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6566866
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We aren't really motivated by abstract ideas or pushed by rules and duties. Instead some panoramic tableau of what looks like flourishing has an alluring power that attracts
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James K.A. Smith |
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d71623f
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Not surprisingly, where Barnes really appreciates the haunting of immanence is in the realm of the aesthetic.
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James K.A. Smith |
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7747efd
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You might have Bible verses on the wall in every room of the house and yet the unspoken rituals reinforce self-centeredness rather than sacrifice. Thus
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James K.A. Smith |
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d0caa99
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Those evangelicals who have been raised and shaped by forms of Christianity that are roughly "fundamentalist" will either: a. become taken with the modern moral order and thus sort of replay the excarnational development of modernity, just now a few centuries later, sort of catching up with the wider culture; so under the guise of the "emerging church" or "progressive" evangelicalism, we'll be set on a path to something like Protestant libe..
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James K.A. Smith |
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0551b3a
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What if the primary work of education was the transforming of our imagination rather than the saturation of our intellect?
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James K.A. Smith |
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too often we look for the Spirit in the extraordinary when God has promised to be present in the ordinary.5
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James K.A. Smith |
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4c0e89a
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learning what seems insignificant can be training us for (and about) what's essential--that what's ultimate can unwittingly be at stake in what appears to be innocuous.
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James K.A. Smith |
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6fd1da8
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The soul therefore needs three things: eyes which it can use aright, looking, and seeing.
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James K.A. Smith |
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05d85e8
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worship is not primarily a venue for innovative creativity but a place for discerning reception and faithful repetition. That
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James K.A. Smith |
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4624378
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ethical knowledge is "the emplotment of one's life in the theological narrative"
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James K.A. Smith |
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e5cb975
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One could say of Augustine what Leslie Jamison notes about Don Gately in Infinite Jest: He's "no saint. That's why he made salvation seem possible."
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James K.A. Smith |
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d092671
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What draws people away from traditional, institutional religion is largely the success of consumer culture -- the "stronger form of magic" found in the ever-new glow of consumer products"
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James K.A. Smith |
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f01cfe5
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When we gather, we are responding to a call to worship; that call is an echo and renewal of the call of creation to be God's image bearers for the world, and we fulfill the mission of being God's image bearers by undertaking the work of culture making.
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James K.A. Smith |
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a0f72e7
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so too we extend mutual greetings because God has welcomed us.
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James K.A. Smith |
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3f1d538
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This coupling of market forces and the crowd's demand for publicity means that everyone dreams of monetizing their Instagram feed. And that effectively becomes the ethos of a society.
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James K.A. Smith |
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5ade4f1
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we are witnessing to the fact that God's action in the cross and resurrection has made it possible for humanity to be human, to take up their creational vocation
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James K.A. Smith |
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6fe2e13
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Worship your intellect, being seen as smart--you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
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James K.A. Smith |
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4f91522
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What if the primary work of education was the transforming of our imagination rather than the saturation of our intellect? And what if this had as much to do with our bodies as with our minds?
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James K.A. Smith |
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6406f8e
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Because our hearts are oriented primarily by desire, by what we love, and because those desires are shaped and molded by the habit-forming practices in which we participate, it is the rituals and practices of the mall--the liturgies of mall and market--that shape our imaginations and how we orient ourselves to the world.
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James K.A. Smith |
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116c8ce
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The core claim of this book is that liturgies[ 8]--whether "sacred" or "secular"--shape and constitute our identities by forming our most fundamental desires and our most basic attunement to the world. In short, liturgies make us certain kinds of people, and what defines us is what we love."
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James K.A. Smith |
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f1c7402
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the Creator in whom we find our "rest" is only all too eager to welcome us into communion." --
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James K.A. Smith |
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b95529a
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In short, God's welcome is a gracious way of reminding us of our utter dependence, cutting against the grain of myths of self-sufficiency that we've been immersed in all week long.
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James K.A. Smith |
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This dependence and lack of self-sufficiency is then often affirmed horizontally, as it were, by encouraging the congregation to greet one another, expressing welcome
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James K.A. Smith |
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301cbb7
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How does that happen? I'm suggesting that Christian education has, for too long, been concerned with information rather than formation; thus Christian colleges have thought it sufficient to provide a Christian perspective, an intellectual framework, because they see themselves as fostering individual "minds in the making."[6] Hand in hand with that, such an approach reduces Christianity to a denuded intellectual framework that has diminishe..
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James K.A. Smith |
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bcc321d
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so too we extend mutual greetings because God has welcomed us. As recipients of God's greeting, we become imitators of God by extending welcome to our neighbors and brothers and sisters.
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James K.A. Smith |
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4ee2f73
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singing is a full-bodied action that activates the whole person--or at least more of the whole person than is affected by merely sitting and passively listening, or even reading and reciting texts.
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James K.A. Smith |
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5967cdd
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In short, music and song seem to stand as packed microcosms of what it means to be human.
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James K.A. Smith |
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Second, singing is a mode of expression that seems to reside in our imagination more than other forms of discourse.
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James K.A. Smith |
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Music gets "in" us in ways that other forms of discourse rarely do."
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James K.A. Smith |
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273e6de
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A song gets absorbed into our imagination in a way that mere texts rarely do.
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James K.A. Smith |
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6171a3e
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This knitting of song into our bodies is why memorization of Scripture through song is often so effective. Song soaks into the very core of our being, which is why music is an important constitutive element of our identity.
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James K.A. Smith |
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70e1b40
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Third, the church's music and songs constitute what Richard Mouw describes as a "compacted theology."
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James K.A. Smith |
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Scripture envisions the identity and faith of the people of God as a song.
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James K.A. Smith |
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what we sing says something significant about who we are--and whose we are.
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James K.A. Smith |
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3aed412
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Implicit in Christian worship is a vision not just for spiritual flourishing but also for human flourishing; this is not just practice for eternal bliss; it is training for temporal, embodied human community.
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James K.A. Smith |
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ee773ab
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Christian discipleship is the shape of what it means to be a renewed human being and constitutes a restoration of the gift and call of being human that was given and announced in the Garden of Eden.
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James K.A. Smith |
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1d7825c
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The place we unconsciously strive toward is what ancient philosophers of habit called our --our goal, our end. But the we live toward is not something we primarily know or believe or think about; rather, our is what we , what we long for, what we crave. It is less an ideal that we have ideas about and more a vision of "the good life" that we desire."
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James K.A. Smith |
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d7798b5
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In the action of gathering, there is a visceral training of our imagination that shapes how we subsequently think about our identity and our calling as human, in relation to God and in relation to others.
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James K.A. Smith |
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6c4af96
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With hands raised, the minister extends God's welcome and blessing to the gathered congregation, who may receive the welcome and blessing with hands open in a spirit of mutual welcome and expectation.
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James K.A. Smith |
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Having fallen prey to the intellectualism of modernity, both Christian worship and Christian pedagogy have underestimated the importance of this body/story nexus--this inextricable link between imagination, narrative, and embodiment--thereby forgetting the ancient Christian sacramental wisdom carried in the historic practices of Christian worship and the embodied legacies of spiritual and monastic disciplines. Failing to appreciate this, we..
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James K.A. Smith |
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In contrast, right here in Christian worship we see a very different understanding of the good: humanity and all of creation flourish when they are rightly ordered to a telos that is not of their own choosing but rather is stipulated by God.
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James K.A. Smith |
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a098514
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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."
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James K.A. Smith |
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514aa0b
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A reordering of creation has already broken into creation in the person of Jesus Christ, and we are gathering as a people in order to practice for the arrival of the kingdom in its fullness--and thus in order to be trained to be a kingdom-kind-of-people in the meantime, as witnesses to that kingdom, in and through our work as cultural agents.
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James K.A. Smith |
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f689d69
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like the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, baptism is a microcosm of the entirety of Christian worship and the story of God, in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.
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James K.A. Smith |