I want to like Jazz. When I am with cool people and they talk about Jazz, I want to have something to say other than, “Oh yeah, Jazz. That’s some good stuff. Very jazzy and freeform with the whole sound. Yeah, how about that Jazz?”
But it all sounds the same to me. The other night when my wife put on a Miles Davis CD (that I bought years ago under the assumption that you had to own at least one Miles Davis CD in case anyone looked at your music collection) I was reminded that I don’t care that much about Jazz. I just care that you think I care about Jazz because it seems like something cool people should care about and I want to be cool.
So I own a Miles Davis CD and I know the name John Coltrane and I’ve even started using a Jazz analogy at work. Last week in a meeting I described a project by saying, “That project felt like jazz, it developed as we went along, very freeform. I’m used to more traditional projects with two verses and a chorus.” People kind of chuckled and hopefully thought, “Wow, that guy is such a huge fan of Jazz that he incorporates his love of it into project analogies.”
If I’m being honest though, I’m only pretending to love Jazz and I think I’m only pretending to love CS Lewis.
I know, I know, that’s borderline sacrilege and right now you’re furiously removing this blog from your favorites list, but I think it’s true. It’s not that I dislike Lewis, it’s just that somewhere along the way I figured out that to be considered a cool or intellectual Christian you needed to like Lewis a lot. So I started name dropping him and quoting him occasionally, but I realized the other day that the only book of his I’ve ever finished is “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” I didn’t finish watching that movie about his life starring Anthony Hopkins. And when I went to a play about him, I thought about basketball during most of the second act.
To top it all off, I haven’t even read Mere Christianity, which makes me a “Mere D+ kind of Christian.”
None of that however has stopped me from answering “CS Lewis” when asked about my favorite Christian writers. I’ve mentioned Lewis a few times on this site and used his awesome accent as part of the litmus test for induction into the SALACBHOF. I might even recommend “Mere Christianity” if forced into a corner or keep a copy of the “Screwtape Letters” in a visible place on my bookshelf if you come over for a dinner party.
So there’s my confession for this Monday morning. My public adoration to CS Lewis is woefully different than my private dedication to his writing. I pretend to like him more than I really do because I think to be a good Christian you have to.
What about you? Has there ever been something Christian you felt compelled to pretend about? Did all your Christian friends fall madly in love with something and you secretly thought, “Ehhhh, it’s OK I guess?”
Let it out.
What do you pretend to like?
Update:
My hope is that we can be honest with each other about things we feel compelled to like in order to be considered a “good Christian” and not create a pinata fest list of things/people/books we don’t like. Let’s disagree, not destroy. (That last line felt a little “We are the World” but you know what I mean.)
