James K. a. Smith in chapter 2 of you are what you love (Brazos press: Grand rapids, mi. 2016.)5/19/2020 Smith says:
If I ask you, a Christian, to tell me what you really want, what you most deeply long for, what you ultimately love -- well, of course you know the right answer. You know what you ought to say. (p. 29) Christian worship faces this disturbing reality head-on, recognizing the gap between what we think we love and what we really love, what still propels us toward rival gods and rival visions of the good life. (p. 29) As lovers -- as desiring creatures and liturgical animals -- our primary orientation to the world is visceral, not cerebral. (p. 33) Some cultural practices will be effectively training our loves, automating a kind of orientation to the world that seeps into your unconscious ways of being. That's why you might not love what you think; you might not love what that snowball of thinking on the tip of the iceberg tells you that you love. (p. 37) Rome is a monster. (p. 39, humorous if intentionally taken out of context) Indeed, we could be so fixated on intellectual temptations that we don't realize our hearts are being liturgically co-opted by rival empires all the while. (p. 40) The mall is a religious site, not because it is theological but because it is liturgical. Its spiritual significance (and threat) isn't found in its "ideas" or it "messages" but in its rituals. The mall doesn't care what you think, but it is very much interested in what you love. Victoria's secret is that she's actually after your heart. (p. 41) When we stop worrying about smartphones just in terms of content (what we're looking at) and start to consider the rituals that tether us to them throughout the day, we'll notice that the very form of the practice comes with an egocentric vision that makes me the center of the universe. (p. 46) As such, the liturgies of the market and mall convey a stealthy message about my own brokenness (and hence a veritable need for redemption), but they do so in a way that plays off the power of shame and embarrassment. (p. 48-9) What the liturgy of the mall trains us to desire as the good life and "the American way" requires such massive consumption of natural resources and cheap (exploitive) labor that it is impossible for this way of life to be universalized. (p. 53)
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Michael Price - I am a husband, father of three, poet, and science teacher at a classical Christian school in Memphis, TN. I have four volumes of poetry. My latest volume The Shadowed Night can be purchased by clicking on the button below. Archives
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