Soul Mates

About every year or so I read a book that is so in-tune with my own thoughts and where my soul is at that I wonder why I didn't write the book, and I wonder why I'm not best friends with whoever wrote it. The book Blue Like Jazz (written by Donald Miller), that I am currently reading, is just such a book.

I am about half-way through the book, and I have probably underlined, starred, checked, circled about half of the text. It is that good and that relevant to me.

Let me give you some tidbits from the second chapter, titled Problems: What I Learned on Television.

I sometimes wonder whether we are moving through time or time is moving through us...I believe that 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.

If you don't love somebody, it gets 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.

An observation on the human condition: We have to be taught how to be good. It doesn't come completely natural. In my mind, that's a flaw in the human condition.

The problem is not "out there". The problem is the neady beast of a thing that lives in my chest...I went there to try to get my head around this idea, the idea that the problem of the universe lives within me. I can't think of anything more progressive than the embrace of this fundamental idea.

A poem by C.S. Lewis:
All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love - a scholar's parrot may talk Greek-
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

I think Jesus feels strongly about communicating the idea of our brokenness, and I think it is worth reflectioin. Nothing is going to change in the Congo until you and I figure out what is wrong with the person in the mirror.

Fantastic stuff. I think Don Miller is quickly becoming one of my favourite authors (guess I'll have to see about his other books though).

J