Subscribe to feedDonald Miller’s book Blue Like Jazz has a lot to offer, both positive and negative. The book is written in a way that will appeal mostly to the Emergent crowd and it received an endorsement from Mr. Emergent himself, Brian McLaren, but there are elements that can be helpful to all.
In this review I will not give an overview of the book but will focus on a few specific points that I think are helpful either as a reminder to non-emergents or to highlight some of the problems with the emerging church.
To start with some of the positive points, Blue Like Jazz does offer a number of helpful words for the reader. First, throughout the book we are reminded of our need to carry out social ministry. The emerging church has been rightly criticized for focusing too much on the social gospel. Nonetheless, most of our churches fail to do as much as we should be doing. Many critics of the emerging church have recognized that people in the movement make some legitimate criticisms about traditional churches. One of those legitimate criticisms is that we are not active enough in social ministry. This is one of the things that makes the emerging church more appealing to those who want to be active in meeting physical needs. Miller reminds us that the gospel calls for believers to provide for the needy, whether they be close to home or around the world. The gospel calls for believers to do more than repent of sins, meet on Sunday, and read the Bible on Monday. One way we spread the love of God is by displaying his compassion to the world through acts of service and sacrificial giving.
Miller also does a pretty good job when he talks about the need for community. All Christians – introvert or extrovert – are called to live in community with one another. That means involving ourselves in each other’s lives, going deeper than just seeing each other in church once a week. The early church gathered together daily. Somehow we think that once or twice a week is all we need. Some of the problems in the book show up when Miller talks about what Christian love and acceptance should look like, but I will bring that up again later.
Even though Miller’s view of love is problematic, he still gives us a good reminder that we are called to love all people. Whatever the person’s faults may be, our response to them should be given in love. Miller is right that it is easy to hate someone you do not know, so one way to help us overcome hate and move to love is to get to know all kinds of people. As we do this it will also open up more opportunities to display and present the gospel.
Most emergent types have a strong dislike of the organized church. Miller is no different. Nonetheless, one of the things I liked about the book is that Miller frequently affirmed the need for and value of church. He will often take potshots and some of the stereotypical views of church, but around that he also tells us that Christians need to be attendees of, participants in, and givers to the local church.
Now on to some of the problems. Many outsiders have recognized the tendency of emergents to revel in the crude or behavior normally considered bad form for Christians. Miller will sometimes go out of his way to point out occasions when he got together with people to smoke a pipe (tobacco, not marijuana) or to share a beer with a friend. He talked about his pot smoking friends with a wink and a smile, and almost sounded like he admired the fact that this or that person was willing to cuss. And when he talks about the hippies who perhaps loved too much or were perhaps too physical, the “perhaps” was as close as he would get to saying their behavior was wrong. Something about young adults these days (and I am one of them so I know this from my own experience) celebrates coarse language and behavior. Miller does not seem to see any intrinsic value in the behaviors themselves but highlights them simply for the fact that they were performed. He wants people to see how hip, how relevant, how liberated he is from the stuffy old ways of the past.
The biggest problem with the book was how it presented love and acceptance. As already mentioned, Miller does a good job of reminding us of our need to love all people. But for Miller love seems to mean accepting and respecting any life decision they have made. He says he prefers being with hippies rather than church people because hippies are quicker to love and to forgive. What he means without saying it is that hippies do not have any moral expectations on how people should behave whereas church people do. Miller seems to say that we should not try to lead people to change their lives. We should love them and hope that our example influences them for the better. Going back to the hippies, Miller does not seem concerned with whether or not their behavior ever changes. Since they love everyone he is happier with them then he is with church people.
Miller is right that Christians need to work on how we respond to sinners. Christians should not expect non-Christians to live like saints. Worldly people will live like worldly people. But Miller is wrong that Christians should not try to influence the behavior of others. The whole idea behind community in the New Testament was that these people would gather together to help people grow closer to Christ. If they saw someone doing something wrong, they were supposed to go up to that person and help them get out of the sin. Miller seems to think that this is okay if we are helping people become aware of the need for social ministry, but it is not okay if we are trying to help people change the way they live. But love is not love if it ignores destructive lifestyles and behaviors, and everything that is not done in obedience to God is destructive. At one point Miller says, “I wondered whether any human being could be an enemy of God.” I wonder what Miller makes of passages like Romans 5:10, Philippians 3:18, and 1 Corinthians 15:25. There are many enemies of God out there and all of their actions are destructive. It is not love that lets them go on being enemies and behaving in destructive ways.
In the end I was far more impressed with this book than I had expected to be. I thought it would be somewhat like Rob Bell’s book Sex God, full of problems from beginning to end. But while the book does have problems that causes trouble throughout, Miller also has a lot to offer his reader. The problems are serious enough that I don’t think I could recommend this book to others, but I would not be too concerned if I knew someone was reading it. Now, if they go from Miller to someone like Bell or McLaren, I might recommend they start a steady dose of Piper instead.
