Desiring the Kingdom (Part 1)

Preface

Desiring the Kingdom is a book that managed to transcend its intended purpose to a fairly significant degree. Originally a plea to Christian universities and instructors to re-evaluate their approach to education and formation, Smith’s book has since become a source book for pastors, musicians, and Christian laypeople alike. The reason: it affirms the primacy of worship as the site of Christian formation, it reorients ideas and beliefs under how and what one loves, and it rediscovers the significance of desire in the Christian life. It is an approachable, readable book, but in that “college lecturer that occasionally makes slightly out of date cultural references” kind of way. The average reader will probably lose patience with Smith at the sections on phenomenology and Heidegger, and reading long portions in one sitting results in hearing many of the same phrases repeated again and again.

These “features” are part of the process; pedagogical as Ken put it. The beautiful and insightful breakdown of the parts of the worship service near the end of Desiring the Kingdom must be “earned” by going through the more dense sections, or so the reasoning goes.

So in a way I am here to suffer on your behalf. I will write to you, dear reader, assuming you have never read the book, and summarize what I take to be Smith’s main points and examples chapter by chapter. It would not be a Jojo blog if there were no criticisms, but I will try to keep them brief and to include them only when they are relevant to the purpose of this read-through. The purpose being: answering the question, “How are Christians to rightly view formation?”. At the time of writing this, we in the church plant (the name has not been solidified yet) are going through a series called Getting your Feet Wet, dealing with formation; the writers of which clearly have been influenced by Desiring the Kingdom. When there are interesting intersections between the two, I will try to bring them out. But hopefully it is not necessary to have read through that piece to understand what I write here.

Desiring the Kingdom: An Introduction

James K. A. Smith introduces his 2009 book with a set of claims. The first is that the generally accepted Christian view of education and learning is mistaken, to the detriment of Christians everywhere. The story goes a little like this: with the world’s help, Christians came to see the role of education as primarily providing the right information, and then teaching students to retain that information. In the context of church, the hope is that they will come to believe these things to be true (e.g. “that God loves you”, “that Christ died for your sins”; ideas and propositions). Some go so far as to hope for a Christian perspective or worldview to develop; that maybe after 4 years of Sunday School little Billy will go off to college and still be able to see things from a Christian point of view. In other words, to let his Christian upbringing inform his thinking and decision making, and thus give him a better chance of doing and saying the right things.

What about this story feels “off” to us? Trying to identify what we think this account gets wrong or leaves out reveals a lot about our assumptions regarding formation. For example, you may rightly point out that the above paragraph says nothing about developing a relationship with God, and that we should instead focus on teaching Christians how to get closer to God, and how to depend on Him more and more fully.

Others might take offense at how shallow it makes Christian teaching sound, and whose first step would be to add a more robust knowledge and love for scripture and biblical doctrine, and maybe even training in articulating the gospel truth to non-believers.

Others still might scoff and think that they’ve got it all backwards. It’s not about what you know, or even your perspective. Its about loving, caring for, and helping people, and that’s not something you teach in Sunday school. Its something you learn from experience “out in the field”, either from the people themselves or from research into their contexts and needs.

There are strands of truth to each of the possible alternatives I just described. But each carry within them the assumption that formation is merely about absorbing ideas and information. Smith rejects this assumption, and on his view Christian formation is primarily about how we are “shaped, formed, and molded into a certain kind of people whose hearts and passions and desires are aimed at the Kingdom of God.” Feel free to reread that sentence a couple times. Hopefully it will begin to sink in just how strange that statement sounds, and how unlikely for it to be uttered in most American Christian contexts. Wherein lies the difference? Is his statement generally right, but emphasizes different things than most Christians might have? Does it go too far with this talk of passions and desires, when we should be worried about morality and character instead? And what in the world does he mean by “aiming”?

Agree or disagree, it is good to recognize the particularity of such statements. And as we get to later chapters, hopefully the dynamics of this view will come into clearer focus. To reiterate: many Christians have been co-opted into a view of formation as acquiring information, which doesn’t fully get at our hearts and desires. In later chapters he will argue that the world has got our hearts and desires (our “guts”) in mind, and thus are doing a better job at forming Christians than many churches. By recovering a sense of the human animal as embodied and liturgical, the church will be better equipped with practices that resist the world’s seductions, and be more fully and deeply formed into the image of Christ’s likeness.

I realize that last bit was dense, perhaps unintelligible. But as an introduction to the book, I need to get it in your subconscious, to prime you for the discussions that will come afterwards. Later posts will be lighter, since I will not be trying to motivate and encapsulate the the overarching argument of a 200 page book. I appreciate your patience, and pray that our small congregation would be blessed as we attend to the how of formation, our humble attempts at becoming holy as our heavenly father is holy.