Blue Like Jazz

Right now I am going back through my papers from college and typing up notes. I am coming across many things that is helpful for me to look at again and get a feel for the thoughts and impressions that they made. Here is a paper that I wrote on Blue Like Jazz while taking a class about culture and evangelism. We were pushed really hard in the class, but as you will see in the paper I noticed something very powerful about evangelism in the book because of this:

This may not make sense, but as I started writing this I wanted to write about the ideas in the book and wrestle with them. Part of me although felt like I should look at this book through the lens of the process of contextualization. The more I started to write the more I found myself naturally drawn to analyzing the book in light of the process. So I deleted most my paper and now what I have is trying to think about how Miller is using the process and how that comes out. I could have ended up going through and using the many great quotes about being culturally relevant and how that is misguided, but ultimately I think the true value that I got from this book (only now) is how the process can allow us to grow and change our life.

            There are many parts with Miller’s ideas that I believe people would say he is compromising. One example that jumps out at me of this is when he and other Christians at Reed set up a confession booth. Instead of battling the students and the immorality in an attacking way they apologize and confess sins of Christianity. This amazed me and was not what I expected, but also could be seen as compromising. If your not condemning then are we encouraging that behavior? I think Miller shows how, especially at Reed, how he ended up going through the process with people. I would meet people like Laura and talk with her about the issues of the day and befriend her and gradually they ended up changing each other. There was a mesh of thought and out of the meeting of those two individual contexts a new one arose.

            I saw this theme repeated several, several times throughout this book. There were times he had with hippies living out in the woods. He immersed himself in that culture and learned from them and most likely shaped some of what they thought too. He had a group of fundamentalist guys one summer that he went through the process with. Then there was the community at his new house of Graceland. Here he lived with tons of other men and developed a community where he and the other men end up going through the process of contextualization. I did not notice that at first but as I write this paper all these different forms of community that he goes through and how these continue to shape him and develop him into a brand new context.

            So why is this important? I think that what I have learned from reading this book, aside from finding many concepts that challenged my thinking, is that I am going to go through this process a lot in my life. I see the great impact and revelations that can come out of continuing to engage in the process and not shutting down on a group. Some of the groups that Miller went into, such as the hippies or Reed, would have been very easy to disengage. Although if he would have done this and given up then I think he never would have realized many great things that he has. I hope too to always be able to see the process to the end and not hop off too soon.