2 posts tagged “book”
"Magic" in chapter 3 was fascinating for me. I've always loved the fact that God's plan of salvation is among everything else, simply a great story, complete with conflict, climax, and resolution.
And the fact that humans naturally love stories of all kinds seems to show me God did something incredibly beautiful when he made us: He placed within us a love of The Story - a love of all things that are comparable to what life is all about.
Don Miller's point in this chapter is that the gospel truly tells a story with conflict, climax, and resolution, and tells us that somehow, magically, we are a part of the story, we're caught in this adventure. I read an article once called "The man with a thousand faces", and it was all about the hero figure in stories. It was so fascinating, because Jesus fulfilled almost all of the qualities of a poignant hero in a good story.
This doesn't mean to me that it's us who have made Jesus into this mystical hero, rather this tells me that our picture of the best hero in a great story is really only there because He wanted us to be drawn to the Real Thing.
I just finished reading Blue Like Jazz today, and wanted to store some of my thoughts in a few posts. Many other blogs have already done a great job of actually reviewing the book, these posts are really just more my personal reactions and thoughts which I don't want to forget that came up while reading the book.
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His point in chapter 2 ("Problems") really resonated with me - "I am the problem." The problem in the universe lives within me, within John Goering.
So often I can think things would be so much better if _____ would just ______ (I can think of quite a few things to fill in those blanks). The thing is, where I need to start and truly concentrate on is always in me, not in others. As he says on page 20, "This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there, the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest."
The second thing that impacted me in that chapter is the line from C.S. Lewis' poem: "I talk of love - a scholar's parrot may talk Greek / But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin." That is such an apt description of what I tend to be far more often than not - a parrot - reciting truth like a beautiful Greek classic, but actually not having a clue of what I'm talking about, since I haven't even allowed that truth to yet change my own heart.
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