The Spiritual Power of Habit - You Are What You Love

I was expecting a book that uplifted me and taught me to use better the loves I have. What I got was a philosophical/historical look at worship in the church over the ages with a few chapters in the beginning discussing how we tend to follow the society while living with buried loves on the inside of us that don't get expressed. Very disappointing

I really enjoyed Desiring the Kingdom and Imagining the Kingdom but I really struggled with expressing what was ruminating in my head to others. This book takes the concepts I enjoyed in those two books, expands them, and makes them far more practical.

It is also an easy read. I got through it in just three days without devoting too much time to it.

This book was well written but just not what I was looking for. The author writes with a lot of philosophical jargon and perhaps from a different denominational perspective than I am used to. I think this would make it a difficult read for many.

Every so often a book comes along that takes me by surprise, a book that I was expecting to just be decent but ends up being excellent; a book that I anticipated to be one thing but ends up shattering my expectations completely; a book that I planned to work through quickly but end up working through slowly and thoughtfully because every page seems to apply in such an astounding way. These books don’t come along often, but when they do, they are an absolute delight.

One such book that came along recently and is transforming the way that I think about discipleship is You Are What You Love by James K. A. Smith, professor of philosophy and theology at Calvin College. Named one of the top books of 2016 by Christianity Today, and recommended by the likes of Russel Moore and Tim Keller, You Are What You Love is an insightful look at the heart of discipleship. At the heart of Christian discipleship and spurring one another along in our growth in sanctification are the desires and affections of our heart and the objects of our worship. Smith comments:

“What do you want? That’s the question. It is the first, last, and most fundamental question of Christian discipleship … This is the most incisive, piercing question Jesus can ask of us precisely because we are what we want. Our wants and longings and desires are at the core of our identity, the wellspring from which our actions and behavior flow” (1-2).

A Different View

Pushing back against the view of discipleship that is exclusively concerned with imparting the right information, as if knowing the right things will inevitably lead to doing the right things, Smith offers a different view of discipleship. By no means does he downplay the role of correct theology, doctrine, and thinking. Rather, he seeks to fill in the gap between what you know and what you do. Though we may know the right things, and think the right things, so often we find ourselves making decisions, both big and small, that are not in accord with what we say we believe.

Why is that? Smith suggests it is because we really love something different that what we say we do. Our actions, our longings, and our hearts’ desires point to a vision of “the good life” that we have set up in our minds that is decidedly different that that of the Bible’s, even different than that of what we say we desire and long for.

The Structure

The structure of the book is simple. Smith begins with a chapter laying the foundation for the rest of the book. In this chapter, he shows that to worship is human. All humans worship something. All humans long for something. And their actions point to what that something is. The problem is not that we do not worship, but that we worship the wrong things:

“While being human means we can’t not love something ultimate — some version of the kingdom — it doesn’t mean we necessarily love the right things, or the true King. God has created us for himself and our hearts are designed to find that end in him, yet many spend their days restlessly craving rival gods, frenetically pursuing rival kingdoms. The subconscious longings of our hearts are aimed and directed elsewhere; our orientation is askew; our erotic compass malfunctions, giving us false bearings. When this happens, the results can be disastrous” (20).

Following this foundation-laying chapter, Smith moves in chapters 2-7 to helping you see what it is that you are really worshipping, how to build spiritual habits that transform the thing/person that you are worshiping, and how to help others do the same.

Conclusion

Truth be told, I could go on for pages and pages about this book, outlining and discussing every chapter. But for your benefit, I won’t. Rather, I would just strongly encourage you to go to the store or wherever it is that you buy your books and grab a copy for yourself. It won’t be a quick read. It probably won’t even be an easy read. But I do believe that it will be a transformative read, both in terms of how you think about yourself and your own desires and longings, as well as how you think about ministering to and discipling others toward Christlikeness.

In accordance with FTC regulations, I would like to thank Brazos Press for providing me a review copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

“Worship isn’t just something we do; it is where God does something to us.”

The title really intrigued me and I have heard a lot of great things about James K.A. Smith over the years, so I was really interested in this book.

Unfortunately, the more I read the more confused I became. Perhaps I had the wrong mindset going into the book or everything simply went over my head, but I could not engage in the material at all.

I enjoyed the basic concept of the book but I writing did not lure me. For example, the entire analogy of the shopping mall being a secular place of worship was more confusing than convincing. He talked about the architecture of a mall and how if reflects the spiritual wonder of a church, but I felt like this told me more about human interaction with architecture and environment than human fascination with consumerism. He kept talking about ‘secular liturgies’ which seems like a ten-dollar word for idol. Furthermore, if malls are replacing spiritual liturgy with secular liturgy, then why are malls dying? What is internet retail in the grand scheme of liturgy? I know this may be stretching the metaphor but I think the metaphor falls flat pretty quickly.

Speaking of metaphors, Smith is quite liberal with them: worship is interchangeably setting a sail, telling a narrative, and painting a picture. However, when he does not use metaphors the book reads like an owner’s manual. One chapter is subtitle “The Narrative Arc of Formative Christian Worship.” I almost fell asleep writing that.

Again, this is not a bad theme, but I just could not get into it. The book felt like another example of churched curmudgeon grumbling how church was better back in the good ol’ days. I definitely believe we can learn a lot from our church history, there is a lot of value there. I love old architecture and I definitely think it can inspire, but I also think about the first churches in the world were in homes, and how the fastest growing churches today are in poor places where people meet in huts.

But the book almost saves itself with this one amazing quote: “What if education weren’t first and foremost about what we know but about what we love?” That is a perfect question.

The ancient essayist astutely quipped, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4.23). That truism surfaces in story form and didactic instruction throughout Scripture, and is substantiated when raising our children, supervising employees or shepherding parishioners: what has your heart rules your life. This is the central emphasis in the newly published 224 hardback, “You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit” by James K. A. Smith, professor of philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, accomplished author and editor. This short work appears to be a compression and reworking of his larger “Desiring the Kingdom” to make it more accessible for busy pastors and disciples.

The heart of “You Are What You Love” from which flow the springs and chapters is the importance of discipleship. For Smith, discipleship has far less to do with the cognitive, and more with the God-storied, Gospel-shaped affections and perceptions where our loves and longings are aligned with Christ’s. Discipleship is “to want what God wants, to desire what God desires, to hunger and thirst after God and crave a world where he is all in all” (2); it is a “rehabituation of your loves” (19). And this rehabituation comes through the character-inscribing “rhythms and routines and rituals, enacted over and over again” that embed a heart-disposition that leans into God’s reign (Ibid.). These rhythms, routines and rituals come in habit-forming, love-molding liturgies.

The greater flow of the book expounds the importance of traditional Christian liturgy, and explores rival liturgies in the marketplace, some youth ministries, vocational environments, wedding arrangements, etc. Smith’s perceptive investigation of these secular liturgies is quite insightful and handy for thinking through the ways our affections and hearts are being molded to love lesser things, alternative views of the good life, and opposing kingdoms. According to Smith, through these everyday rituals and practices “I’m covertly conscripted into a way of life because I have been formed by cultural practices that are nothing less than secular liturgies. My loves have been automated by rituals I didn’t even realize were liturgies” (45).

Yet the weight of “You Are What You Love” delves into the importance of Christian liturgy in re-accustoming our loves and longings in the right direction. The church “is the place where God invites us to renew our loves, reorient our desires, and retrain our appetites” because the church is “that household where the Spirit feeds us what we need” and we graciously become a “people who desire him above all else” (65). Therefore, the church’s liturgies are highly essential for discipleship, because “Christian worship is the feast where we acquire new hungers – for God and for what God desires – and are then sent into his creation to act accordingly” (Ibid.). This premise leads the author to make a significant case for well-rehearsed and historical liturgies, rather than the new and novel. In challenging the hankering for the innovative, Smith stresses that we “keep looking for God in the new, as if grace were always bound up with “the next best thing,” but Jesus encouraged us to look for God in a simple, regular meal” (67).

But the author recognizes this emphasis on Christian liturgy as a primary practice of heart-shaping, disciple-making, will evoke surprise and skepticism due to many readers’ experiences. Smith spends time divulging how many churches have re-vamped their liturgies into passive entertainment, or an expressivist endeavor. The corrective is to reclaim the gift of worship and the recognition that the main agent in worship is God himself. In classic form, worship “works from the top down….we don’t just come to show God our devotion and give him praise; we are called to worship because in this encounter God (re)makes and molds us top-down. Worship is the arena in which God recalibrates our hearts, reforms our desires, and rehabituates our loves. Worship isn’t just something we do; it is where God does something to us” (77). In being reclaimed by historic Christian liturgy, we find that worship “that restores us is worship that restories us” 95). It draws us back into God’s story, week after week, re-grounding and re-immersing us into God’s world reclamation project.

“You Are What You Love” is a treatise about the heart, to help disciples learn to guard their hearts. It is insightful, instructive, investigative and inducing. This work is ideal for an elder board to read together as they think through – or rethink altogether – the why and way of Christian worship and their task of the care of the souls given to their charge. Pastors and parishioners alike would benefit greatly from probing the leaves of this manuscript. Also, church planters, missionaries, and church revitalizers will find their time spent reading this material well worth it. This is a must-read for anyone serious about church, worship, and disciple-making.

Thanks to Brazos Press for providing, upon my request, the free copy of “You Are What You Love” used for this review. The assessments are mine given without restrictions or requirements (as per Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255).

I do have some quibbles here and there, but overall this is an excellent, timely, and provocative book in the best sense of the word. Smith focuses on the formation of what we love and desire, and this is very important. I think we need a better and deeper Christian intellectual formation to go alongside the cultivation of our loves. If the church could exemplify excellent Christian character, including both intellectual and moral virtue, that would help us fulfill our redemptive role in the world. I think Smith underestimates the central role the mind does play in formation and transformation (see Romans 12:1-2, for example). However, Smith’s book is important for helping us understand what our redemptive role is, and how to better fulfill it by intentionally shaping our desires.

I went to church today with chapter 4 of this book in mind, and it made a real difference. Grateful for this book.

Update:

After thinking more about this book over the past few days, I still think it is a very worthwhile read with some excellent points. However, my concern about the underemphasis of the role of the mind in spiritual formation that is present in the book has grown. First, upon reflection, part of the reason that chapter 4 made a difference in my experience of Sunday morning worship is that I had it in mind, i.e. my mental focus was different, more open, and attentive to the truths present in song, the proclamation of the Word, and the teaching.

And I’m becoming more skeptical of some of the claims about the role of liturgy in our subconscious. I think Smith is too optimistic about this. From my experience, and the experiences of many who grew up in the heavily liturgical church that I did, mere presence and exposure to the elements of liturgy were not sufficient for faith, nor for transformation in Christ.

So I agree with Smith that we aren’t “brains on sticks”, but I also think we are much more than “desiring will-ers”, so to speak. We must intentionally cultivate the will, the heart, and the mind. The problem is not that the evangelical church is too intellectual, but rather that it is shallowly intellectual and panders to consumerist desires rather than being counter-formative. The latter is a key point made by Smith in this book.

We need to seek to cultivate all of our being in Christ: intellect, emotion, desire, will, and body. I think Smith would agree, but I fear that many readers will think they can safely ignore the centrality of the mind in spiritual formation. And we cannot do that.

@michaelwaustin

“Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being ‘with it,’ yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation,” observed Ivan Illich in his Deschooling Society. Illich understood the great decoupling of habits, liturgies, and meaning from learning that had fallen upon Western society. Education today has become nothing more then technical vocation training that fail to instruct the soul.

Participation in a story, a narrative, a life that has others in a web of relationships that create, sustain, and enlighten meaning and purpose is the desire of each person today. And yet, we live in a culture that has torn apart the unity of life with lightening speed through its modes of discourse, education, and technological advancement. When any society has lost the ability to converse and meditate upon this ethical dilemma, propaganda as education is the sad result. This sad reality is something Jacques Ellul prophetically decried in the post-war era. To such a lineage James K. A. Smith’s You Are What You Love belongs. And yet, he also provides a “way out.”

In continuing his work on cultural liturgics and the re-formation of Christian worship, You Are What You Love is the newest in his litany. For many people this book will be an odyssey of discovery, an enterprise going into the beyond. For those just getting into the discussion, this book is an excellent gateway to a vital discussion.

Smith begins his work by describing the landscape of what it means to be human, namely that we are worshipping beings. In the West an overly cognitive approach to learning has dominated the scene. Late modern Christian education has particularly failed to understand the problem that Illich described in the mid-century and Smith exposes today. Humans are already enveloped in worship, whether secular or not. Overtly religious liturgies of ultimate significance and meaning already immerse our bodies in a learning process of heart formation. The modern dichotomy of heart and head has led Christians to form people’s minds without looking to the heart’s way of knowing. The task of reintegrating liturgy, formation, and imagination within the context of truly counter-cultural formation drives this work.

Desire drives our hearts and imaginations, and eventually what we think. “You are what you desire or love” is the repeated mantra of this work. Nevertheless, what our hearts love might not be what we are thinking. We may know all the right answers to the theological exam, but are our hearts loving what God loves? Are our bodies engaged in the world in a way that depicts and incarnates God’s love and grace that we have received in the liturgy of Word and Sacrament? These kinds of questions seemed to have reached a zenith in the West where the group of “nones” (those uncommitted to any religion) continue to rise. The de-churched, unchurched, and orphaned continues to rise. It seems the secular liturgies are winning the imaginative (and spiritual) battle.

How do we read (and understand) the compelling nature of these secular liturgies? This is the next question Smith unpacks. In a similar tone to his Desiring the Kingdom, he makes the familiar very strange by showing how things like the shopping mall function. What are they doing to us? What good life do they incarnate and embody? How should we relate to them? How does the Spirit actually meet us and counteract these powerfully, evocative postures and movements?

Smith then unveils how a trinitarian theology of participation in Christian worship can become the controlling metaphor, or story, in which we can have our desires and loves re-ordered in a truly biblical (and Augustinian) way. How worship can actually counteract the liturgies of the day is really where Smith shines as he rekindles the power of worship’s form. The meaning inherent in the liturgy can seem dull and repetitive. Yet, if we see how the Spirit counteracts the narratives of consumerism and false desire, the heart can once again be tuned to sing God’s grace. In the liturgy we come to a deeper faith in him whom we find our heart’s end.

The effectual power of forgiveness and confession in the church – above us, among us, between us – provides the spell-breaking Word of Christ that smashes the idols of each age, whether it is the age of consumerism or ancient paganism. The Lord is merciful in unveiling the idols of the heart and gracious in giving us the true joy that we can find in him. Smith unpacks the liturgy’s meaning in a way that I found much more satisfying and compelling than in Desiring the Kingdom.

Smith ends his book describing how these vital truths form and shape the home, school, and workplace. In writing such a work Smith has truly done the church a service in reconnecting God to our everyday lives. He has made the familiar strange in unveiling what our culture would rather not see – the death and slavery of decadent consumption that leaves desire scattered and unfulfilled. Like a good teacher and guide Smith does not leave us there. He points us to still a more excellent way, the way of grace. Through the counter-cultural formation of the church we can once again participate in the life of the triune God. We can breathe the free air again and live as servants of the King.

In You Are What You Love, James K. A. Smith argues the foundational part of Christian growth is being conformed to the image of the Son by reshaping our loves, not our intellect. Smith argues we are not fundamentally “thinking things” (3) but “lovers” (7), and thus to be truly human requires us to retrain our loves toward God through imitation and practice. We cannot think our way to holiness, but holiness is given to us as our loves are shaped toward the good through embodied liturgical practices. We are beset with liturgy from every side, both forming and deforming, and a true liturgy is grounded in the historic worship of the Christian Church, which, through the Word and the Table, sweeps us up into the redemptive narrative arc of all creation as revealed in the Scripture, whereupon our souls are shaped toward the good.
Smith’s work is a profound and challenging reminder that the Christian life is not merely intellectual, but embodied. Thus, Christianity is meant to be shaped by our liturgies and our practices. Especially in post-Enlightenment Western Protestantism, there is an over-emphasis on “spiritualizing” our encounter with God and our love for God. We often forget that God gave us a body that He is redeeming, and thus to honor God is to love Him. Smith’s book is a challenge to rethink the way we worship and to rethink the process of salvation; it is not intellectual assent, but a lifestyle given by the power of the Spirit.
You Are What You Love is a masterpiece in its own way; by making his “Cultural Liturgies” series more accessible to the average reader, Smith is able to offer a compelling vision of what the Kingdom of God here on Earth might look like through, not the brain, but the imaginative capabilities of the heart. In a sense, Smith is arguing we need to expand our narrative horizon and our moral imagination to encompass a new framework for understanding reality in terms of reshaping our loves for the kingdom. Thus, all that we are is profoundly impacted by all that we do.
The mind is a gift from God, and it needs to be cultivated. However, our salvation, our very lives, depend on our love for God and our love for each other. Smith reminds us that there is a need for deep and soul-changing Christian worship, fueled by historic Christian practices and nourished by the sacraments, and equipped by the Word and the Table. Thus, our time of corporate worship must be centered around God and the work He is doing in us. By working with God to reshape our loves, we are prepared to live the Christian life and journey to our final home in glory.

I'll keep my review brief, as many others have already written good reviews I see.

In sum: James K. A. Smith is David Foster Wallace for Christians. And I mean that in the highest form of a compliment I can give. DFW is a fantastic philosopher and writer who knew all too well the idea that we are always worshipping and we should be very mindful of our worship of consumerism in Western culture. Smith even quotes and discusses DFW at length in one of the earlier chapters. (I can also say that James K. A. Smith is

Smith has such great mind for this time in the history of the church. He is particularly effective at pointing out how the worship of consumerism and the "novel" has seeped into the church liturgy. Smith strikes the difficult and effective balance of writing to the academic seminary student and also the average layperson. Both will profit greatly from the read.

I love this book. I listened to it on Audible and found it so compelling that I also picked it up on Kindle to reread for myself.

James K. A. Smith, a Reformed theologian heavily influenced by Augustine, offers a stimulating book, a condensed version of his larger work Desiring the Kingdom. He asserts that you are what you love, and you are what you worship. He challenges the modern worldview that you are what you think. The heart is both a homing beacon and a compass that both orients and directs our loves. Our loves, which are more visceral and subconscious than intellectual, orient us toward a goal, the telos, to fulfill our desires about the “good life.” Our loves are misdirected through worldly cultural propaganda, rituals, and practices, that he calls “liturgies” that shape our loves, our wants, and ultimately our worship. Discipleship is not chiefly an intellectual project where we acquire more information. Rather, “discipleship, we might say, is a way to curate your heart, to be attentive to and intentional about what you love.” Worship is the heart of discipleship. Discipleship, then, is a transformational process that reorients and recalibrates the habits of our heart through worship. In the end, love is a habit, formed by rituals and liturgies of either the mall that shapes our longings to make us consumers, or by the rituals and liturgies shaped by God in communion, baptism, the Christian narrative, confession, toward sending, to make us his worshippers. Like a compass that always directs you to true north, your heart directs your life. Proverbs 4:23 advises, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (NIV). Two key places where these formational liturgies should occur are in the home with children and in youth ministries. While Smith addresses the need for a more “affective” side to discipleship that includes the reordering of the disordered habits of what we actually love, he seems to underrate the importance of also reordering the mind, the intellect, through sound doctrine and theological rigor, that also shapes the soul and heart—for we are called to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and our neighbor as our self. One could argue that at the heart of discipleship is not worship per se (though this is an overarching category), but more specifically in learning, following, serving, and obeying Christ Jesus as Lord, with both heart and mind. The subtitle, The Spiritual Power of Habit, gets to the heart of human behaviour, and the shaping influences that cause us to do what we do from our deepest, usually unconscious, desires. His Reformed liturgical context certainly influences his thesis in the book, but it does not detract from its overall worth as a worthwhile read. I found the first half of the book to contain the most substance while the second half seemed somewhat tangential. “Book has been provided courtesy of Graf-Martin Communications and Baker\Brazos Books in exchange for an honest review.”

A friend suggested I read Desiring the Kingdom. Disappointed, I left a rather extensive two-star review. That same friend recommended I read You Are What You Love. Given the title I assumed Smith had left his intellectual schizophrenia behind. Nope. Smith still cannot decide whether the heart causes rituals or if rituals cause the heart. And trust me, I was hoping he had because as cerebral as I am, I know scripture gives greater weight to the heart: as a man thinks in his HEART so he is; out of the abundance of the HEART the mouth speaks; Mary (et al) contemplated these things in her HEART. So in other words, I agree with Smith’s basic premise that worldview training or teaching to the head as though men are brains on sticks is insufficient. Yes, ideas have consequences but people often adopt a worldview as a justification for their wants. In fact, I would argue that your reason provides you with a reason why you “follow your heart”. This is why it is so important for born again believers to renew their minds. Suppose you see an iPhone on the desk. You get an urge to steal it followed by a check in your heart/spirit. Your reason can either provide you with a reason to obey the urge—Jackie is wealthy and I am not—or with a reason to obey the check—thou shall not covet/steal. Now that head and heart are in agreement, the body is more likely to obey. Regenerated heart and renewed mind gang up to overcome the other law at work in my members.

But this is where I depart. I cannot accept Smith’s subsequent conclusion that rituals or practices fundamentally change the heart. Take two examples he provides. Smith adopts new eating habits until he develops new hungers. Fair enough but had he not already had a heart desire to change his diet and head knowledge providing him with a reason for why he ought to change his diet, he would never have embarked on the journey to change his diet. Likewise, Smith begins to jog until eventually he desires to jog. But again, he had a precedent heart desire and head knowledge that caused him to take up jogging. In both cases I would argue that the heart and head compelled the flesh to act and the more it did so the more the flesh relented.

What is so frustrating is that Smith is himself equivocal on this cause-effect order. For example, though he knew and believed in eating well, thanks to his wants he was still prone to pull into the McDonald’s drive-thru. But then he admits that watching the Food Network does not necessarily make you want what you see. I thought rituals like watching the Food Network captures and shapes your heart desire? And if watching the Food Network does not necessarily make you want what you see then neither does seeing a McDonald’s force you to pull in and buy a Big Mac.

I would argue that “belief” is the problem. Are we talking about head belief or heart belief? I would suggest that when head and heart are in agreement, the body is more likely to follow. That is when you experience victory. You have to believe in your heart AND your head (re-pent).

Let me conclude with the call to Ancient-Future Worship. Smith argues that historic liturgical traditions have the power to change the heart, to disciple. I must disagree. Ironically, I find myself in a small Baptist church led by a crypto wannabe Anglican priest who also adores Webber. Unfortunately, virtually nobody in the congregation knows WHY we follow that particular format and so it is just that. Most go through the motions and have been doing so for decades. Sadly, I see little to no spill-over effect. Attending Sunday services checks their “religious” box but there is no having or applying a biblical worldview to their Monday through Saturday. At most, the pastor and a few others seem to know more about, and love tradition more than, the spiritual truths the tradition is supposed to convey. When asked about this, the pastor admits that these traditions are extrabiblical and not necessarily biblical. Okay, extrabiblical is not unbiblical but there comes a point when the shadow overshadows the substance that gave birth to the shadow. This is especially true if you never explain what the practices symbolize. Coincidentally, in a footnote Smith recognizes that liturgical rituals/practices are insufficient; adults and youth need to be catechized so as to knowingly participate. But note this is still just religious conditioning; not everything the mouth confesses the heart believes.

Frankly, unlike Smith and my pastor, I do not see the longevity of liturgical traditions as proof of their veracity. Rather, I see it as proof that man prefers religion to exercising faith. Instead of one another-ing in love and the power of the Holy Spirit (see Acts 2 and 1 Cor 14), these churches mimic the OT shadow replete with a new priesthood who administer new sacraments at a new altar in a new sanctuary. I see no biblical authority for any of this; the OT shadow has been done away with (see Hebrews). Moreover, the real mystery—the resurrection power and gifts of the Holy Spirit—has been rejected. Rather than repent, the Church formulates doctrine to explain His absence and then goes beyond symbolism to imbue rituals like baptism and communion with “mystery”. All the talk about extrabiblical mysteries and enchantment sounds like pagan-Christian syncretism to me.

I went looking for eggs and got the whole fridge...and that's not a bad thing.
This book serves as a wake up call, challenging the reader to open our eyes to the prevalence and importance of doing and the role of doing in our being. The book starts like a refresher course in Dr. Piper's book, Desiring God, but the rest of the content is refreshing and unique. At times, it reads like a ministry manual, a counseling handbook or a training tool for church planters. At other times, the book feels like you're talking with a friend over lunch. In all, though, this book is thorough and strong, drawing the reader to take seriously the patterns of thought and behavior for the importance they have.

The key word is "liturgy" and Smith thoroughly demonstrates that much of life (and therefore life in Christ) is shaped not merely by what we think but by what we do. It sounds obvious when stated, but Smith puts his finger on many of the areas of life that are often left unaddressed to our detriment. What we do reveals what we love but what we love can be shaped by what things we do.

I heartily recommend this book - especially to those (like myself) who cherish authenticity. In our quest to do that which is genuine, we may miss that which is most meaningful because our senses are often bound by circumstances instead of truth.

In You Are What You Love, James K.A. Smith has given a gift to the Church. This book is a timely corrective, full of timeless truths that help the reader to glorify the eternal King.

Dr. Smith’s arguments are presented in a clear and reasonably concise fashion. He expounds on the depth to which American consumerism and other cultural liturgies draw us away from the formative liturgies of Christian worship. He deftly describes our need to be centered in a lifestyle process that encourages our hearts to move towards the ultimate end of God’s glory rather than the trivial ends to which our culture is pushing us. It has caused me to question the type of church that I should attend and raise my children in.

Smith, a professor of philosophy at Calvin College, has developed a profound take on the act and art of Christian worship. The title positions the importance of worship for the believer - it forms us indelibly, which is why the object of our worship is so important. And as he notes early on, you might not love what you think you love, or what you say you love. An eye-opening, compulsively readable take on a part of Christian life most of us take for granted.

To the unassuming reader, one of the most confusing and seemingly misplaced words throughout the Scriptures is “heart.” It feels like on many occasions, most noticeably in the New Testament, that the verb presented in the verse does not necessarily match what our hearts are supposed to do. There is talk of understanding with our hearts (Acts 28:27), the mouth speaking out of the abundance of the heart (Mt 12:34), the heart forming evil thoughts (Mt 15:19), and doubting in heart (Mk 11:23). To understanding, to have thoughts, to doubt, to form words…aren’t these the result of what we think; should we not be talking of our minds here?

Thankfully, Jesus was careful with his words. And Augustine was careful with Jesus’s words. Now here in his newest book, You Are What You Love, James K.A. Smith helps us understand not only the Augustinian concept of worship, but what Jesus Christ meant in all those New Testament emphases on the heart. To do so, Smith opens his first chapter with a brilliant question. “What do you want?” What Smith is soon to posit, which has massive implications for our personal Christian life and the task of discipleship, is simple yet profound: How we worship is determined by how we love, that discipleship is “a matter of hungering and thirsting” (2). We make the mistake of making our brain the center of our lives, when it is not only physically, but spiritually, the heart that is what drives us and how we think, see, speak, worship, and live. We are ultimately people not of the mind, but of the heart. “Our actions are captured poetically, not didactically” (107).

In You Are What You Love, James K.A. Smith has brilliantly made the case for the centrality of the heart and our loves and how they direct our rhythms and patterns and habits of living. Chapter One opens with a brief overview of this main point, summed up well by Augustine’s idea that “wherever I am carried, my love is carrying me” (14). Chapter Two explains the impact “cultural liturgies” have on the formation of worship. For what it’s worth, the first two chapters of the book in and of themselves are worth the purchase of the book. But if that wasn’t enough reason to get it, the rest of the chapters in the book deal with how our worship plays out in real life. For example, how do we carry such an attitude of worship into a world of postmodernist thinking (Chapter 3)? Or how do we implement these worship liturgies with our children? (Chapter 6)? The flow and the structure of the book is spot on. Smith does a masterful job of presenting and opening with his initial arguments, and just as magnificently explains how they naturally play out in various avenues of life.

What did I enjoy most about this book? Lots, but one of the most significant aspects of You Are What You Love is that it is the perfect mix of deconstruction with reconstruction. In other words, Smith beautifully blends together not only our need to have some of our own presuppositions torn apart, but he also offers a way to build them back up. Many authors only succeed in one of the two areas, but Smith has done wonderfully in both.

Another aspect of You Are What You Love that I appreciated was Smith’s ability to use long-form word picture and illustration to make his ideas tangible. He did not rely on chintzy, eye-roll examples to make his points. For example, on pages 40–55 (yes, a whole 15 pages), he made a case for the mall as a compelling worship space, a “temple” of sorts. It was an absolutely riveting discussion that not only brought sobering conviction, but also validated his claims and reinforced his points. The writing is superb, the voice is clear, and the ease of it all was a bit shocking given just how packed and dense it truly is. It is definitely the best book I have read this year, and I am sure it will stay at the top of my list. I know I will return to this book again and again, to remind me of the need for a rehabituation of my loves, to calibrate the “compass” of my heart, and to help me answer the question, rightly, “What do I want?”

Smith raises some interesting caution in light of our contemporary church, many of which we should question and/or explore. He challenges us to look back to move forward in our ritualistic habits of life - to observe what we do against why we do it and what lasting effect it has on us. In the end, do our habits reflect our love for God? Do we seek ritual/liturgy to form our lives for Him? For the coming Kingdom? All great questions that, though you may disagree along the way, will at least give you pause to consider.

A good premise with which I agree, so I really wanted to like this book; but it is too uneven to be convincing. Numerous asides and digressions that don't contribute to the argument make it hard to follow sometimes. It seems thrown together and not well integrated. Chapter 5 on the family was the most problematic. The first half seems labored and disconnected. I believe his contention that the church family takes priority over the natural family is simply wrong, a teaching that contradicts the marriage vows and God's design for the natural family, and has caused great destruction and division in families -- written by a theologian, not a pastor. The second half of the chapter, on the other hand, contradicts the first half and is excellent, flowing smoothly and naturally with a fine description of how the natural family is nurtured in the family of God. The first half of the chapter detracts from the premise of the book, the second half affirms it. Other chapters are similarly uneven, but perhaps not as glaringly. A good book, but could have been much better with a better focus and better editing.

We worship what we love. Out of what we love, we worship. This relationship is tight and indispensable. It has implications for what it means to be human, and reflects what exactly we do want. Author and professor James K.A. Smith observes in the gospels how Jesus is more interested in what the disciples want rather than what they believe or know. Smith believes that many people have become stuck in Descartes-style of "I Think Therefore I Am" to the detriment of the lack of holistic living. Interestingly, he does not argue for less but more knowledge and learning that pulls together holistic living and learning. We need to cultivate a lifestyle of living and loving, of learning and labouring toward a model of centering our behaviour according to the heart of loving. Out of this identity arises our true motivation for thinking; for spirituality; for calling; for discipleship; worship; and spiritual formation. Describing the heart as our center of spiritual gravity, Smith also tells us that this goes way beyond the head. The virtues of love in the heart form our "erotic compass." He believes that it is possible to acquire such virtues through imitation and practice. This book is about the latter that uses habit as the way to cultivate and to calibrate this compass.

Recognizing how loves can be corrupted in this world, Smith spends time trying to de-link secular forms from true virtues. One example of the fallacy of worldly love is the distinguishing of what we "think" we love from what we "really love." For love can be a deceptive word. He uses the metaphor of a shopping mall to showcase the flaws of consumeristic and materialistic styled loves. What is most disconcerting is that many of these shoppers implicitly believes that they are what they purchase. Prolonged exposure and acceptance of such philosophies both explicitly and implicitly will lead to an erroneous formation of flawed loves. At the same time, we cannot on the basis of these false loves do away with our inner desire for some form of fulfillment. This is what Smith calls "hungry hearts" that all of us have. We need to learn how to fill this need appropriately. Desire is a legitimate emotion. It can only be fulfilled with a fundamental human expression of worship. Smith puts it beautifully: "Worship is the heart of discipleship because it is the gymnasium in which God retrains our hearts." We need to recover the right narrative for true fulfillment. We need practices to help us develop a spiritual habit of formative worship. For true worship not only expresses our deepest human desires, it forms our human selves. Smith adds that formative Christian worship is not only possible but essential. It unifies our minds, hearts, souls, and wills. It characterizes us, re-stories us; and gives us a fresh appreciation of Christian liturgies. Such liturgies are not just expressed in Churches but also in homes. It is about commitment to family and household. It is about the regularity of connecting with one another. It is about centering our passions, not idolizing. It is about cultivating the garden in which love can blossom. The habits of the heart are also applied to discipleship of the young.

So What?
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The key point in this book is that we are what we love and true love comes from right worship and true expression of worship lies in how we practice the liturgies of Church, home, discipleship of people both young and old, and spiritual formation in our respective vocations. Worship covers a wide variety of Christian living. In fact, it covers all even as Smith asserts that worship ends by sending. It also reminds me of John Piper's popular words: "Mission exists because worship doesn't." It is all connected. We learn in this book that our actions and our Christian lives will bear no resemblance of our true selves until we recognize that we are what we love. Instead of letting impressionistic Hollywood, the consumeristic shopping malls, or the deceptive worldly philosophies drive us toward accumulating erroneous forms of loving, we need to look inward to check our true hunger. The Holy Spirit can help us to be reflective of who we are and what we are created to be. We need to look out for legitimate and appropriate ways to live out our hunger for fulfillment. In worship, we not only live out our calling, we are formed and continually reformed in our hearts, minds, and wills. At one look, this book seems to be touching on many things. Whether it is worship, discipleship, spiritual formation, missions, or vocations, Smith is basically telling us that the center of all these things come from the heart. It is the condition of the heart that is key to understanding why we do what we do each day. It is also the deceptiveness of the heart that throws us off course and renders us confused and unfulfilled. In our world of distractions and constant engagements with things that are not truly what we need, we can be less than our true selves.

This book is not so much about giving lots of practical steps or advice on spirituality. It is about getting first things first. It is about returning to our first love. It is about recognizing our origins and what we are created to be. The author has helped us to do just that in unifying our hearts, minds, and souls. Out of this unity comes the expression of our true selves. This is the reason for the title of this book. Some readers may be put off by the words 'worship,' 'discipleship,' or 'liturgies' but once they get the hang of where Smith is coming from, they will have a renewed understanding of these words. Not only that, they will love to put these words directly into action.

James K.A. Smith is Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College. He has previously written on popular Christian topics on worship, culture, and the Christian Life, such as Imagining the Kingdom, Discipleship in the Present Tense, and Who's Afraid of Relativism?

Rating: 4.75 stars of 5.

conrade
This book is provided to me courtesy of Brazos Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.

The women in my book club liked the book for the most part, but I couldn’t get used to the narrator’s voice so it tainted my perception of the material. It seemed to be written for intellectuals, which I tend to appreciate, but not in this instance. Some of the examples he used seemed to be a stretch.

We are constantly being formed by the choices we make and by our day-to-day relationships. This is the central idea at the heart of You Are What You Love. Given that we are always being formed by the people and things surrounding us, Smith argues that the church community should be at the very heart of our formation as Christians. This important book challenges us to take a hard look at who and what and how we love.

This is by far one of the best books I have ever read. It challenged me to examine how culture and recent history have shaped people to value their intellect over their souls. He offers practical and accessible ways to read current western culture with a Christrocentric lens. I am thankful for God's work in and through James K.A. Smith.

It’s a great book with a lot of deep thought information!!! I only give it a “4 stars” because it isn’t a book you can read or listen to non-stop. You have to take some time to digest it a little at a time! (At least for me!!)

James K.A. Smith (aka Jamie) writes with insight and verve. He is a deep thinker who wants us to know that there is more to life than thinking. More on that in a moment.

I’ve read four of Jamie’s books: Letters to a Young Calvinist (reviewed here: [...]), Desiring the Kingdom, How (Not) to be Secular, and his latest, You are What You Love (YWYL). YWYL is designed as a more accessible version of Desiring the Kingdom, but I found both worth reading.

There is much to appreciate about the project Smith calls “cultural liturgics.” Smith has sniffed out a pervasive and naïve notion at least among American Christians: the idea that thinking alone is adequate to form us in the way Christ intends. Smith’s concern here is well founded as one can find many examples of Christians who once stuffed their heads with Bible knowledge only to find themselves now burned out, disillusioned, and adding to the growing numbers of self-proclaimed evangelicals who seek to work out their salvation autonomously. There is no doubt that Bible knowledge alone does not make one a Christ follower. Jesus warned the Jews to not confuse knowledge of the Scriptures with knowing Him (Jn. 5:39,40).

Smith forcefully argues that Bible knowledge alone is not enough. Some believe he falls prey here to a false dichotomy in correcting this error. I think that charge is unmerited. Smith gives some explicit disavowals to the contrary. Also, the body of Smith’s work makes clear that he is no anti-intellectual. Something else must be afoot rather than simply advocating a simplistic either/or option of head versus heart.

I agree that we are not just (a modifier Smith wisely employs on many occasions)“thinking-things” or ‘brains on a stick.” Smith’s view seems to be that formative liturgies are primary while biblical knowledge, essential as it may be, takes a subordinate role of sorts. He writes, “We learn to love, then, not primarily by acquiring information about what we should love but rather through practices that form the habits of how we love.” (Emphasis his)

The examples Smith gives in YWYL to demonstrate that biblical knowledge is hardly adequate for the best Christian formation are ones that sadly glut the evangelical landscape. Granted, there are many pathetic examples of ministers investing an almost magical power in acquiring biblical knowledge, but here is where I have questions. It is easy to see the foolishness of making biblical knowledge alone magical, but that begs a question of sorts. Is biblical knowledge acquired in only one way? That is, do all Christians believe that mere intellectual apprehension of biblical data is the proper way to learn Scripture? Smith’s monolithic description of gaining bible knowledge does not consider the myriad of ways, including the healthy ones, where Christians interact with God’s Word. Yes, we have many bad examples of a simplistic notion that learning the Bible better can automatically make one mature. However, there are Christians who come to the Scriptures with reverence, submission, and a genuine reliance on the Holy Spirit. Proper Bible knowledge is meant to lead us to the person of Christ. Smith never engages with these possibilities. Categorizing the place of all biblical thinking in a monolithically negative manner dismisses what ought to be delved into much further.
David Morlan writes in his own review of Smith’s proposal that “he deals with generalities and stereotypes of churches, not actual people and actual churches.”

I would argue there is more of a both/and dynamic with thinking and formation rather than formative liturgies being primary. II Corinthians 10:3-5 and Romans 12:1,2 along with a more integrated/holistic anthropology (which keep the intellectual tethered to the affective) also move in that direction. The latest neuroscience from folks like Antonio Damasio shows that there is more talking going on between the so-called right and left halves of the brain than we previously imagined. I therefore find Smith’s regular refrain that we love things before we know why or that “virtue isn’t acquired intellectually but affectively” unpersuasive.

Smith claims that our “primary orientation to the world is visceral, not cerebral.” In my own discipleship ministry with men I first cover trusting God when suffering intersects one’s life. I take the men through an in depth study of Habakkuk. It is heavy biblical input while candidly working through issues of sorrow, grief, and the important role of lament. I don’t find it possible or prudent to separate the so-called visceral from the so-called cerebral. New Testament scholar, Patrick Schreiner, voices a similar concern: “I still personally wonder if the picture Smith paints is actually too neat. Maybe the process of theological anthropology is too complex to break down into humans primarily being this or that. Because isn’t the intellect a part of the body’s and heart’s process of desiring”?

Jamie Smith makes all of us think more deeply about the Christian faith. I for one have benefitted from his gifted pen, even, and maybe especially so, when I disagree with him.

[I am grateful to Jamie Smith for his quick response to my questions. I am also appreciative for Dennis Okholm and Scot McKnight taking the time to interact with me over the role of liturgy in spiritual formation. I alone take responsibility for the views expressed in this review.]

The Good:
I think Smith correctly points out that we need to be mindful of our habits, rituals, and 'liturgies' that we practice regularly so that we can be aware of their influence on us. Habits such as what we do in the morning, our kids routines, and our church services all have an impact on us, and in some cases we need to change them in order to foster love for Christ.

The Bad:
1) It ignores what the gospel is - that it is a message that enters the mind and changes the heart. Yes, the evangelical church has put too much focus on the mind and needs to do a better job at shaping what we love, but here Smith overcompensates to too much heart and too little mind. Our mind should lead our heart, not the other way around.

2) I think this book has the wrong application of the principle of shaping our habits. It advocates for returning to the liturgies and practices of old such as those that existed in the Catholic Church. This cannot be made central as this book advocates - otherwise we will become like the pharisees and the Catholic church with people who know the traditions but don't know the gospel (I grew up Catholic, so I have a bias here). We should learn from those Christians before us, but we need to always ask "Do these practices keep the Gospel as the central and main thing?" Some new practices do, some don't. Some old practices do, some don't. Blindly going back to old practices can be foolish.

3) It does not acknowledge that we can have unity with diversity (to borrow from Schaeffer). That is, this book advocates for a 'one size fits all' approach by universally applying what the church has historically done. Instead, we need to recognize that words, symbols, and liturgies mean different things to different generations and cultures. This means that there are different legitimate ways that keep the gospel central. For some, this can mean a high church liturgy. For others, a more contemporary worship service. However, we do need to keep in mind that there are wrong ways and bad ways like the seeker church model that Smith correctly critiques, but saying that we have to therefore go back to old liturgies creates a false dichotomy between seeker church and "historic high church".

Additionally, I think having diversity in the way we do certain things from week to week is extremely helpful. Take communal confession for example. Saying the same thing every week creates a mindless repetition that does not induce reflection or heart transformation. However, having variance in the wording or singing different confession songs from week to week will allow us to do the same thing every week (communal confession) while having enough variance to help force us to think about what we're saying.

Conclusion:
This book is though provoking and asks good questions, especially "how are our regular habits and liturgies influencing our hearts?" However, the books gives bad solutions and does not keep the gospel at the center of how we form our habits.

Alternative Book: Instead of this book, I would recommend reading "Conscience: what it is, how to train it, and loving those who differ". While it does not deal with the exact same subject, it does give a more accurate and gospel-centered approach to thinking about our subconscious thoughts and loves.

I cannot remember the last time I finished a book and immediately started rereading it. Encouraging, challenging, and fun.
Plus, this book undeniably has the most David Foster Wallace references of any theological book I have ever read.
UPDATE-
Second trip through the book was just as enjoyable as the first. I am definitely going to have to grab a copy of Desiring the Kingdom.

This book is amazing and will change how you look at discipleship. Why, when you know all the right things, do you fail to change and grow in Christ? This book will answer it. I have been through it 3 times and we are now working through it in our small group leadership team. Highly recommend this text!

We are not just "thinking things." We are ritual and habitual creatures always moving toward a goal, a love, a desire, whether we realize it or not. In this excellent book, James K.A. Smith pushes us to consider the ritual and liturgy of our daily lives, the rituals of our worship, and the way those things are forming our habits and loves. As a pastor, one of the things I most appreciated about this book was that it was not only critical, but also offered helpful and thoughtful ideas for making meaningful changes in our lives, our families, the church, and the world. I plan to use pieces of this book with my Christian Education team as well as my Music and Worship team as we consider the ways our worship and education in the church are forming us into the kind of people we are becoming.

This is not a good book. It is not well-written, not engaging, not inspirational, and not well-organized. The paragraphs are long-winded, wandering, and mostly irrelevant. The chapters are even moreso. Again and again (and again) I picked it up and tried to find some value in it. The author does not write in terms of thesis and supporting evidence. Instead he states conclusions and then rambles on and on until you no longer care what the point was. About a third of the books I own are theological or philosophical in nature. This one will not be staying in my collection.

Overall the book does inspire someone to both heart and head changes in their lives and encourages you to consider where your life is directing its heart and life.
Some of the liturgical issues however did not resonate with me on a theological level. So it is not one size fits all kind of book.

I purchased the audible version of the book.
Best part of the book is the title which speaks volumes about what is truly our hearts' desires. The book itself is wordy and repetitive, pushes the virtues of traditional forms of worship, and confuses thoughtless habits with an active purposeful desire to pursue Christ-likeness. Yes, there are some gems scattered throughout the book, but they are few and far in between. Disappointed.

It begins with sloppy exegesis; he makes 'knowing' and 'believing' as antithetical to 'hungering' and 'thirsting.' Smith is more man-centered in his approach than Theocentric, so that man rises to become something by his/ her passions rather than being captured by God's glory in a full, growing knowledge of God--epignosis.
Save your money and your mind, read David F. Wells.
Phil Sigman

Overall enjoying this book. There are areas where the language is a little hard to understand if you haven't studied theology and there are times when the writer is all over the place or gets stuck on an example that the reader may or may not relate to, but overall having good conversations and enjoying it.