Blue Like Jazz Round 1

Some quotes that intrigued me in my first sitting of a “Blue Like Jazz” reading.
The book was written by Donald Miller.
I just finished his “sequel” to this book called “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” and you can read my review of it here.
I’m not completely on board with his theology per se, but I connect with his writing style and the fact that he looks at the world through a right-brained perspective as I personally do.

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“Some people skip through life; some people are dragged through it…

I believe 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.”

(page 13)

“If you don’t love somebody, it bets annoying when they tell you what to do or what to feel. When you love them you get pleasure from their pleasure, and it makes it easy to serve. I didn’t love God because I didn’t know God.”

(page 14)

“It is hard for us to admit we have a sin nature because we live in this system of checks and balances. If we get caught, we will be punished. But that doesn’t make us good people; it only makes us subdued. Just think about the Congress and Senate and even the president. The genius of the American system is not freedom; the genius of the American system is checks and balances. Nobody gets all the power. Everybody is watching everybody else. It is as if the founding fathers knew, intrinsically, that the soul of man, unwatched, is perverse.”

(page 18)

“I think the devil has tricked us into thinking so much of biblical theology is story fit for kids. How did we come to think the story of Noah’s ark is appropriate for children? Can you imagine a children’s book about Noah’s ark complete with paintings of people gasping in gallons of water, mothers grasping their children while their bodies go flying down white-rapid rivers, the children’s tiny heads being bashed against rocks or hung up in fallen trees? I don’t think a children’s book like that would sell many copies.

I couldn’t give myself to Christianity because it was a religion for the intellectually naive. In order to believe Christianity, you either had to reduce enormous theological absurdities into children’s stories or ignore them. The entire thing seemed very difficult for my intellect to embrace.”

(pages 30 & 31)