And Chapter 3.

Ch3

There are many liturgies in life that refocus our values without us realizing it; one can counter this by creating intentional liturgies in one’s life that train the heart in ways you want it to grow (57-58). Very often in spiritual (namely biblical) language desires are described as hungers, this shows how our wants are more like cravings than anything else. Smith continues to press the idea that we can have our minds convinced, but not change our actions because our hearts are not on board. He gives a personal example to bring this point home: he explains how he was convinced of eating healthy and supporting healthy food production by the writings of Wendell Berry. He was hooked on his books and would take one wherever he went. In a moment of great irony, he realized that he was reading the book in a Costco food court. His mind was convinced, but his heart still loved Costco hotdogs!

The first aspect of training one’s desires is to do so in community. Smith explains that we are social creatures so the best way to change is to be in a group of people who are doing the same thing (62). Second, we must commit to do things we do not want to do. Any new habit we want to form will most likely not be enjoyable at first (hence it not being a habit). This is also where the community comes into play, people who can remind you of your goal (62).

Smith connects this to the Christian life. The church is the community that we partner with and the Eucharistic liturgy is the set of practices that we submit ourselves to. In hope that we will learn to love truth and justice (and God!) through them (65). Smith draws from the biblical imagery of citizenship, he explains that if becoming a Christian truly means to enter the kingdom of God (a new nation), then one must learn how to “live like a local” (66).

God does not primarily act through extravagant and flashy means, he often uses the mundane simplicities of life to shape who we are. Smith argues, based on this point, that the church should look to its weekly worship to find its primary formative practices (68).

Smith begins by explaining that we have to develop a new definition of worship before we can analyze how worship forms us. Worship is not only singing songs. Smith argues that the liturgy is a more holistic form of worship because it not only identifies humanity’s part in worship, but also God’s. God is the primary actor in worship, he speaks to us and we respond. Smith is at pains to show us that worship is a dynamic conversation between humanity and God, a conversation that is begun by God, not man (69-74).

Worship is not about formation, but about God. It is an encounter with the God of the universe, where we meet him and he meets us.

Our human focused worship often leads us to see worship as being an expression of our love, which then leads us to seeing “sincerity” as the most important virtue of worship (75). This leads many churches to pursue novel forms of worship, often using contexts that look like our cultures (76). Smith shows that this is dangerous because as we saw in chapter 2 the form information is given in is just as informative as the content itself.

If worship is more about a formative encounter then the form does matter. The practices that we submit ourselves to shape our wants and habits (78). Therefore the form needs to be shaped by the biblical narrative and be steeped in the Spirit (78-79).

And here is chapter 2.

Ch2

“Sometimes a man doesn’t want to do what a man thinks he wants to do” (29). Smith begins by examining two movies, Stalker and American Beauty to show how often times we do not actually know what we want. Often times the idea of our ultimate want, is not actually that.

Discipleship or education then relies on our understanding of how human behavior is created (33). Most of human behavior is done unconsciously; we learn how to do things and then make those actions become subconscious actions (automaticities) to focus the mind on other things. As we master actions, those actions become automaticities (36). The way we make an action into an automaticities is through practice, when we choose to do an action over and over again. However, we can unintentionally develop automaticities as well. We create routines and rituals all the time without realizing it (37). This creates a problem because we can subconsciously develop loves for contradicting or rivaling things. We are constantly being trained to have different ideas of the “good life” and most of the time we do not even realize it.

This means that everything can potentially form us, there is no neutral action in life. The biblical authors have historically used the genre of apocalypse to identify the reality of formative liturgies all throughout culture (39). The genre uses fantastical images of dragons and monsters to reveal the actual state of things, rejecting the false image the polis was showing. Therefore, we need to learn to exegete (discern) the cultural liturgies that we engage with every day.

Smith analyzes the American shopping mall, explaining that its architecture, layout and advertising all resemble an ancient temple. He shows how one of the most religious sites in the West is in fact the shopping mall (40-43). The shopping mall uses mannequins and propaganda to create its own image of the good life. Smith explains that the mall trains consumerists, not be explaining to them why buying is good, but by painting a picture of the good life. The picture they paint is one that says, without words, you can only be happy when you own “this” (45).

This is only an example of how the “mundane” practices of life shape and even create our desires.

We do not lose sight of our ideals because we have been given wrong information, but because our hearts have been grabbed by a contrasting image of the good life (47). Smith goes back to the analogy of the shopping mall, in order to analyze the “gospel” of consumerism. He explains that the shopping mall tells a number of stories that create the desire to shop in people. The first is “You are broken therefore you shop” (47). This story paints the picture that you cannot be content without x. The next narrative is that the things you own are not good enough, so you need to shop some more in order to get what you “truly” need. The irony here is that the stories contradict one another. We are told you need to buy x to be happy, then we get x and are told that x won’t make you happy, but y will (50-52). The story of the shopping mall is a perpetual circle of consumption that never ends in joy, but only continues in want.

“By our immersion in this liturgy of consumption, we are being trained to both overvalue and undervalue things: we’re being trained to invest them with a meaning and significance as objects of love and desire in which we place disproportionate hopes … while at the same time treating them … as easily discarded” (52).

The tenants of the consumer gospel are caught not taught (54). Smith ends the chapter with a challenge for us to take a liturgical audit of our lives. Asking the question, “What do I love?” and “What is currently teaching me to love?” (54).