Blue Like Jazz and the Christian Genre.

I read Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz a little more than a year ago, and it has been on my list of Top 5 Favorite Books since then (among Phillip Keller's A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 and C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity).

Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
 
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. 

More than my questions about the efficacy of social action were my questions about my own motives. Do I want social justice for the oppressed, or do I just want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don't have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself.... I was the very problem that I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read "I AM THE PROBLEM!" 

I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me. 

There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere. Of course, I had always known He was, but this time I felt it, I realized it, the way a person realizes they are hungry or thirsty. 

After a whirlwind of a process to find financial support, Blue Like Jazz has been adapted to film and will be released in theaters this Friday. I've been following the movie blog off and on, and I look forward to seeing how they adapt the semi-autobiographical book.

As the release date nears, I stumbled upon this article about the movie. "Blue Like Jazz" won't fit into your typical "Christian" movie genre -- and I am glad. Often times I am embarrassed of such movies as "Fireproof" and "Facing Giants." Don't get me wrong; they are alright movies. The message was delivered. Intentions were good. But they were cheesy, and there was no room for subtlety. As the film director, Steve Taylor, said in his blog, "good intentions trump artistry."

This has been the case for a lot of "Christian" art -- music, movies, novels. I will even admit to this in my own songwriting; sometimes it doesn't matter if the music isn't that good, as long as it preaches the Gospel. A lot of us have fallen prey to this thinking, watering down our art and, as a result, losing respect among artists, minimizing our effectiveness among both the believing and non-believing population -- and, I think, causing us to not reach the full potential of the talents God has given us. I believe God is a lover of art. Art that glorifies Him. And this kind of art doesn't have to literally scream His name or clearly lay out the Gospel for it to bring Him honor. God cannot be contained in our conservative, traditional mindsets of what Christianity looks like -- and I don't think art should be either.

As I've read reviews, I've only had a glimpse of how "Blue Like Jazz" will be portrayed as a film, and it appears to be sparking some controversy. I don't have an established opinion yet, but I wanted to bring it to attention so you could form your own (if you desire).

Photo source.