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Desiring The Kingdom Summary

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Book Review
On
“Desiring the Kingdom”

Matthew Sproule
Marketplace Ministry

James Enns
AS 400
November 9, 2017. What we dwell on grows in us and balloons to form our identity. In the book “Desiring the Kingdom,” by James K. A. Smith, the author writes on the themes of liturgy and desire with deft aspirations to reshape the development of Christian education. This new aged Augustinian prose on Christian formation shows all that is at stake with the choices we make, it reforms our desires from worldviews to the heart of God. Smith describes the liturgies of contemporary life being played out in human industries and then reimagines them where specifically students can learn to love in the world and not just think about its social institutions. …show more content…

Our postmodern culture is saturated with liturgy; although, not in the places you would expect: social institutes. Even so, these structures are not always beneficial. With over cognitive approaches surrounding Christian formation, Smith offers a counter – neglect false desires and reorder Love as the primary.
This prose compares desire and formation and tells of their relationship within education. A dominant paradigm in Christian formation: we went too far and became what we loved, and in turn forgot whom we were loved by. Smith envisions the American culture and Christian worship as contesting liturgies of formation, he invites us to recognize this through noticing the idols we worship in everyday life. Challenging those committed to worldview education to grasp that this is not a mere process of sharing information, but an ongoing development of character formation – impacting our minds, bodies and spirits. Communal practices, sacred or secular, form our longings and outline us into a society with precise interests – for better or worse. Smith shows these idolatrous rituals are formatted to sustain the state and the market; although, they are clearly insufficient to support the practice that is modern academia. Contemporary practices are not consistent with God. Smith argues, God’s embodied love should be central, without paying attention to the ordering we misshape our own

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