This is a book that has reshaped the way I think about everything I do. It can be a little dense at times, but it’s well worth it. Smith’s basic argument is that we all partake in liturgies whether we know it or not. These liturgies (Ex. going to the mall) shape our identities (Ex. making us consumers) by forming our desires. Basically, what we do defines who we are and what we love. We are all desiring some form of the kingdom and we need to learn how God invites us to follow Him toward the true kingdom.
2. The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller (2011)
3. In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen (1992)
4. The Brothers Karamozov by Fyoder Dostoevsky (1880)
1. News misleadsAll this reminds me of some thoughts Neil Postman has in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death. He points out that news, education, politics, etc have all basically become forms of entertainment. He believes news is a collection of decontextualized facts that we cannot do much about:
2. News is irrelevant
3. News has no explanatory power
4. News is toxic to your body
5. News increases cognitive errors
6. News inhibits thinking
7. News works like a drug
8. News wastes time
9. News makes us passive
10. News kills creativity
"How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve?...most of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action.”What do you think?
...What steps do you plan to take to reduce the conflict in the Middle East? Or the rates of inflation, crime or unemployment? ...What do you plan to do about NATO, OPEC, the CIA, affirmative action, and the monstrous treatment of Baha'is in Iran? I shall take the liberty of answering for you: You plan to do nothing about them.
...We have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing."
“These broken, wounded, and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self—the self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things—and forced me to reclaim that unadorned self in which I am completely vulnerable, open to receive and give love regardless of any accomplishments.”He goes on to explain that the Christian leader has to be one that gives up the desire to be relevant and merely offers the world his or her vulnerable self. He says the discipline that will counteract this desire for relevance is contemplative prayer. Instead of listening to the world and getting pulled into seemingly urgent needs, we need to be people who constantly dwell in God's presence. It is only here that we can find the source of our words and guidance for the hurting world.
“They separate themselves from their own concrete community, try to deal with their needs by ignoring them or satisfying them in distant or anonymous places, and then experience an increasing split between their own most private inner world and the good news they announce…When ministers and priests live their ministry mostly in their heads and relate to the Gospel as a set of valuable ideas to be announced, the body quickly takes revenge by screaming loudly for affection and intimacy.”The third and final temptation that Jesus faced was the temptation to power, as He was tempted to rule all the kingdoms of the world. Nouwen explains that there is a great temptation to have power among Christian leaders, even though Jesus came and emptied Himself of all rights to power. He goes on to say that it is easier to control people than to love people. It's easier to be God than to love Him. The way of the Christian leader does not look like the world. Nouwen says,
“The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross.”The discipline suggested to guard against the temptation to have power is theological reflection. Without this, he explains that we will be nothing more than pseudo-psychologists in trying to help people deal with the stresses of their life. In contrast,
“The task of future Christian leaders is not to make a little contribution to the solution of the pains and tribulations of their time, but to identify and announce the ways in which Jesus is leading God’s people out of slavery, through the desert to a new land of freedom. Christian leaders have the arduous task of responding to personal struggles, family conflicts, national calamities, and international tensions with an articulate faith in God’s real presence.”Through prayer, through confession and forgiveness, and through theological reflection, Christians can counteract the temptations to be relevant and popular, to be spectacular and removed from those whom we lead, and to exert power and control over others. At this point we can finally help people to hear God's gentle and loving voice in a noisy world.
Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you go forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.I hope you feel even a fraction of the weight that this paragraph carries. He and the rest of the black community had been fighting against this sense of "nobodiness" for so long and they were understandably tired of it.
"...the giving of commandments is an expression of love; the commandments are given as guardrails that encourage us to act in ways that are consistent with the 'grain of the universe,' so to speak. They are the means by which God invites and encourages us to find abundance and flourishing."God's standards for us help us match up with the grain of the universe. They are for our good, not for suppressing us. But our modern understanding fights against the reality. Smith goes on to say:
"The secular liturgies of late modern culture are bent on forming in us a notion of autonomy--a sense that we are a law unto ourselves and that we are only properly 'free' when we can choose our own ends, determine our own telos. Since it's early beginnings, Charles Taylor notes, modernity has been marked by a rejection of teleology, a rejection of the notion that there is a specified, normative end (telos) to which humanity ought to be directed in order to enjoy the good life. And this rejection was driven by a new notion of 'libertarian' freedom, which identified freedom with freedom of choice."Smith concludes with a picture of true freedom, rightly ordered desires in conformity to how God designed the universe to be. He explains:
"In contrast, right here in Christian worship we see a very different understanding of the good: humanity and all of creation flourish when they are rightly ordered to a telos that is not of their own choosing but rather is stipulated by God. Creation is created for something, for a particular end envisioned by the Creator...The reading of the law is a displacement of our own wants and desires, reminding us that we find ourselves in a world not of our own making--which is why all our attempts to remake it as we want (as if we ourselves could be little creators) are not only doomed to failure; they are also doomed to exacerbate suffering. The announcement of the law reminds us that we inhabit not 'nature,' but creation, fashioned by a Creator, and that there is a certain grain to the universe--grooves and tracks and norms that are part of the fabric of the world. And all of creation flourishes best when our communities and relationships run with the grain of those grooves. Indeed, the biblical vision of human flourishing implicit in worship means that we are only properly free when our desires are rightly ordered, when they are bounded and directed to the end that constitutes our good. That is why the law, though it comes as a scandalous challenge to the modern desire for autonomy, is actually an invitation to be freed from a-teleological wandering. It is an invitation to find the good life by welcoming the boundaries of law that guide us into the grooves that constitute the grain of the universe and are conducive to flourishing."I invite you to think about the law in such a way. Yes the law points to our need for a Savior, because of our inability to fulfill the law's demands. But the law is also a good thing in and of itself, a loving blueprint for what God intends for a thriving new humanity.
Why is it so important that you are with God and God alone on the mountain top? It’s important because it’s the place in which you can listen to the voice of the One who calls you the beloved. To pray is to listen to the One who calls you “my beloved daughter,” “my beloved son,” “my beloved child.” To pray is to let that voice speak to the center of your being, to your guts, and let that voice resound in your whole being.He goes on to say that if we are not hearing this voice then we cannot walk freely in this world. Without hearing this voice, success and failures will equally wreck us because our identity will be tied up in those things. We will constantly be seeking affirmation and praise from others if we are not listening to God's voice and claiming our belovedness.
...community is not loneliness grabbing onto loneliness: “I’m so lonely, and you’re so lonely.” It’s solitude grabbing onto solitude: “I am the beloved; you are the beloved; together we can build a home.”He also talks about how forgiveness and celebration are two key components of community. Forgiveness is acknowledging that other people cannot love you perfectly. Forgiveness is allowing another person not to be God. If you can forgive others and stop demanding from them something that only God can give, then you can learn to celebrate that person's gifts.
Jesus says, “Cry over your pains, and you will discover that I’m right there in your tears, and you will be grateful for my presence in your weakness.” Ministry means to help people become grateful for life even with pain. That gratitude can send you into the world precisely to the places where people are in pain. The minister, the disciple of Jesus, goes where there is pain not because he is a masochist or she is a sadist, but because God is hidden in the pain.When talking about ministry, many of us talk of the desire to see fruit. Nouwen reminds us that, "the fruits of your life are born often in your pain and in your vulnerability and in your losses. The fruits of your life come only after the plow has carved through your land."
