You are what you love? Really? So, If I love God, am I God?
Do you enjoy being asked innumerable rhetorical/philosophical questions, followed by an opinion -posed as fact?
Do you appreciate the restating, in every conceivable and frequently twisted way possible, amid endless questions, the same basic biblical proverb: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” ?
Do you enjoy the muddling of definitions of words such as “liturgy” and “habit” which instead of construing confidence in intellectual comprehension produces an “I’m smarter than you because I use complex definitions and have PHD after my name requiring your subjugation” mentality?
Are you stimulated by illogical and contradictory ideas, swirling philosophical rhetoric, and incomplete reasoning on almost every page?
Do you can’t not love double negatives utilized with abandon?
If your answer to these questions is, “Yes”, YOU will really enjoy this book! If your answer is, “no”, I cannot stress enough to run away.
One of the rules in our home is:
“Do not create unnecessary work for others”. A good teacher can take a complicated subject and make it reachable. This author does exactly the opposite -creating lots of unnecessary mental gymnastics.
The application of “writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination” by the editors would well serve the reader.
While there are some good, thought-provoking analogies in this book,
obviously, this purchaser did not care for this writer’s mishmash writing style and wouldn’t recommend it. I pity the students that are required to read it.
Take a good look at how you spend your time and money. This will reveal what you really love. Make adjustments as needed and remember the children’s song “O Be Careful Little..” when choosing your daily activities.
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You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit Hardcover – Illustrated, April 5, 2016
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Print length224 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherBrazos Press
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Publication dateApril 5, 2016
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Dimensions5.8 x 1 x 8.6 inches
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ISBN-10158743380X
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ISBN-13978-1587433801
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Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
"Smith has an exceptional gift for disentangling things. Here again his efforts disentangle our minds and our hearts so our imaginations can be set free to be captured by and reflective of the kingdom of God. In these ways, Smith gives us a profound gift so we can seek and find what we need most."
--Mark Labberton, president, Fuller Theological Seminary
"Attention, all 'general readers'--not academics or specialists (though they're welcome too), but people who are tired of shoddy thinking and trendy slogans: this is the kind of book you've been hungering for. It's a bit like one of those 'Great Courses.' An inspired teacher, a compelling subject, and you. What are you waiting for?"
--John Wilson, editor, Books & Culture
"Informed by the insights of St. Augustine, You Are What You Love explores the substance of Christian discipleship as total life transformation through worship and liturgy. More than any other contemporary writer, Smith has helped me to understand how belief is embodied in us primarily through our habits of desire, and that God himself is the true satisfaction of our hungry hearts. This book should be read by every follower of Jesus."
--Sandra McCracken, singer and songwriter
"Jamie Smith writes with enormous understanding, authority, and warmth. Masterful!"
--Cornelius Plantinga Jr., president emeritus, Calvin Theological Seminary; author of Reading for Preaching: The Preacher in Conversation with Storytellers, Biographers, Poets, and Journalists
--Mark Labberton, president, Fuller Theological Seminary
"Attention, all 'general readers'--not academics or specialists (though they're welcome too), but people who are tired of shoddy thinking and trendy slogans: this is the kind of book you've been hungering for. It's a bit like one of those 'Great Courses.' An inspired teacher, a compelling subject, and you. What are you waiting for?"
--John Wilson, editor, Books & Culture
"Informed by the insights of St. Augustine, You Are What You Love explores the substance of Christian discipleship as total life transformation through worship and liturgy. More than any other contemporary writer, Smith has helped me to understand how belief is embodied in us primarily through our habits of desire, and that God himself is the true satisfaction of our hungry hearts. This book should be read by every follower of Jesus."
--Sandra McCracken, singer and songwriter
"Jamie Smith writes with enormous understanding, authority, and warmth. Masterful!"
--Cornelius Plantinga Jr., president emeritus, Calvin Theological Seminary; author of Reading for Preaching: The Preacher in Conversation with Storytellers, Biographers, Poets, and Journalists
From the Back Cover
You are what you love. But you might not love what you think.
Who and what we worship fundamentally shape our hearts. We may not realize, however, the ways our hearts are taught to love rival gods instead of the One for whom we were made. And while we desire to shape culture, we are not often aware of how culture shapes us. In You Are What You Love, popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith helps us recognize the formative power of culture and the transformative possibilities of Christian practices.
"A user-friendly introduction to the sweeping Augustinian insight that we are shaped most by what we love most, more so than by what we think or do. If sin and virtue are disordered and rightly ordered love, respectively, and if the only way to change is to change what we worship, then this will lead us to rethink how we conduct Christian work and ministry. Jamie gives some foundational ideas on how this affects our corporate worship, our Christian education and formation, and our vocations in the world. An important, provocative volume!"
--Tim Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City
"What do you love? is the most important question of our lives. With his characteristic ease, energy, and insightfulness, Smith explores in this compelling book not only what it is that we should love but also how we can learn to love what we should."
--Miroslav Volf, Yale Divinity School; author of A Public Faith and Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World
"In this wise and provocative book, Jamie Smith has the audacity to ask the question: Do we love what we think we love? It is not a comfortable question if we strive to answer it honestly. Smith presses us to do so and then shows us the renewed and abundant life that awaits Christians whose habits and practices--whose liturgies of living--work to open our hearts to our God and our neighbors."
--Alan Jacobs, Honors College, Baylor University
"Desiring the Kingdom influenced me more than any single book of the past decade. I--and the rest of the church--owe a great debt to Smith's scholarship, now made particularly accessible in You Are What You Love. As a means for reimagining the task of discipleship, this book should be required reading for every pastor, lay leader, and parent."
--Jen Pollock Michel, author of Christianity Today's 2015 Book of the Year, Teach Us to Want
Who and what we worship fundamentally shape our hearts. We may not realize, however, the ways our hearts are taught to love rival gods instead of the One for whom we were made. And while we desire to shape culture, we are not often aware of how culture shapes us. In You Are What You Love, popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith helps us recognize the formative power of culture and the transformative possibilities of Christian practices.
"A user-friendly introduction to the sweeping Augustinian insight that we are shaped most by what we love most, more so than by what we think or do. If sin and virtue are disordered and rightly ordered love, respectively, and if the only way to change is to change what we worship, then this will lead us to rethink how we conduct Christian work and ministry. Jamie gives some foundational ideas on how this affects our corporate worship, our Christian education and formation, and our vocations in the world. An important, provocative volume!"
--Tim Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City
"What do you love? is the most important question of our lives. With his characteristic ease, energy, and insightfulness, Smith explores in this compelling book not only what it is that we should love but also how we can learn to love what we should."
--Miroslav Volf, Yale Divinity School; author of A Public Faith and Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World
"In this wise and provocative book, Jamie Smith has the audacity to ask the question: Do we love what we think we love? It is not a comfortable question if we strive to answer it honestly. Smith presses us to do so and then shows us the renewed and abundant life that awaits Christians whose habits and practices--whose liturgies of living--work to open our hearts to our God and our neighbors."
--Alan Jacobs, Honors College, Baylor University
"Desiring the Kingdom influenced me more than any single book of the past decade. I--and the rest of the church--owe a great debt to Smith's scholarship, now made particularly accessible in You Are What You Love. As a means for reimagining the task of discipleship, this book should be required reading for every pastor, lay leader, and parent."
--Jen Pollock Michel, author of Christianity Today's 2015 Book of the Year, Teach Us to Want
About the Author
James K. A. Smith (PhD, Villanova University) is a popular speaker who has written many books, including Awaiting the King, Imagining the Kingdom, How (Not) to Be Secular, and the Christianity Today Book Award winners You Are What You Love, Desiring the Kingdom, and Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? He is professor of philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he holds the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview. He was editor in chief of Comment magazine from 2013 to 2018 and is now editor in chief of Image journal. Smith has written for Christianity Today, First Things, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Washington Post.
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Product details
- Publisher : Brazos Press; Illustrated edition (April 5, 2016)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 224 pages
- ISBN-10 : 158743380X
- ISBN-13 : 978-1587433801
- Item Weight : 13.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.8 x 1 x 8.6 inches
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Best Sellers Rank:
#4,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #49 in Christian Theology (Books)
- #101 in Christian Spiritual Growth (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2019
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Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2018
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I purchased this book as required reading for a class, and while I am not one to typically write book reviews, I feel compelled to in this case.
While I am sure that Dr. Smith is a morally upright man, whose faith in Christ is in the right place, his understanding of cultural anthropology is shallow at best. He appropriates terms to juxtapose his point, while completely neglecting their proper meaning in order to shoe horn his ideas. His understanding of Cartesian Philosophy is dim at best, basing his whole argument on the notion that we are often considered "thinking thingisms" (a low brow way of stating that we are merely thinking substances), simply because Descartes concluded in his meditations "I think, therefore I am", completely missing Descartes conclusion to his own existential crisis.
He is painfully contradictory, criticizing post-modern day church culture and yet in the same breathe, contends to use innovation not to change the church, but to bring it back to it's medieval glory. That's not to say that there are not good points in his book, such as how mega-churches and youth groups have created a zealous and emotive form of worship that is designed to serve the person, and not worship the Lord -- in that we are in total agreement. However he seems to have this notion that as "culture makers", we should use be using the tools of innovation to excited and inspire people back into the Church..
He uses logical fallacies akin to all squares are rectangles, therefore all rectangles are squares, in that he equates love to desire and therefore all desires are loves. This statement in and of itself is incredibly myopic and shows that his understanding of desire is very one dimensional. He grossly over uses the word liturgical where he ought be using ritual, and tries to "repurpose" it, as if it isn't commonly used today, properly, in the Catholic and Protestant language. While he is right to point out that there is a ritualistic modus operandi to things such as shopping and our day to day dealings, calling them liturgies is a stretch in that it is the wrong language to describe what he is seeing.
In many cases he seems to do what most post-modern "scholars" do nowadays, as well as what is expected in academia in that he uses a computer to find ideas and quotes that juxtapose his ideas, cites it, and calls it an academic, scholarly work all the while missing the greater point.
In every chapter he does a "what if I told you" line, where he comes off as a second rate, bargain bin Morpheus (from the Matrix), trying to sound more intelligent than he really is -- creating this almost rose tinted ideology about how reality ought work if only we approached it as "lovers" and not "thinking thingisms". The other problem is that in the first chapter, at the same time while asserting that we are "thinking thingisms", he goes onto say, that 95% of our days are automatic responses. So what are we, are we automatons, or are we thinking thingisms?
The biggest problem with this whole "love" ideology is that regardless of how it is presented it comes off as this high school romance fluff. While Smith does assert that notion, he does the exact same thing only giving it his own spin, and thus justifying it as different. Love and intellect, heart and mind, faith and deeds, are NOT mutually exclusive but instead are partners that walk hand in hand. When they are out of balance they produce discord and chaos -- we are not merely just "lovers", and we are not entirely "brains on a stick".
I brought up this book with some scholars that I am acquainted with and each time they said that it sounded like he was misrepresenting Augustinian Philosophy, and while I make no claims to be familiar with Augustin, nor have I read his works in depth, Smith does in fact state that his concept is based on Augustinian thought.
Unfortunately, while you can take a quote out of a book, you can misrepresent a quote by misunderstanding the greater whole and I believe that Smith does this greatly.
Towards the end of the book Smith basically just reiterates his premises and repeats himself not really making anymore sense than he did in the beginning. This book might be fine for some looking for some vapid, feel good theology, but in the broader sense it lacks depth and understanding of greater principles. If anything, I take this as an indication of just how deeply damaged and mindless the Church as a whole has become.
On the bright side, his mention of the movie "Stalker" did intrigue me, so I look forward to watching that in the near future.
While I am sure that Dr. Smith is a morally upright man, whose faith in Christ is in the right place, his understanding of cultural anthropology is shallow at best. He appropriates terms to juxtapose his point, while completely neglecting their proper meaning in order to shoe horn his ideas. His understanding of Cartesian Philosophy is dim at best, basing his whole argument on the notion that we are often considered "thinking thingisms" (a low brow way of stating that we are merely thinking substances), simply because Descartes concluded in his meditations "I think, therefore I am", completely missing Descartes conclusion to his own existential crisis.
He is painfully contradictory, criticizing post-modern day church culture and yet in the same breathe, contends to use innovation not to change the church, but to bring it back to it's medieval glory. That's not to say that there are not good points in his book, such as how mega-churches and youth groups have created a zealous and emotive form of worship that is designed to serve the person, and not worship the Lord -- in that we are in total agreement. However he seems to have this notion that as "culture makers", we should use be using the tools of innovation to excited and inspire people back into the Church..
He uses logical fallacies akin to all squares are rectangles, therefore all rectangles are squares, in that he equates love to desire and therefore all desires are loves. This statement in and of itself is incredibly myopic and shows that his understanding of desire is very one dimensional. He grossly over uses the word liturgical where he ought be using ritual, and tries to "repurpose" it, as if it isn't commonly used today, properly, in the Catholic and Protestant language. While he is right to point out that there is a ritualistic modus operandi to things such as shopping and our day to day dealings, calling them liturgies is a stretch in that it is the wrong language to describe what he is seeing.
In many cases he seems to do what most post-modern "scholars" do nowadays, as well as what is expected in academia in that he uses a computer to find ideas and quotes that juxtapose his ideas, cites it, and calls it an academic, scholarly work all the while missing the greater point.
In every chapter he does a "what if I told you" line, where he comes off as a second rate, bargain bin Morpheus (from the Matrix), trying to sound more intelligent than he really is -- creating this almost rose tinted ideology about how reality ought work if only we approached it as "lovers" and not "thinking thingisms". The other problem is that in the first chapter, at the same time while asserting that we are "thinking thingisms", he goes onto say, that 95% of our days are automatic responses. So what are we, are we automatons, or are we thinking thingisms?
The biggest problem with this whole "love" ideology is that regardless of how it is presented it comes off as this high school romance fluff. While Smith does assert that notion, he does the exact same thing only giving it his own spin, and thus justifying it as different. Love and intellect, heart and mind, faith and deeds, are NOT mutually exclusive but instead are partners that walk hand in hand. When they are out of balance they produce discord and chaos -- we are not merely just "lovers", and we are not entirely "brains on a stick".
I brought up this book with some scholars that I am acquainted with and each time they said that it sounded like he was misrepresenting Augustinian Philosophy, and while I make no claims to be familiar with Augustin, nor have I read his works in depth, Smith does in fact state that his concept is based on Augustinian thought.
Unfortunately, while you can take a quote out of a book, you can misrepresent a quote by misunderstanding the greater whole and I believe that Smith does this greatly.
Towards the end of the book Smith basically just reiterates his premises and repeats himself not really making anymore sense than he did in the beginning. This book might be fine for some looking for some vapid, feel good theology, but in the broader sense it lacks depth and understanding of greater principles. If anything, I take this as an indication of just how deeply damaged and mindless the Church as a whole has become.
On the bright side, his mention of the movie "Stalker" did intrigue me, so I look forward to watching that in the near future.
26 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries
David GIBBS
4.0 out of 5 stars
Habit forming
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 22, 2016Verified Purchase
The main point of this book is about the importance of habits. The author explores how habits are formed and how they form us based on what we love. It is both a battle and challenge reminding of the Apostle Paul speaking in Romans 8. He goes to great lengths to highlight the necessity of using our imagination and church tradition in shaping both the present and future.
It was a good read.
It was a good read.
9 people found this helpful
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WhatshallIuse
4.0 out of 5 stars
Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 15, 2017Verified Purchase
interesting
Reece Lewis-Henman
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 18, 2018Verified Purchase
I've read 7 pages and I've already had a tear to my eye and i've become a much purer person. This has been written by an absolute genius. It's easy to miss his teachings but for the right people at the right time this is an absolute gem! But I'm only 7 pages in.. heh heh heh
One person found this helpful
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Ian C
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 13, 2018Verified Purchase
Easy to read, thoughtful and useful in thinking about the 'whole' person.
Chad j
3.0 out of 5 stars
Surprising and interesting
Reviewed in Canada on May 6, 2021Verified Purchase
I learned a good deal from this book about my daily habits, my culture and milieu, and their significance--on levels I would never have conceived of.
We're being formed by everything in our environment, whether we like it, or know it, or not.
Powerful people understand this fact, and harness it for their own benefit--at our expense.
Don't worry; it's not that tricky to disengage from the wrong processes, and nurture good ones.
I found this book very insightful and to reveal phenomena I found really interesting--and practical--to discover.
We're being formed by everything in our environment, whether we like it, or know it, or not.
Powerful people understand this fact, and harness it for their own benefit--at our expense.
Don't worry; it's not that tricky to disengage from the wrong processes, and nurture good ones.
I found this book very insightful and to reveal phenomena I found really interesting--and practical--to discover.
2 people found this helpful
Report abuse
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