Jesus and Jazz
I read somewhere recently that the book “Blue Like Jazz” has sold over a million copies. That makes sense, because back when I read it in college it seemed like everyone I knew was talking about it. With his book, Donald Miller struck a chord with young Christians in a way that I haven’t seen since. The closest comparisons I have to it are Toms shoes and The Civil Wars - we all loved them and claimed them as our own. They inspired us and gave us hope for our secular credibility.
Reading “Blue Like Jazz” justified and strengthened the feelings I had that living an authentic life of faith might not look the same as what I saw in the subculture I grew up in. We can call it post-modern or emergent or relevant, but I think we’ve all seen a movement away from the separatist Christian bubble and towards a culture-engaging openness. We like the world, and we want it to like us back. Those jerks they interview on the news when they need a “Religious Right-Wing” sound byte about abortion or gay marriage do not represent us as a whole. That’s not what we want to be about. We want to be about loving and engaging the world, putting beauty into it, and inviting others to find hope and rest in Christ.
Or do we?
I saw “Blue Like Jazz” the movie yesterday, and it got me thinking about all of this (I won’t comment much on its merit as a film, other than to say I think they did a good job and it’s definitely worth seeing). In one of the previews I saw online for the film, you see one of the characters say, “I’m ashamed of Jesus.” That line alone drew me to the theatre because I wanted to see where that was going. Of course it was the huge moment in the film. The lead character, who has been running away from his Christian past, confesses the sentence I mentioned. But he doesn’t stop there, and this is what really messed me up and got my head and my heart spinning. “I’m ashamed of Jesus,” he says, “because I want you to like me.”
Sound familiar?
I know I’ve been there.
I think many of us have leaned so far into the “we want the world to like us and respect us and still be Christians” frame of mind that we’ve started to lose our love and affection for Jesus in the process. We all see the obvious friction between the ultra-conservative Christian subculture and the world we live in, but an equal tension exists when we try so hard to be relevant. In both ways we forget to lead with Christ. If the world likes us more because we’re nicer and more creative and cooler than previous generations of Christians, have we really accomplished anything? If we don’t give them Jesus then what is it worth?
I have lots of questions and very few (if any) answers. I know that something resonates deep within me when I think about being the kind of person who represents my faith well in the world, but I also know that a lot of the things that Jesus said and that I read in the Bible simply won’t go over very well in our culture. How do I follow faithfully and stay relevant at the same time? I want to be so wrapped up in Jesus that people think I’m weird, but so humble and kind and generous that they’re drawn to me anyway. That’s a narrow path to navigate.
Life is about that journey, that navigation. We may never reach the destination, just like jazz doesn’t resolve.
But we keep moving.
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