You Are What You Love

The Spiritual Power of Habit

By: James K.A. Smith

Narrated by: Claton Butcher

You are what you love. But you might not love what you think.

In this book, award-winning author James K. A. Smith shows that who and what we worship fundamentally shape our hearts. And while we desire to shape culture, we are not often aware of how culture shapes us. We might not realize the ways our hearts are being taught to love rival gods instead of the One for whom we were made. Smith helps listeners recognize the formative power of culture and the transformative possibilities of Christian practices. He explains that worship is the "imagination station" that incubates our loves and longings so that our cultural endeavors are indexed toward God and his kingdom. This is why the church and worshiping in a local community of believers should be the hub and heart of Christian formation and discipleship.

Following the publication of his influential work Desiring the Kingdom, Smith received numerous requests from pastors and leaders for a more accessible version of that book's content. No mere abridgment, this new book draws on years of Smith's popular presentations on the ideas in Desiring the Kingdom to offer a fresh, bottom-up re-articulation. The author creatively uses film, literature, and music illustrations to engage listeners and includes new material on marriage, family, youth ministry, and faith and work. He also suggests individual and communal practices for shaping the Christian life.

©2016 Brazos Press (P)2016 Baker Publishing Group

My second reading was on audiobook

It is good to re-read books. I can not remember where I read it, but I remember a discussion about the difference in reading habits of people a couple hundred years ago. The short version is that books used to be very expensive. So you would read and re-read a book several times because you only had a few options of what books to read.

Today books are cheap. I routinely pick up books for a couple dollars or even free. So we tend to read a book once and move on to the next idea. I have put a goal on myself to re-read at least one book a month. I rarely re-read books quite that often, but almost every time I re-read a book I am reminded about the importance of re-reading. Maybe others are more careful readers than I am. But I almost always find significant ideas that I either missed on the first reading or I have forgotten.

The most important idea from You are What You Love that I missed on the first reading is the clear understanding of the difference between what Smith calls Expressive and Formative worship. For Smith, expressive worship, the predominate focus of modern evangelicals, is about the importance of bringing praise to God. Smith does not say it is wrong to expressively worship. But he is not sure that expressive worship should be our primary focus and this is for several reasons. 1) Expressive worship is focused on what we do for God instead of what God has done. 2) Because of our age of authenticity, the temptation for expressive worship is to always seek out the new and innovative because repeated expressive worship feels less authentic. 3) Because of point one, the only real place for the congregation to participate in expressive worship is the music portion of worship. So expressive worship ends up minimizing the full range of worship in a service.

Instead Smith believes that we should approach worship as primarily formative. Formative worship is focused on what the activity of worship does to us. Music reminds us of themes of worship, creeds reminds us of the historical and catholic character of Christianity, the eucharist reminds us of the sacrifice of Christ and the power of the Spirit to act in us on a daily basis, the word reminds us of the message of the gospel.

I think that I have been so shaped in my evangelical formation on the importance of expressive worship that I have missed Smith’s distinction between expressive and formative worship in the first reading.

The main focus of the book is that we are shaped by habits that occur in the pre-cognitive portion of our brain. Things that we do without really thinking of them. So we should strive after creating habits that help us move in the direction that we want to go as Christians.

Similar to my first reading, I still think that while Smith’s cultural liturgies are important, there is so much cultural baggage with them that it is often hard to see deeply into the liturgies. I think Smith is too negative sometimes about his look at cultural liturgies. For instance when talking about the mall he never talks about the mall as safe space in a positive sense. After all, that is why kids get together at the mall, it is seen by parents as safe and limited (whether it is or not is another thing.) And the inside waking space for elderly at 6 am is not mentioned although there is some real positives there. I think that while Smith is right to alert us to some of the negatives of cultural liturgies and their formative power. But we also need to spend time on their positive formative power to really get a full picture of what cultural liturgies are trying to do.
On the negative side is also hard to get enough distance from a cultural liturgy to actually see it without significant cross-cultural contact. I think that is a place where advocating for a diverse church would have been a helpful addition to this book (although I am pretty sure I have heard Smith speaking about this in other contexts.)

One note about the audiobook edition. (When possible I try to change formats that I read a book for the second reading.) I thought it was fine, but for authors like Smith, who I have heard speak via video a number of times, I miss the actual author’s voice. There were several mispronounced words that would not have happened if Smith was the one narrating. I know not every author has time to spend narrating their own audiobooks, but most of the time I really do think an author should read their own books whenever possible.

I loved this work. Smith rocks

I loved this work. Smith does a masterful job of relating the principles here. going to read more

Challenging Perspective

Valuable text for challenging new ways of engaging older traditions. Author is very articulate thought use of some terminology gets confusing and difficult to follow. Criticism of newer church movements not balanced with what value they may be offering.

Practical, Persuasive, Penatrating

Anyone interested in how to grow closer to God moment by moment as an individual or in community should partake in and dwell with these ideas. It makes one want to want better.

Life’s liturgies

This book is wonderful look into the ancient and present. It helps us to evaluate the unintended liturgies we may be following. It is great narrative for all ages.

A must read for contemporary Christians.

Smith offers a beautiful, coherent and relevant discourse on how it is love and our orientation as Lovers, that animates the human person. By extension we can see that it is our love our embodied passion for Christ and his Kingdom, that orients the Christian in the world. This book can help the Christian understand how and why to shift their own walk in ways that help orient and continually reorient the Christian in ways that order the passion and the reason towards Christ and his coming kingdom.

Another perspective inside out. A lot to consider

Unique thoughts on motives and our actions or lack of action. What is our vision?

This book is okay...

I am very compelled by two things in this book: first, that we are what we love, and second, that we are creatures of habits. Furthermore, I am curious about the concept of counter liturgies. I laud the attempt to counter Cartesian thought, which assumes humans are "thinking things." It is necessary to note that this book relies heavily on Augustinian thought, with it discussion of the order of loves and emphasis on marriage. It also is deeply influenced by substitutionary atonement and original sin. Furthermore, it knowingly ascribes to stereotypical, patriarchical gender roles, and denounces other views of not only gender, but heteronormative families. For all of these reasons, it is a three star for me. 

Overrated

I had high expectations for this book because of so many recommendations and high reviews, but it was disappointing. If you’ve already been thinking and learning about liturgical living, you probably won’t get anything new out of this book. It was also surprising that he used crude examples to make his points. I didn’t see the movie “American Beauty” when it came out for a reason and didn’t expect to get a detailed plot summary in a supposedly Christian book. Yuck

Love is all you need!

Great book! It’s amazing how much we tend to get things wrong. But we need to live and let love shine through.