Desiring the Kingdom (): Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Cultural Liturgies Book 1)

by James K. A. Smith

In short, the goal is to push down through worldview to worship as the matrix from which a Christian worldview is born—and

this book argues that we human creatures are lovers before and above all else, and that the people of God is a community marked by a love and desire for the kingdom of God.

before we are thinkers, we are believers; before we can offer our rational explanations of the world, we have already assumed a whole constellation of beliefs—a worldview—that governs and conditions our perception of the world. Our primordial orientation or comportment to the world is not as thinkers but as believers. Beliefs, we might say, are more “basic” than ideas.[6]

we are involved with the world as traditioned actors. The world is the environment in which we swim, not a picture that we look at as distanced observers.[16]

There are no “private” practices; rather, practices are social products that come to have an institutional base and expression. Practices don’t float in society; rather, they find expression and articulation in concrete sites and institutions—which is also how and why they actually shape embodied persons. There are no practices without institutions.

rather than calling into question the gospel of consumption—the sense that acquisition brings happiness and fulfillment. So instead, the evangelical community simply replays the gospel of consumption but with “Jesus” stuff

“secular liturgies” show that the so-called secular still testifies to our religious nature, not just because it involves beliefs or “spiritual” messages, but because even the secular is ultimately about love of something ultimate, with practices intended to form our love. Secular liturgies don’t create our desire; they point it, aim it, direct it to certain ends.

Augustine confessed, which is precisely why “our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.” The announcement of the law and the reading of God’s will for our lives represents a significant challenge to the desire for autonomy that is impressed upon us by secular liturgies. 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.[51]

baptism is situated in the context of gathered worship because it announces a social and political reality. When we zoom out and consider the reality that baptism signifies, we should be “awed . . . that God can throw down nations and plant new ones with a few drops of water.”[62]

baptismal promises counter such a configuration: love and its obligations traverse the boundaries of “private residences” and “nuclear families” because they initiate us into a household that is bigger than what is under the roof of our house. The promises in baptism indicate a very different theology of the family, which recognizes that “families work well when we do not expect them to give us all we need.”

One of the most crucial things to appreciate about Christian formation is that it happens over time. It is not fostered by events or experiences; real formation cannot be effected by actions that are merely episodic. There must be a rhythm and a regularity to formative practices in order for them to sink in—in order for them to seep into our kardia and begin to be effectively inscribed in who we are, directing our passion to the king dom of God and thus disposing us to action that reflects such a desire.