You Are What You Love

For many years I subscribed to the notion that our behaviors are the product of our thinking, but James KA Smith’s book You Are What You Love changed the way I think about discipleship.

Smith pushes back against the idea that “you are what you think.” I must confess that I long believed that if we can help people think right, their lives would surely be right. If people struggled with their faith, it was no doubt due to something faulty in their worldview, their theology, their thinking.

But I questioned that assumption: Why the disconnect between the head and the heart?

I was always puzzled and distressed when I saw how head knowledge so often fails to lead to life change. Why is that someone can have a good grasp on theological truth and still fail to grow in holiness? How can someone have a great hunger for spiritual knowledge – notebooks filled with valuable, biblically-based insights on the spiritual life – and yet continue to flounder spiritually?

Smith would say that I am operating with a faulty understanding of how we make decisions. We assume that we make choices for purely rational reasons, but we are not nearly as rational as we suppose. Advertisers understand this. Even in decisions as mundane as choosing which consumer products to purchase, our decisions are shaped by so many other factors: how we want to be perceived by others, how we want to think about ourselves, the customs of our family and tribe, and – above all – habit and routine.

We are not aware of this intermingling of motives in our decision-making; our decisions are shaped by assumptions that run in the background like a computer operating system, hidden from the scrutiny of our rational mind.

But Smith argues that we are being “discipled” by norms, customs, and routines that are culturally indexed. “Dispositions and habits can be inscribed in our unconscious if we regularly repeat routines and rituals that we fail to recognize as formative practices,” says Smith. “So there can be all sorts of automating going on that we do not choose and of which we are not aware but that nevertheless happen because we are immersed in environments loaded with such formative rituals.”

This over-emphasis on the intellect affects the way we approach discipleship. “We often approach discipleship as primarily a didactic endeavor—as if becoming disciple of Jesus is largely an intellectual project, a matter of acquiring knowledge,” says Smith. “Such an intellectualist model of the human person—one that reduces us to mere intellect—assumes that learning (and hence discipleship) is primarily a matter of depositing ideas and beliefs into mind-containers.”

So if discipleship is not primarily an educational endeavor, exactly what is discipleship? “Discipleship is more a matter of hungering and thirsting than of knowing and believing,” says Smith. “Discipleship, we might say, is a way to curate your heart, to be attentive to and intentional about what you love.”

I think he’s onto something. But that brings us to the obvious question: How do we curate our hearts?

Smith points out that since our loves are already being shaped by the practices and habits (“secular liturgies”) embedded in our culture, the way we are “attentive to and intentional” about what we love is by cultivating the habit of corporate Christian worship.

That’s right: we “curate our loves” by going to church.
 
Smith explains: “Discipleship is a kind of immigration, from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son (Col. 1:13). In Christ we are given a heavenly passport; in his body we learn how to live like ‘locals’ of his kingdom. Such an immigration to a new kingdom isn’t just a matter of being teleported to a different realm; we need to be acclimated to a new way of life, learn a new language, acquire new habits—and unlearn the habits of that rival dominion. Christian worship is our enculturation as citizens heaven.”

It’s true that “secular liturgies” do shape my outlook, and I am forgetful of the deeper truths about God and His Word. During the week, I am bombarded by a worldview that has no place for a sovereign God; in corporate worship I am reminded of who He is and why He is worthy of my worship. In mass media marketing and in social media, I am told that I am my own sovereign self, that I deserve to indulge myself; in corporate worship I am reminded that I have merited nothing from God but His well-deserved wrath but that He has redeemed me from sin and death.

So how has this changed the way I approach discipleship?

Two implications are clear:

1. Discipleship must involve far more than the transferring of information. I must focus more attention on matters of the heart and the imagination. I must help people see not only the necessity but also the joy of prayer, of service, of engaging with Scripture. I need to help people see not only the truth but the beauty of the gospel.
2. If discipleship must happen at the deepest level of our yearnings and heart’s desires, programs alone won’t make disciples. Disciples are required to make disciples; discipleship must be personal, relational. Corporate worship and fellowship are essential.

The good news in all this is that our hearts are where God’s Spirit does His best work. He is constantly at work reordering our disordered affections, realigning our appetites, making us long for the life we’ve always wanted.

Persevere.