So, I've said (probably about five too many times) that Blue Like Jazz completely changed my perspective. I don't know that that is necessarily accurate. I would have to say that really it solidified my thinking. I found that I identified with so many facets of Donald Miller's spiritual walk.
In the remainder of the first chapter, there was a section that particularly stood out to me. It begins on page 8:
The ideas I learned in Sunday school, teh ideas about sin and how we shouldn't sin, kept bugging me. I felt as thought I needed to redeem myself, teh way a kid feels when he finally decides to clean his room. My carnal thinking had made a mess of my head, and I felt as though I were standing in the doorway of my mind, wondering where to begin, how to organize my thoughts so they weren't so out of control.
That's when I realized that religion might be able to those things down, get me back to normal so I could have fun without feeling guilty or something. I just didn't want to have to thibnk about this guilt crap anymore.
For me, however, there was a mental wall between religion and God. I could walk around inside religion and never, on any sort of emotional level, understand that God was a person, an actual Being with thoughts and feelings and that sort of thing. To me, God was more of an idea. It was something like a slot machine, a set of spinning images that doled out rewards based on behavior and, perhaps chance...
...What I was doing was more in line with superstition that spirituality. But it worked. If something nice happened to me, I thought it was God, and if something nice didn't, I went back to the slot machine, knelt down in pprayer, and pulled the lever a few more times. I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back. But the fun never lasts."
I know I have found it very convenient to make God this impersonal, especially early in my journey.
What do you think about Donald Miller's image a of a slot-machine God? What resonated with you in the remainder of the chapter?
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A slot-machine God seems very convenient, almost like a wishing well. When WE need something We can throw in a few coins, wish really hard until we get what WE think WE need and then put him on the back burner of our lives for future reference. Unfortunately we have all probably abused God in this manner. We keep him at a distance until we are desperate, all the while missing the point - a true amazing relationship with our ultimate creator who loves us and longs for us at all times, not just when WE think WE need something that WE think would make us happier. It is not supposed to be about what WE can get from God but what WE can do for Him and His Kingdom.
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