(more more) Blue Like Jazz. part III

Okay, so it started downpouring just this morning and I was just going to go shower...but something about lots of rain coming down and usually your not supposed to have fun like that in the rain all by yourself, but I did. I ran out there to the street which was filling up with water and then bolted back inside to dry off. Yes, I am going to actually take a shower b/c I forgot my shampoo out there.

Here's the last of my favorite BLJ quotes here!

Blue Like Jazz quotes

And that's when I realized that believing in God is as much like falling in love as it is like making a decision. Love is both something that happens to you and something you decide upon. (104)

Here is the trick, and here is my point. Satan, who I believe exists as much as I believe Jesus exists, wants us to believe meaningless things for meaningless reasons. (100)

The trouble with deep belief is that it costs something. (107)

I had this idea once that if I could make Christianity cool, I could change the world, because if Christianity were cool then everybody would want to deal with their sinful nature, and if everybody would want to deal with their sin nature then most of the world's problems would be solved. (107)

If you believe something, passionately, people will follow you. People hardly care what you believe, as long as you believe something. I told the radio host that I would rather talk about Jesus and how I came to believe that Jesus exists and that he likes me. (115)

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. (115)

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 religions 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. (118)

The churches I attended would embrace war metaphor. They would talk about how we are in a battle, and I agreed with them, only they wouldn't clarify that we were battling poverty and hate and injustice and pride and the powers of darkness... The truth is we are supposed to love the hippies, the liberals, and even the Democrats, and that God wants us to think of them as more important than ourselves. Anything short of this is not true to the teachings of Jesus. (132?

I think there are artists at a lot of churches who don't have an outlet, and by creating an outlet, the church gives artists a chance to express themselves and in return the church gets free stuff to put on their walls. Relationships are like rubber bands...when one person pulls away, the other is attracted, and when the other person pulls away, well, that just draws the other one even closer. (140)

I think if you like somebody you have to tell them. It might be embarrassing to say it, but you will never regret stepping up. I know from personal experience, however, that you should not keep telling a girl that you liker her after she tells you she isn't into it. You should not keep ridding your bike by her house either. (142)

People really like me a lot when they only know me a little, but I have this great fear that if they knew me a lot they wouldn't like me. (143)

Marriage is amazing because it is the closest two people can get, but they can't get all the way to that place of absolute knowing. (146)

When I was in love there was somebody in the world who was more important than me, and that, given all that happened at the fall of man, is a miracle, like something God forgot to curse. (151)

No drug is so powerful as the drug of self. (182)

Because I grew up in the safe cocoon of Big-Christianity, I came to believe that anything outside the church was filled with darkness and unlove. (209)

The problem with Christian community was that we had ethics, we had rules and laws and principles to judge each other against. There was love in the Christian community, but it was conditional love. (215)

I was tired of biblical ethic being used as a tool with which to judge people rather than heal them. (216)

If a person senses that you don not like them, that you don not approve of their existence, then your religion and your political ideas will all seem wrong to them. If they sense that you like them, then they are open to what you have to say. (220)

I loved the fact that t wasn't my responsibility to change somebody, that it was God's, that my part was just to communicate love and approval. (221)

I have come to understand that strength inner strength, comes from receiving love as such as it comes from giving it. (232)

I think the most important thing that happens within Christian spirituality is when a person falls in love with Jesus. (237)

I know our culture will sometimes understand a love for Jesus as weakness. there is this like floating around that says I am supposed to be able to do life alone, without any help, without stopping to worship something bigger than myself. (237)

I think Christian spirituality is like Jazz music. I think Jesus is something you feel. I think
it is very difficult to get on paper. But it is no less real, no less meaningful, no less beautiful. (239)

(more) Blue Like Jazz. part II

I'm going at it again with some more quotes from the book here. Lesson learned: when you give a mouse (or me) a cookie (or a highlighter), he'll want to drink some milk (highlight the entire book like a yellow-book warrior)... Anyway, yeah. This book is great, I recently ordered a new book by Miller but dumb eBay is taking forever to ship!!! I'm not an impatient American, no, I'm just all about (ahem) promptness.

Blue Like Jazz

It all sounded so very witless to me, but by this time I wanted desperately to believe it. It felt as though my soul was designed to live the story Christian spirituality was telling. I felt like my soul wanted to be forgiven. I wanted the resolution God was offering. (35)

Christian spirituality was not a children's story. It wasn't cute or neat. It was mystical and odd and clean, and it was reaching into dirty. There was wonder in it and enchantment. (35)

She also thought that if Christianity were a person, that is all Christians lumped into one human being, that human being probably wouldn't like her. (44)

They felt they had to sell God, as if He were soap or a vacuum cleaner, and it's like they really weren't listening to me, they didn't care, they just wanted me to buy their product. (46)

I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn't. It is a chocolate thing. (47)

Love, for example, 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. (54)

I figured all this was God's fault. I thought that if God would make it so I felt convicted all the time I would never sin. I would never get drunk or smoke pot. (63)

I think the things we want most in life, the things we think will set us free, are not the things we need. (63)

And that's the tricky thing about life, really that the things we want most will kill us. (77)

I was in that same phase of trying to discipline myself to "behave" as if I loved light and not "behave" as if I loved darkness. (79)

The first of the exploits to go was the Bible. It wasn't that I didn't want to read it or didn't agree with it, I would just forget. (80)

The ability to accept God's unconditional grace and ferocious love is all we need to obey him in return. (86)

Our behavior will not be changed long with self-discipline, but fall in love and a human will accomplish what he never thought possible. (86)

I felt as if believing in God was no more rational than having an imaginary friend. (87)

I read through the Koran before it was even popular. It never occurred to me that if Christianity was not rational, then neither were other religions. (87)

I don't have so many problems with Muhammad, but I have problems with middle-aged white guys who grew up in America claiming Muhammad as a hero, not because Muhammad never did anything good (he did), but because calling Muhammad a hero is such an incredibly trendy thing to do. (90)

I understand why people wear crystals around their necks and why they perform chants and gaze at stars. They are lonely. I'm not talking about lonely for a lover or a friend. I mean lonely in the universal sense, lonely inside the understanding that we are tiny little people on a tiny little earth suspended in an endless void that echoes past stars and stars and stars. (92)


Here is this guy using Islamic verbiage to make himself look spiritual, and yet he really hasn't researched or subscribed to the faith, as it presents itself. He's just using it. Raping it for his own pleasure. (93)

I knew Christ, but I was not a practicing Christian. (94)

I have become an infomercial for God, and I don't even use the product. I don't want to be who I am anymore. (97)

That is the thing about giving yourself to God. Some people get really emotional about it and some people don't feel much of anything except the peace they have after making an important decision . (100)

Blue Like Jazz

I have decided, after reading one of the greatest books ever, to put down some quotes straight from Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz, non-religious thoughts on Christianity. I have never identified so well with a book more than this one. It strikes a chord in me, and since reading it in January, I have felt compelled to get copies for great friends that I love--they deserve to read the same.

Anyway, I'm just gonna stop rambling on and put out some quotes. this may take a few blogs but bare with me...

BLUE LIKE JAZZ quotes:

In light of the earthly representation of the role, why would God want to call himself father? Seems a marketing mistake. Why would anyone want to call Himself Father when so many fathers abandon their children? (4)

If something nice happened to me, I thought it was God, and if something nice didn't, I went back to the slot machine, knelt down in prayer, and pulled the lever a few more times. (9)

I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God. (13)

I didn't love God because I didn't know God. (14)

It was as if we were broken, I thought, as if we were supposed to feel those sticky emotions. As if we were cracked, couldn't love right, couldn't feel good things for very long time without screwing it all up. (14)

He said that when we are watching television our minds are working no harder than when we are sleeping. I thought that sounded heavenly. I bought one that afternoon. (15)

I think every conscious person, every person who is awake enough to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems on group think, an humanity, and starts to face himself. (20)

Six billion people live in this world, and I can only muster thoughts for one. Me. (22)

I think Jesus feels strongly about communicating the idea of our brokenness, and I think it is worth reflection. Nothing is going to change in the Congo until you and I figure out what is wrong with the person in the mirror. (23)

It is a pretty good idea to make noises when you are at a play. (27)

Everybody wants to be fancy and new. Nobody wants to be themselves. (29)

If there was a guy who just liked being himself and didn't want to be anybody else, that guy would be the most different guy in the world and everybody would want to be him. (29)

I pictured my pastor as a salesman or a magician, trying to trick the congregation into believing Jesus could make us new. And, honestly, I felt as though he was trying to convince himself as though he only half believed what he was saying. (29)

I felt as if Christianity, as a religious system, was a product that kept falling apart, and whoever was selling it would hold the broken parts behind his back trying to divert everybody's attention. (30)

The rebellion against God explained why humans experienced conflict in their lives, and nobody knows of any other explanation than this. (32)

Christianity offered a decision, a climax. It also offered a good and a bad resolution. In part, our decisions were instrumental to the way our story turned out. (33)

And perhaps, I was judging the idea (making a decision to follow Jesus), not by its merit but by the fashionable or unfashionable delivery of the message. (33)

I never liked it when the preachers said we had to follow Jesus. Sometimes they would make him sound angry... I liked the idea of Jesus becoming a man, so that we would be able to trust Him, and I like that he healed people and loved them and cared deeply about how people were feeling. (34)