14/09/2023
The Books on My Shelf
#4 Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation - James K. A. Smith
I bought this a long time ago (it was published 2009) and made a few attempts at reading it. I sometimes wondered why I couldn’t see it through. Tonight it dawned on me that now is the right time, the most relevant time of my life to read it. Smith asks the question, “What is at stake in a distinctly Christian education?”
At present, I am involved in writing a 2-year cycle of curriculum for a special assistance school, run by Christians but not delivered as Christian except in that we love children who are all to some degree “the least of these”. Students enrolled in our school all require extensive adjustments in order to access the curriculum. “Mainstream” education didn’t work out. There is something distinctly redemptive in the work we do.
Having said that, ours is not an evangelistic endeavour. At times, we do share our faith, if only to explain how God has rescued us, or blessed us abundantly, or taught us humility and grace.
So, back to the book. Smith asks, what makes education “Christian”? It is not enough to impart a worldview or perspective that is largely information-based. There are secular liturgies, he argues, that form us in ways far more powerful than a primarily didactic education can; they operate at a sensual level, awakening our bodies and imaginations to a vision of the good life that animates and motivates us. It may not matter that the Bible and its teachings are true if they are not desirable.
Imagination and desire are formed in a whole host of ways and contexts that, in the end, constitute rituals more familiar to us than prayer or communion.
If Christian education seeks to form “lovers of God” rather than “successful people with a Christian perspective”, we need to be awake to the power and potential of secular *and* sacred liturgies, rather than relying on the rightness of our information.
