Penguin Sex and Jesus
God, please grant me the serenity
over the things which I cannot chage,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
My name is Zach, and I am a Christian-bestseller-basher-aholic.
(Hi Zach).
I have a problem.
I need help.
Last week I was at a coffee shop, and I overheard two Christian guys with goatees (why the goatees? (Are Goatees the new baptism?)) raving about Donald Miller. Donald this, Donald that. Here a Donald, There a Donald. Everywhere a Donald, Donald. E-I-Freeking-O.
Donald Miller is a contemporary Christian bestseller author. And I will be the first to admit that I’m leery of these types. You know the type. A bunch of thirty year old guys that wear clothes their nieces picked out for them at the GAP. Every couple years, it seems, another one of their books of religious gimmicks comes out, and with it, a new buzz and a new lexicon of youth group jargon. The latest buzz going around is about Donald Miller and his two latest youth group and Christian college sensations, Blue Like Jazz (2003) and Searching For God Knows What (2004).
The problem with the Christian best-seller rack is that once you’ve had your fill of C.S. Lewis and a few others, most of its books suffer from at least one of the following problems of relevancy: either (a) accessibility: the book is too dogmatic and requires the theological equivalent of a Rosetta Stone to decode the meaning, and/or (b) continuity: the book has no point and is so milk-toast and wishy-washy that it ceases to be useful. Yet, still I return to the rack -with the an ambivalence akin to that of a slot machine junky, knowing full well I will probably be wasting my money, yet still tantalized by a mixture of unquenchable optimism and sadism.
A couple of months ago, I had another gambler’s itch. After-and perhaps despite-countless recommendations from Christian friends, I decided to take the ol’ Kierkegaardian leap into the absurd, and read one of Miller’s Books, Blue Like Jazz. Blue Like Jazz, subtitled, Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality is Miller’s sort of tongue-in-cheek account of his life and his search for an authentic way to relate with a mysterious God. His book begins:
“I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn’t resolve. But that was before any of this happened.”
The rest of the book outlines a series of paradigmatic epiphanies Miller has while dialoging with his hip and savvy friends, Tony The Beat Poet, Mark The Cussing Pastor (Mars Hill Church), Andrew The Protestor, Penny The Liberal Atheist and various others.
I’ll admit, though I was highly skeptical of this book, I liked the unique cast of characters, and while I was tempted to disregard it altogether because of the tepid subtitle, Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, thinking that it would be about a bunch of new-agy sages flitting about, sniffing tea-leaves and reciting Kerouac-ish koans, I was quite relieved to see a book on spirituality featuring an edgy cast, complete with smoking, cussing, humanities majors like my friends. And what’s more, it was great to hear some intelligent conversation about religion in a fresh language, not perilously over-fraught with churchy sentimentality and quaint little aphorisms.
Reading this book, I began to think that my problem with the Christian book industry was beginning to melt away, that there was maybe some small shred of hope for the canon of Christian campus bestsellers.
But that was before I turned to page 51, chapter 5, entitled, “Faith: Penguin Sex.” He kicks off the chapter, by talking about how he watched a documentary on how penguins get it on and then goes on to say, “The goofy thing about [both] Christian Faith [and Penguin sex] is that you believe it and don’t believe it at the same time.” C’mon, Don, you were off to such a good start, why ruin it now? Ok, great, funny image, chuckle, chuckle, but did you really need to take it there? When Christian authors try to throw needless animal sexuality in their piece to give it an edge, I begin to feel a bit manipulated, as though the author is trying to convince the reader of what a down-to-earth, regular guy he is, and that though he’s a sophisticated Christian author, he is still an Animal Planet perv like the rest of us. He goes on using the tactic of sexual language to grab the imaginations of us A.D.D. (and apparently sex-starved) readers, using provocative titles like: “Redemption: The Sexy Carrots,” and “Confession: Coming out of the Closet.
And to top that off, each little didactic sex-tale has a quaint little mini-lesson in it in which he shows you how he has some grand realization because of something one of his hippie liberal friends says, and, poof, just like that, he’s a new man. Miller’s realizations are always ventriloquisticly preached through one of the other characters so he doesn’t look preachy, and the changes are always a miraculous and instantaneous occurrence, caricaturing some change from one polar extreme to the other. It’s always something like: Man, I was a total moron, but then my friend Tony The Beat Poet told me to lighten up, and now I am a new man. B.S. Don! That’s not how life works.
You don’t just change over night. You’re exaggerating the change to make it more dramatic. Chances are you were only slightly a moron before you had your epiphany, and now, having had it, you’re still slightly a moron, just a little less of one. The problem with testimonials that exaggerate change is that such testimonials are often written for express purposes of influencing and inspiring others, but if the testimony is inflated with exaggeration and false dichotomization, then the said influence and inspiration won’t be of much sustainable value. Inflation creates false expectation; false expectation deflates into disappointment, and disappointment into disillusionment. So why exaggerate progress at the cost of thwarting it in the long-run?
Just when I thought I had found the first worthy Christian bestseller, I start reading about penguin sex and start to feel like Pip in Great Expectations, realizing my hopes to be in vain. It is in times like these that I start to relapse into the insatiable desire to jump back on the Hatorade Wagon ™.
So, like I said, before. I have a problem, and I need help. Seriously. How does one write a book on Christianity that’s accessible enough to gain influence while still being relevant enough to yield sustainable usefulness? How does one write a book that is both challenging enough to compel the reader and simple and honest enough that the reader can understand it and walk away with something more than a couple head-scratchings and a handful of laughs? And how does one, as a Christian author, relate with people of the faith, and still retain his own voice, without trying to appeal too much to the market?
For those of who like Donald Miller. I apologize. He's a really good guy. And I really want to like him. And I do. I just can't stomach his books. But, I am in the minority, so I'll be flexible.