Blue Like Jazz and the Art of Christian Self-Flagellation

Is God's holiness increased the more we beat ourselves up?

Starting at the small, Christian, liberal arts college in 2003 was a bit like moving to a foreign country. The campus’ Christian culture was so thick that even I, with my extensive collection of Christian bookstore merch, had a hard time following the references. Joshua Harris’ dumpster fire of a book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye was everywhere—people weren’t “dating” they were “courting.” The baggy pajamas I wore around the dorm were whispered about as “immodest.” My fellow students proclaimed truly bizarre divine revelations to each other. A total stranger walked up to an attractive friend of mine and told her, “God has revealed to me that you will be my wife.” Shit like this happened all the time.

In this hothouse of competitive holiness, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality felt like a cool breeze. The author went to Reed College in Portland! (Sort of.) He had friends who were atheists! It was exciting precisely because the author refused to close him off to the outside world the way so much Christian culture seemed to encourage. My more chill classmates quoted it esoterically—God is like jazz because God doesn’t resolve, man!

Several of these classmates pointed me towards the book because it seemed like I was interested in the same deep questions the author was posing. But between our mandatory theology classes and the mandatory church and chapel attendance, I was full up on God. I didn’t read the book, nor see the 2012 film. But this blog seemed like a prime opportunity—maybe within its pages I would find a like-minded seeker.

(Spoiler alert: I would not.)

What struck me initially about this book was that it feels like it was written 100 years ago. The author is tone-deaf in all the cringiest ways, dismissing issues like racism with casual ease, and treating the women of his acquaintance with a sort of “aw shucks” paternalism. Perhaps this shouldn’t have surprised me; Christian media consistently lags decades behind its secular counterpart both in style and ideas. But it was an early warning that I wouldn’t find much in the way of revolutionary thought within these pages.

The real subject of BLJ is self-flagellation, or as Kevin and Caroline from the hilarious Good Christian Fun podcast put it: “I’m a piece of shit” theology. (GCF posits there are only a few types of Christian contemporary songs, including “fallen woman” and “Jesus is my boyfriend.”) In “I’m a piece of shit” songs, the singer details some mundane sins they have committed as evidence of how much they need God. It’s an odd gambit—are these confessions of minor sins supposed to contrast against God’s perfection? Or is this just a more religious form of humble bragging? “Listen to the grim tale of how I once hung up on a telemarketer…”

The passage where this most struck me was towards the end of the book. Miller’s pastor pushes him to move in with several guys from his church (🚩🚩🚩) Roommate drama ensues: Miller removes someone’s laundry from the dryer without their permission, he gets irritated with a roommate who tries to chat with him while he’s reading. Instead of a calm discussion followed by implementing boundaries which work for both parties, Miller must perform the dance of self-flagellation. He needs to “die to [himself]” and learn to stop being so “selfish.”

If Miller had had more awareness of boundaries, his conversations with his roommates could’ve gone quite differently. He could say things like, “I didn’t know that removing your laundry from the dryer would upset you. What can we do in the future so that your laundry is taken care of and I can still use the dryer when I need it?” and “I would like to hear about your day for 5 minutes and then I would like to read my book,” or “When my door is open, I’d love for you to come chat, but when it’s closed, that means I want alone time.” Boundaries help us negotiate relationships to mutual satisfaction rather than blaming and shaming each other for common misunderstandings. But when you’re raised with a top-down understanding of morality and an inherent mistrust of your own motives (“the heart is deceitful above all things”), it’s easy for an authority figure to call an action “selfish” or “evil” coercing you to repent for something as inane as doing laundry.

When everything is framed as a sin, and when “sin leveling” leads us to consider all sins equally evil, and these evil sins are framed as the reason for Christ’s crucifixion (as those who believe in Penal Substitutionary Atonement are wont to believe) then moving someone’s laundry is the same as personally nailing Jesus’ hands to the cross. Do I need to say this is a bizarre and harmful belief?

It’s not wrong to be a human with needs. But too often Christians are pushed towards an unnecessary martyrdom. I know first-hand how praise is heaped on people who sacrifice the most. I once received an award in youth group for pushing through my exhaustion to keep volunteering for a Vacation Bible School. I remember the youth pastor extolling me for sitting on the floor of the library, children on my lap, children clinging to my shoulders, trying to sound out a picture book in Spanish (which I do not speak) while the other youth groupers dozed on chairs. A healthier environment might have rearranged the schedule, encouraged us all to take naps, or even just sent someone on a Starbucks run.

This was far from an isolated incident in my church experiences. It’s common knowledge in churches that 20% of the volunteers do 80% of the work, and there are few safeguards against burnout in situations where sacrifice is as central to holiness as it is in Christianity.

The epitome of this kind of self-sacrifice is the Christian mom. I fell into this trap of the martyr-mother when my first son was born. We were living in Canada at the time, far from family and most friends. I felt too guilty to ask casual friends and acquaintances for help, even though I desperately needed it. My son screamed continuously for the first six months of his life. I could feel my mental health deteriorating but couldn’t see a way to get my needs met. How was I supposed to handle this situation? Secular websites touted “me time” and Christian sites said I didn’t need time for a shower, just needed to pray more. This advice was generally not presented in an accusatory way, mind you, but in a “wow, I really bought into this whole ‘me time’ scam but I’m so much happier now that I’ve given up on the concept of pleasure.” Attention writers of women’s devotionals: moms don’t need more things to do. What we need is someone to watch our kids occasionally so we can try to meet a few of our human needs. We need to normalize asking for help and normalize lowering the bar when it all gets to be too much. (Your kid ate goldfish crackers in front of the TV for dinner? Congratulations, you fed your kid, great job!)

But instead of urging us towards collective care, much Christian media hinges on notions of individual responsibility—if you have a problem, it’s not because your community has let you down or because a system has failed you, it’s because you are doing something wrong. This mentality serves to keep people in their place, not questioning how we got to this point or whether our larger structures need to be upended.

The golden rule is to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Too often the church emphasizes the first half of that sentence at the expense of the second. Churches can’t be places of justice if they push members to martyrdom in an effort to get their programs staffed. I suspect many Christians would benefit from a crash course in boundary setting—I know I have.

All that being said, there were parts of Blue Like Jazz I did like—a scene where the Christian Reedies put up a confession booth on campus and take turns apologizing for the harms the church has done was particularly moving; but even in this case I couldn’t help but notice that it’s a small, somewhat marginalized group doing all the apologizing. Maybe those at the margins have apologized enough.

Journal/discussion Prompts:

• Have you ever felt manipulated into apologizing for something that, in hindsight, you don’t think was actually wrong?

• How are your boundary-setting skills? Is this an area you’d like to improve?

• Would you rather spend a semester as a pajama inspector at a Christian college, or inside a makeshift confessional on the Reed campus?