Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

Donald Miller is a Christian writer living in Portland, Oregon, and this memoir-like collection of personal essays traces his spiritual journey from a confused childhood faith through doubt, self-absorption, and community toward a deeper, more honest relationship with Jesus. The book is organized thematically rather than chronologically, with each chapter exploring a different facet of Christian spirituality.

Miller opens with a governing metaphor: He once disliked jazz because it does not resolve, but after watching a saxophone player perform with closed-eyed passion outside a Portland theater, he learned to love it. He draws a parallel to God, whom he also found frustrating for the same reason, and promises that the experiences in the book changed this.

Miller grew up poor in Houston, Texas, attending a wealthy church. His father, a basketball coach, left the family when Miller was young, and Miller recalls only three childhood visits with him. This absence made the concept of God as "Father" confusing. Miller perceived God as distant and wealthy, separated from him by class, and treated prayer like a slot machine. On Christmas Eve when Miller was 13, he experienced what he calls "the lifting of the haze": Lying in bed, he realized he had bought his mother a cheap gift after spending most of his money on himself. Crushing guilt drove him to crawl outside her bedroom door and beg a living God to relieve the pain. The burden lifted, marking his first genuine encounter with God.

As an adult in Portland, Miller watched news coverage of genocide in the Congo and discussed it with his friend Tony the Beat Poet at a local pub. Tony challenged Miller to consider whether he was capable of the same atrocities. That same day, Miller and his friend Andrew the Protester attended a protest against the president's visit, carrying signs opposing World Bank policies, but afterward Miller realized he had been protesting global poverty while not giving to his own church's homeless ministry. Riding his motorcycle to Mount Tabor, a dormant volcano east of Portland, he concluded that the fundamental problem in the universe resided within himself.

Miller wrestles with whether Christianity's promises are genuine or merely illusion. While studying narrative elements in a college literature course, he recognizes that setting, conflict, climax, and resolution mirror real human experience, and that without the Christian account of original sin, there is no adequate explanation for the universal conflict people feel. A folksinger's story about a Navy SEAL who removed his helmet and curled up beside terrified hostages to earn their trust strikes Miller as an analogy for Jesus becoming human. He concludes that the gospel, freed from fairy-tale packaging, is "mystical and odd and clean," reaching into the messiness of real life.

Miller and Tony began auditing a humanities class at Reed College, a Portland school known for both intellectual rigor and hostility toward religion. Miller met Laura, an atheist whose father is a Methodist minister, and the two discussed Greek literature daily. Miller recounts the conversion of his friend Penny, who was born on a hippie commune and whose mother has paranoid schizophrenia and lives on the streets of Seattle. Penny traveled to France, where she befriended Nadine, a devout Christian of Scottish royal descent. Over months of reading the Gospel of Matthew together, Penny grew drawn to Jesus. One night in her dorm room, she heard God say, "Penny, I have a better life for you, not only now, but forever" (48). A few nights later, sober, she knelt and asked God to forgive her. Laura, too, eventually came to faith. She told Miller she felt God pursuing her but could not will herself to believe. Days later, she emailed him: She had read Matthew and Mark in one sitting and concluded, "I suppose this makes me a Christian. I feel much better now" (58).

After his own conversion, Miller experienced deep spiritual joy that eventually faded. He struggled with persistent sin and tried self-discipline as a solution. A summer at a fundamentalist camp in Colorado produced a rigid contract of spiritual commitments that he broke within months. His pastor Rick's story illuminated the problem. Rick became a Christian at 19 after years of partying at Chico State, a California college. Unable to reconcile God's free grace with his constant failures, Rick swallowed enough muscle relaxants and sleeping pills to kill three people. As he lay dying, he felt God communicate that his life had been bought with a price. He survived inexplicably, later attended Bible college, and planted Imago-Dei, a church in downtown Portland. Rick teaches Miller that self-discipline alone cannot produce righteousness; only by accepting God's unconditional love can a person find the motivation to obey.

Miller also confronts periodic doubts and a temptation toward trendy spirituality. At a reading at Powell's Books, Portland's enormous independent bookstore, he watched a Christian author he admired mix religions in a way Miller found shallow. Recognizing himself in the writer, Miller was horrified. Tony later confessed he, too, had treated Jesus superficially. Miller calls this the beginning of his authentic Christianity.

Earlier, feeling like a phony while leading a college group at a Houston church, Miller had left and driven a Volkswagen van across the country with a friend. At the bottom of the Grand Canyon, beside the river under a sky of stars, he prayed honestly for the first time in years. He describes the stars hanging "like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz" (100), and the knowledge of God moved from his head into his heart.

Back at Reed, Miller and the Christian group built a confession booth at Ren Fayre, the college's annual festival. Tony proposed a twist: Instead of hearing confessions, they would confess to students, apologizing for the Crusades, televangelism, neglect of the poor, and ways Christians have misrepresented Jesus. Miller sat inside the booth in a monk robe. His first visitor, Jake, listened, was moved to tears, and forgave him. Miller spoke with about 30 people, all of whom were gracious. The experience catalyzed lasting change: The group started a homeless shelter ministry and hosted Bible studies for non-Christians.

After years of frustration with churches that felt like sales pitches, Miller found a home at Imago-Dei. Rick's call to live "missional lives," loving people simply because they exist, transformed the small congregation into a community of over 500. Miller's friend Andrew, who feeds the homeless on Saturday mornings, teaches him a pivotal lesson: What a person believes is not what they say they believe but what they do.

Miller moved into a communal house called Graceland with five men from the church. After years of solitude, he discovered how self-centered he had become. Hearing Brennan Manning, a former Catholic priest and author, speak about how Christ's affection changed the biblical tax collector Zacchaeus, Miller returned home seeing his housemates as people beloved by God and began making amends.

At a Westmont College alumni event, professor Greg Spencer lectured on how people use economic metaphors for relationships, treating love as currency. Miller realized Christians withhold affection to control behavior. He repented and began loving unconditionally, finding that love functions as a magnet rather than a transaction. Miller also discovered that his inability to receive love had sabotaged his romantic relationships. A counselor from his church told him he was letting girlfriends determine his value instead of receiving it from God. The phrase "Love your neighbor as yourself" rose powerfully in his mind, and he realized he had mistaken self-hatred for humility. Within a year of deciding to change, he found himself genuinely happier.

The book concludes with Miller reading through the Gospels and, near the end of Luke, feeling a rush of love for Jesus that makes him weep. He compares Christian spirituality to jazz, a music invented by the first generation out of slavery, birthed from freedom, with everyone singing their own song. He invites readers to ask Jesus to become real to them.