When it comes to our spiritual formation, the average Western Christian has lost much of the value that comes from practices that quiet our souls and remind us of who we are. We live in an age of addiction to speed, multi-tasked productivity, compressed thoughts, and condensed experiences. Even when it comes to our spiritual life we find ourselves too busy to pray, too distracted to just “be still”, and even see some churches try to preach shorter sermons out of fear that they will lose the attendance of our attention-deficit generation. And from society around us we (the church) run the risk of succumbing to these bad doctrines and false narratives; carelessly adopting our secular culture’s daily liturgies.
In You Are What You Love Smith argues for a return to intentional practices that immerse our souls in “liturgies indexed to the kingdom of God”. He recognises that we are restored by being re-storied; and we have a deep need to change the rhythm of the narratives that we live by. The truth is the same whether we are considering the habits of our own lives or the environment of our local church; where we invest our time reveals where our love truly resides.
“If you want to build a ship, don’t ask people to gather wood.
Rather, teach them to long for the sea.”
But we can’t re-calibrate our hearts merely from the top-down. Intentional discipleship isn’t a purely intellectual exercise (although, I believe that it needs to begin as one). Smith helpfully points out that his solution isn’t to shun knowledge – as though being anti-intellectual would somehow make you more ‘in tune’ with matters of the Spirit – but to focus on the connection between our habits and our desires. We need to recognise the power of habit. As Christians, I think we understand routine. We strive to read our bibles regularly, we gather together every Sunday to worship as a community, but we are also bombarded with the many unhealthy cultural liturgies that would seek to distract our hearts and steal our affections. We check our social media before – or more frequently than – our time spent with God, and we are lazy about sticking to spiritual disciplines that we know are good for our souls.
Smith is quick to point out that we won’t be “delivered from deformation simply by new information” bur rather reflection must propel us into new practices. By grace we have been provided the means by which to nurture our love for the good and beautiful God, found in the rich practices of the historical Christian church. Perhaps you haven’t given much thought to your habits, your morning routine, the order in which you sub-consciously prioritize your tasks and time. Smith reminds us that in the midst of a world of “hurry sickness”, there is infinite value in receiving and adopting the historic Christian practices as enduring gifts that help us rightly order our loves, just as they have for Christians down through time, and he shows how this deep continuity remains a radical call to discipleship.
