Blue Like Jazz

I just finished reading a book called "Blue Like Jazz", by Donald Miller. It's subtitle is "Nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality".
We watched a video of Donald Miller speaking at a conference once and it was very interesting, and he is very entertaining, plus our Pastor recommended this book, so I got it from the library.
It's not a life altering book, necessarily, but it is profound in parts, entertaining throughout, very funny and well written. He is coming at "Christianity" differently than most Christian books would, from more of a social activist, fight the system approach, which is part of what makes it so interesting. Of course not everything in the book is gold, but there were several things that made me stop and think, or that were good points. I actually laughed out loud several times too, which is high praise from me!
Anyway, here are a couple quotes from various spots in the book, just paragraphs that I found interesting.



"For me, however, there was a mental wall between religion and God. I could walk around inside religion and never, on any sort of emotional level, understand that God was a person, and actual Being with thoughts and feelings and that sort of thing. To me, God was more of an idea. It was something like a slot machine, a set of spinning images that dolled out rewards based on behavior and perhaps, chance.
The slot-machine God provided a relief for the pinging guild and sense of hope that my life would get organized toward a purpose. I was too dumb to test the merit of the slot machine idea. I simply began to pray for forgiveness, thinking the cherries might line up and the light atop the machine would flash, spilling shiny tokens of good fate. what I was doing was more in line with superstition than spirituality. But it worked. If something nice happened to me, I thought it was God, and if something niece didn't, I went back to the slot machine, knelt down in prayer and pulled the lever a few more times. I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back. But the fun never lasts."





"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 so 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. I was into habit. I grew up going to church, so I got used to hearing about God. he was like Uncle Harry or Aunt Sally except we didn't have pictures."




"When I am talking to somebody there are always two conversations going on. The first is on the surface; it is about politics or music or whatever our mouths are saying. The other is beneath the surface, on the level of the heart, and my heart is either communicating that I like the person I am talking to or I don't. God wants both conversations to be true. That is, we are supposed to speak truth in love. If both conversations are not true, God is not involved in the exchange, we are on our own, an don our own, we will lead people astray. The Bible says that if you talk to somebody with your mouth and your heart does not love them, that you are like a person standing there smashing two cymbals together. You are only annoying everybody around you. I think that is beautiful and true."