Skip to main content

#37-Having an opinion about Donald Miller and Blue Like Jazz

Image
By

Who is this man? I thought you would never ask.

"His name is Donald Miller and he is an author. I like him as a writer, I don't like him as role model for my children..."

You're likely to hear this or one of a few other possible answers when someone begins telling you about Donald Miller.

Donald Miller wrote the now infamous Christian book "Blue Like Jazz" as well as a few other books which I, nor most other half-hearted Donald Miller fans have ever read.

Blue Like Jazz (and Donald Miller as well since the book is basically an organized diary of Miller's thoughts about Christianity) is one of those books that you can't just tell someone about what the book is about without giving your opinion of it.

It smacks of amateur prose at times, offensiveness at other times, and conviction-that-leads-to repentance at even other times.

One scene you're hearing him quote a friend on how the book of John is best read while smoking a cigarette and eating chocolate, and another you are hearing him boldly claim that some gay people he knows are more Christian in their behavior than many people who claim to be Christian, and then yet in a different section you're seeing a line that stops and makes you develop a kind of admiration for the guy with lines like, "The most difficult lie I ever contended with is this: Life is a story about me"

Needless to say he is very polarizing on forcing you to develop an opinion on him. You won't find someone saying, "I am not really sure how I feel about him."

The people who love him will call you overly judgmental and too narrow-minded to understand Miller if you hate him.

The people that hate him focus too much on the fact that he is constantly referencing how much of a smoker he is and completely miss out on what his actual message is.

So if you haven't read Blue Like Jazz I recommend you do so ASAP so you can join almost all Apostolic 20 somethings in having an opinion about about the book.

Comments

  1. chantellSeptember 14, 2009 at 8:14 AM

    I love, love, LOVE Don Miller. He is officially my husband-in-my-mind. I hereby challenge anyone who would dare criticize him to a duel.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#150-Holy Magic Hair (sort of)

By
Preface: As with many posts, the claims made in this post are far from being definitive to the whole apostolic movement. In fact I has been very surprised and pleased with the openness of many apostolic officials and higher ups to denounce the doctrine of "magic hair" as a heresy in recent months. It must also be noted that whatever controversy may be derived from this post, the thoughts are not really my own. Many men more articulate and intelligent than I have already tried to openly combat this theory and have done so in a far more effective fashion than I could. For the most comprehensive understanding of Holy magic hair, please visit  http://holymagichair.com/wordpress/ . Also note that this is not a criticism anyway in uncut hair, nor is it advocating hair cutting. I'm critiquing a doctrine that has developed around long hair. Okay, when I originally started SAL, I had a post about HMH (holy magic hair) in mind. However, after a beloved teacher of mine spoke o...
190 comments
Read more

#280-Jeff Arnold and His "Idiot" Friends.

By
So basically this happened last week at Because of the Times (no, not the Kings of Leon album, but the preacher's conference that was named after the album): And by "this happened" I really mean a Jeff Arnold sermon-rant to formally announce his senility. Literally, the dude was Khrushchev slamming his shoe on a podium, a rambling Richard Sherman in a postgame interview, a conservative Michael "Shame on you Mr. Bush" Moore at the Oscars. In short, Jeff Arnold pulled a Kanye in front of anyone who matters in the UPC. And it's not like we didn't see it coming . For those who haven't been paying attention to Twitter or simply got wise enough to not really care one iota about the ongoing Reality TV tragicomedy that is the UPC, let me tell ya, you're missing a whole lot of chuckle moments. But to catch you up to speed.. here's the run-down of Mr. Arnold's sermon: -Confesses aspirations to be lauded by God as one of the greatest ...
77 comments
Read more

#285 - #NAYC2015 (An Ode To Broken Commitments)

By Anonymous
Editor's Comment: To ensure credit where credit is due, Glen McGee wrote this post (side note: goosebumps ahead)- Fresh on the heels of North American Youth Congress 2015 it’s the Stuff Apostolics Like Recap of Events! Nah, just kiddin. We actually have finally crossed the threshold of being so far removed we have absolutely no idea who sang, preached, screamed, got wifed up or anything else that may have occurred. I've had a post on my mind for a while now and given that I spent last night looking at the Instagram hashtags from NAYC, and became very, very sad, I thought now was a good time to post it. Looking through Twitter and Instagram there are countless posts of excitement and zealous emotion for the time spent there. And why wouldn’t there be? When you live in a culture that’s founded on isolation from everything that surrounds you, and you’re constantly reminded that you’re “in the world, not of it,” it’s absolutely intoxicating to completely take ...
13 comments
Read more