly unknowable.

My real issue with this quote is the Chesterton quote, and using what is a bullshit statement to make hyper-logical / rational thinking seem as a malady, of which the poetic mind is immune to. I don't know much about the history of chess, but I know that every grandmaster didn't go insane. You have Bobby Fisher's, but you also have Gary Kasparov who I've never heard is insane even though he is probably one of the greatest living chess players in the world. On the poetry side I'll just say Arthur Rimbaud, Robert Lowell, Antoin Artaud, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath; and that is just right off the top of my head.

I have about ten more of these types of examples marked by little pieces of ripped paper in my copy of the book. But I think I've made my point, and no need to brow beat the poetic licenses Miller's emo-ey confessional prose takes (a style I am a sucker for when it's done good, and hate when it's done poorly. Miller falls in the middle, he never makes me fall in love with his world, like a great writer of this style would do, but he also doesn't make me want to throttle him with his own book..... I wonder if Miller ever read Cometbus, and if Cometbus influenced him. Aaron Combetbus is a good example of this kind of personal prose that can work beautifully, although Cometbus won't make you want to believe in God, it might make you want to go live in squats, travel the country, drink too much coffee, read too many books, smoke too many cigarettes and fall in love with smart beautiful and damaged girls that can only end badly.)

But I'll share one more little 'quirk' of Millers, and then call it a night for this review. His belief that Buddhists all rub the belly of Buddha statues and make wishes on them, and uses this as a way of showing how misguided people can be. This is just silly, untrue and even if it was true not any more silly and absurd as believing that a) by praying to God he makes checks wind up at your apartment on the day rent is due (pg. 188), b) that by giving God his tithe of 10% of what you earn he makes it so that you end up making more money, as if he is some kind of mutual fund (pg. 197), or c) the whole cracker and Christ thing (pg. 237).

I probably have so much more to say, but I'll leave this review by saying that I found Miller much more likable than I expected, and I imagine if I met him he'd be a nice guy to talk to. Him and I just from different sides who both happen to know that the other side is wrong. Oh, and he seems to have come around to jazz, and I pretty much can't stand it.

Like 99.9% of Christian books, this has a pinch of cheese but is one that I would recommend to my friends who both believe in God/Jesus and who don’t. I deeply appreciate miller’s candid expression of faith and spirituality, how it’s difficult to comprehend and believe a lot of the time and how that’s not spoken out loud enough. I love when people are candid about that because it frees my own similar thoughts I have. This was a refreshing and easy read that I would recommend

I had a whole rant typed out for this y’all and the Lord seriously convicted me.

I’m seriously disappointed. I was really angry at first, but after reflection I’m just really sad.

This book felt like a really scary, really sad spin-off of the Jesus that I know. There was so much of the “Jesus is *insert your own definition of love here*” that lacked a lot of biblical context. Also many very subtle yet hurtful comments about women that fuel my fear of how Christian men view and speak about women.

I want to give Donald Miller as much grace as Jesus has given me, but I’m having a hard time reconciling a lot of this. I don’t necessarily want to recommend this book to anyone, but if any other believers have read this or read it in the future, let me know your thoughts and if I’m being dramatic.

A personal testimony of one’s journey into, through, around, beside & with faith that left me in awe of God’s ability to be in the details. He truly has a plan for a plan for each and every one of us.

The narrator also crushed it.

I relate to this man sm. “Cults do that sort of thing, you know. First you live in community, and then you drink punch and die.” LOL
I absolutely loved this book and at the same time I agree with so many of the 1-2 star reviews. Idk what that means but 5/5 for the experience

Instead of critiquing, perhaps let me just share a few of what I found to be some of the most powerful -- powerful because they are written so simply, and so simple in their truth -- lines that provide a glimpse of Miller's style, the beauty of this book, and the beauty of Christian spirituality:

"It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things."

"And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receving love as much as it comes from giving it. I think apart from the idea that I am a sinner and God forgives me, this is the greatest lesson I have ever learned. When you get it, it changes you...God's love will never change us if we don't accept it."

"I think the most important thing that happens within Christian spirituality is when a person falls in love with Jesus."

and the quote that hit me personally the most.."I think the difference in my life came when I realized, after reading those Gospels, that Jesus didn't love me out of principle, He didn't just love me because it was the right thing to do. Rather, there was something inside me that caused HIm to love me."

3.5. Sometimes a deep theological discussion filed with beautiful insights, sometimes the unhinged rambling of someone who is eccentric to the point of absurdity, this was a wild ride. This was the first Christian book I've read from a different view than my Reformed upbringing, and while some viewpoints Miller had I highly disagree with, overall this was an excellent read, in the sense that it gave fresh insights into Christian spirituality. Growing up, I had MANY of the same questions that Miller mentions about Christianity; questions that seemed so irreverant that in my mind it was taboo to mention; things such as doubt Christianity was the true religion, sketpticism that God was good... all the heavy hitters. Miller addresses these issues almost from the view of an outsider of the Christian faith, but with the understanding of someone who has a personal relationship with God. Very intriguing.
And man, was this book convicting. What I came away from after reading this book is the realization that sometimes, in the form and ritual of Christian worship and church life, some basic truths fall into the background, such as loving our neighbor. Miller talks about his time spent on Reed campus, an incredibly secular university that my heart qualms at even thinking about. And here's the quote that made me rethink everything;
"Interacting with Reed students showed me how shallow and self-centered my Christian faith had become. Many of the students hated the very idea of God, and yet they cared about people more than I did."
Miller also speaks about very relatable struggles, such as sin returning after becoming a Christian- he wonders, why does he still struggle with temptation? He comes to this realization;
"Sometimes the things we want most in this life are the things that kill us.....Ultimately, we do what we love to do. I like to think I do things for the right reasons, but I don't, I do things because I do or don't love doing them. Because of sin, because I am self-addicted, living in the wreckage of the fall, my body, my heart, and my affections are prone to love things that kill me.....my natural desire was to love darkness".
Miller is also brutally honest, being so blunt about his feelings that I get second hand embarrassment. It's like reading the things that go through my head that have never been mentioned because I am ashamed of thinking them.
"I used to get really ticked about preachers who talked too much about grace, because they tempted me not to be disciplined."
When talking about how he would always ask prayer requests for his friends but insisted his problems weren't important...
"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, " Don, you are not above the charity of God."In that instant he revealed that my motives were not noble, they were prideful".
Miller does not shy away from humiliating and exposing himself. I see not an ounce of untruth or self-preservation, and for that, I think this book is incredibly brave.
He talks about his hypocritcial nature as a youth group leader living a double life-
"I feel like I am constantly saying things I don't mean. I tell people they should share their faith, but I don't feel like sharing my faith. I tell people they should be in the Word, but I am only in the Word because I have to teach the word".
"The trouble with deep belief is that it costs something. And there is something inside of me,some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn't like the truth at all because it carries responsibilty, and if I actually believe these things I have to do something about them. It is so, so cumbersome to believe anything".
"What I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do. If I do not introduce people to Jesus, then I do not believe Jesus is an important person. It doesn't matter what I say."

"When we worship God we worship a Being our life experience does not give us the tools with which to understand. If we could, God would not inspire awe. Eternity, for example, is not something the human mind can understand. We may be able to wrap our heads around living forever (and we can do this only because none of us have experienced death)
but can we understand what is means to have never been born? I only say this to illustrate that we, as Christians, believe things we cannot explain. And so does everybody else."

Miller also tells the story of a guy he really disliked, and how he tried to communicate his dislike in hope the guy knew exactly what kind of guy he was; "I didn't know how to communicate to him that he needed to change, so I displayed it on my face. I rolled my eyes. I gave him dirty looks. I woud mouth the word "loser" when he wasn't looking. I thought somehow he would sense my disapproval and change his life in order to gain my favor. In short, I withheld love."
And of course, it didn't work. Miller realizes that people are SO much more receptive to the Gospel when you love them for who they are without trying to change them yourself; we are called to love them and show them the Gospel in action- God is the one who will change them, not us. And isn't that comforting? If people had to rely on my explanation of the Gospel as the basis of their salvation, what a miserable understanding they would have.
Overall- I'm really glad I read this book. Even though "Sexy Carrots" and "Penguin Sex' might not be the best chapter titles.

Super vulnerable and honest thoughts, really enjoyed it because it was so… real. I don’t agree with everything he wrote in this book, but you could tell that every single word was from the heart, would definitely recommend

Of the few couple Christian books I have read, this book stands alone with its unique honest and relatable tone. I think that is why it was so hard to put down. Miller put into words thoughts I had and didn't know how to express, and I was constantly having little "ooooh this makes sense" moments.

The problem with Miller, Bell, and this whole Gen X/emerging church/postmodern church movement is that they want to be so much smarter than they are. Truthfully this book is spiritually shallow and leaves me thinking, "yeah, but so what?" I have already wrestled with a lot of the issues raised by Donald Miller and found myself wanting him to say more. I believe I finally put my finger on the issue. Jesus told the Samaritan woman that one day we would worship in Spirit and in Truth. Miller has found the Spirit, but is low on Truth. His book does not challenge me because it is nothing more than the ramblings of an idealist. The difference between C.S. Lewis and Miller is the challenge. Lewis really does challenge me to think harder about my Christianity. Miller makes me feel like we should all sit around and pontificate while smoking pipes. Sounds like fun, but what's the point? I like that. That's how I would describe Blue Like Jazz. "Sounds like fun, but what's the point?"