This is what I'm about

For those of you who are unaware, the blog-o-sphere was a-buzz this week with the Save Blue Like Jazz fundraiser. Donald Miller has been planning on making a movie based on the ideas of Blue Like Jazz (the book) for a while now. He wanted to do something big and memorable - something to write a story about, because he's all about living a better story (read his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life to learn about that).

Well, a few weeks ago, one of the major sponsors of the movie dropped their support just a month before filming was supposed to start. Donald Miller announced on his blog that Blue Like Jazz, the movie, was dead. He had had a difficult enough time with all the setbacks and he was exhausted, so he figured God didn't want him to make the movie, and it was time to move on.

And then a couple guys from Tennessee decided to do something remarkable. They used kickstarter to launch a fundraising campaign to raise $125,000 in one month to save Blue Like Jazz. Not only was Donald Miller completely astounded that two random guys would do something like this, but because within 10 days they had funded the movie, and shooting will happen. Now they're shooting for $200,000 because that would make national news as the largest crowd-sourced project ever. Only about 1600 donated on average $80 a piece, and now the movie lives. The Internet is good for something after all, isn't it?

Then one of my friends texted me and asked "Why should I support this movie?" My canned answer was something like "Donald Miller is awesome and I think Blue Like Jazz isn't just another 'Christian movie'." I wasn't really satisfied with that answer myself, so I kept pondering it. Why am I not sending my 50 bucks to Africa, where it can probably do more good?

I finally realized that this is what I'm about. I was described as the "Down with the system, challenge authority" small group leader in college. If there's a perception held by the majority, a little alarm goes off inside my head saying "WRONG! WRONG!" I tend to have the exact opposite political opinion of other evangelical Christians, because I'm generally untrusting of majorities. I believe grace and mercy trump morality any day, and I don't see that in the church majority.

It's time to start doubting again so we search out the truth. It's time to be broken to pieces so we can put ourselves back together again, fresh. I seem to be part of the "Christian Underground Movement" with leaders such as Donald Miller, Rachel Held Evans, Jon Acuff, and Matthew Paul Turner. These leaders challenge us to see past the mess we've made of Christianity and focus on finding truth, even when it hurts.

I believe if there were a pivotal book that started this movement, it would be Blue Like Jazz, and if the next step is to make a movie that challenges a new audience the way the book did, I want to be part of that.