It's not what you think, it's what you desire

A story was once told a few hundred years ago that humans are primarily thinking things. What really matters, this modern story goes, are our minds, so logical arguments and compelling evidences are the stuff that really matters. Even some Christians got in on the game, matching argument for argument coherent reasons in defense of the faith. These Christian apologists told themselves, “If we can just get people to think through things, then they will reasonably change their ways—perhaps even desire God’s good news for them.”
While much can be commended for having people think clearly through things, the relationship between thoughts and desires works the other way around. The modern story got it backwards. Desires inform thoughts, experiences inform desires, and senses inform experiences. For example, one of our few family traditions is eating salty meatballs on New Year’s Day. I won’t share the secret family recipe with you, but there are so many spices and sauces involved that each meatball has enough sodium to parch someone who just guzzled a gallon of water. My Dad would devote hours to the process, meticulously shredding bread (yes, lots of bread goes into these things), rolling balls that must look identical to one another, and then frying them in small batches. The smells and flavors of it all to this day remind me of being a kid, and, of course, remind me of Dad. As I used my hands to mix the meatball ingredients last week I couldn’t help but think of Dad. I hadn’t been thinking of him much that day until the sights, smells, and textures rushed into me all at once and took me back to another time and place. I desired to be with Dad again, and my strong craving came directly from my senses, not my thoughts.
Since my Dad died of cancer, a few people have asked me if I think of my Dad whenever I enter a hospital or visit a dying parishioner. I understand such concerns. They make good rational sense, but they never ring true for me. My Dad was not just some guy who spent many of his last days dying of cancer in a hospital: he was my Dad. I desire him most when I do something that reminds me of him, or smell something, or see something, or hear something, or feel something. You get the point. It’s not the thoughts, but the senses that matter.
The God who created us understands this perfectly. After humans brought onto themselves a curse that mixes up how they crave and think, God responded by designing worship that gets to the root of our being. He came up with worship that involves all of our senses, using water, bread, and wine. Previously, he came up with worship for Israel rooted even more deeply in our senses. He knows that to remind us of him he needs to tap into our experiences and desires, and then he will win over our thoughts too. He reveals to us we were created by him and will be newly created by him in his future kingdom. To be sure, he reminds us we are thinking things, but we are also more than that. We are creatures full of experience, wonder, and cravings. Sin has made all of those things crooked, so God works to straighten them out. Sure, he will straighten them out by revealing how we ought to think too, but he doesn’t stop there. And God is no modernist, so he doesn’t start there either.