James K.A. Smith’s You Are What You Love is a popular version of the same author’s cultural liturgies series one and two—Desiring the Kingdom and Imagining the Kingdom. In the cultural liturgies series, Smith drops confusing and intimidating names of great philosophers, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Pierre Bourdieu, Mark Johnson, and above all, St. Augustine. However, this book takes all those names out of the discussions, so that the readers might find the book a little easier to digest.
After reading the book, I think of the book as still inundated with difficult stuff for ordinary readers to follow. However, Smith adds more practical discussions in the book, such as the implications of the body of Christ (the church) as extended family upon the family as a closed, independent unit constituting and supporting social fabric (ch. 5), or critical reflections on American Christianity’s youth ministry with its expressive, emotionally upbeat flavors (ch. 6). Still, Smith omits the most critical component, were his discussions really to sink into our bodies and seep into our unconscious, borrowing from his own expressions. That is the message and story of the Gospel. It is true that Smith does mention the importance of the gospel, yet he fails to show and demonstrate how such gospel story could sink into our bodies and seep into our unconscious, detail by detail, so that his readers could see the beauty of the gospel. Even so, I will constantly refer to this book and Smith’s cultural liturgies series in general, for in them Smith is sketching a critically important picture of how we humans change, without which Christianity cannot become plausible.
Smith’s thesis is simple yet profound. (but not simplistic) Dropping all the philosophers’ names, his book is a long answer to the question of how we change. In order to answer the question, Smith also draws a picture of his philosophical anthropology. Looking at the picture, one immediately notices that we humans are such organic beings, the parts and elements of whose existence are all organically connected to one another. This is true except for the chasm between what we say and think and what we really believe and desire. Smith begins with a vision of the good life which everyone has. This is what he calls “kingdom.” It is the person’s kingdom, of which authority belongs to the person herself. Such a vision of the good life creates in the person a set of desires to fulfill the good life, moving that person toward a particular direction, causing in her to engage in particular practices, which in turn becomes her habits. This becomes the core of who the person is, constituting her identity. Behind all these lie the person’s desires, behind which is her vision of the good life. This is why Smith’s quipping “You are what you love, because you live toward you want” (13) makes sense.
As I foretold already, there is a disconnect in our lives between what we really want and what we say or think we want. In order to really see through what they are, Smith argues that we need to closely examine our habits and what lies underneath them. Our habits show our desires, which in turn reflects our loves. This is so Augustinian, whose discussions on the disordered loves in our lives being shifted into loving God and neighbor. This is why the chapter title of the second chapter in the book is “You might not love what you think”.
Thus, the answer consists in redirecting and rechanneling our desires, as well as our visions of the good life, which means redirecting our habits. After all, Smith’s thesis of the Christian discipleship all about redirecting our desires perfectly makes sense. But how do we do that? Smith suggests that studying our narratives is the way forward. Our identities are shaped and formed by our habits, which are reflections of our desires and loves, showing what a good life is for us. All these things are instilled into our life stories and how we understand them. Thus, when and only when we begin to see how the gospel story becomes our own life stories, and the more and deeper we do so, can we begin to live as disciples of Jesus Christ. This is not just true among religious or Christian circles. In fact, Mark Manson, whose book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck I have reviewed, also attests to be true. I quote verbatim my review in the relevant part of the review.
While I spoke of them as values (which is a justifiable choice of word), I think getting us to see the bigger picture is that of life narratives coming from Dave Mustaine and Pete Best. For as the philosopher Paul Ricoeur reiterates, our lives are deep down stories, and our stories show what our values truly are.
Now my readers, do you begin to see what Smith is talking about here? We now need a concrete alternative to Smith’s brilliant diagnosis of the human condition. Smith’s alternative is for readers to engage in the Christian worship. For Smith, attending Christian worship is pretty much the only way for the Christian disciples to be shape and formed by the Christian story, for in Christian worship services the story of the gospel is communally and bodily blended into. While Smith has been controversial for his use and understanding of the term ‘worship,’ one can conveniently and quite legally avoid this unnecessary contention by grasping the main thrust of the following quote by David Foster Wallace, who was an atheist and an English scholar at Pomona college.
Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship-be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles-is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things-if they are where you tap real meaning in life-then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already-it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power-you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart-you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.
I have briefly sketched so far what Smith is trying to get at in the book. I believe it is a coherent and useful picture of the human person which would be helpful for anybody, regardless of religious persuasion and orientation. However, as I have already indicated, missing in Smith’s discussions are how he understands the gospel message and how his arguments for the importance of worship, desire, habits, love, etc are connected at a practical level. For this reason, I would like to recommend my readers to read books about the actual message of the gospel, such as Tim Keller’s Prodigal God, Counterfeit gods, and NT Wright’s Simply Good News. Thank you for reading. This is the book review guy.