Desiring the Kingdom (Cultural Liturgies): Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation

A total Copernican shift in not only the "what" of Christian teaching, but much more significantly the "how." Moving away from the geocentric person as thinker model and gradually working up to the heliocentric person as lover model shows the entire person by evaluating their actions through a filter of what love or "kingdom" they desire and the actions they take in pursuit of that kingdom. More impressively Smith imparts how these kingdoms which cultivate unconscious actions can be changed and manipulated by the conscious mind without undermining the existence of that unconscious personality frequently at odds with the conscious mind. The impact this kind of shift has on the Church is limited only by will of the one who undergoes it. If we as Christians believe that Christ has imparted to us the Holy Spirit which works gradually to shift our kingdom to "The Kingdom" (of Heaven) then we should see fruits in our unconscious actions. Unlike most Christians on this kind of personality-dualizing issue the author resists the temptation to call prayer the miracle drug that solidifies this change and instead calls the reader to evaluate their what disciplines or they undergo and to alter them *through practice* to bring them into conformity with the believers altered love or "kingdom." (said kingdom being altered from the kingdoms of earth to the Kingdom of Heaven). I do have an issue prosaically: Run-on sentences litter the book. Not a paragraph goes by that I do not need to remove 2 or 3 prepositional phrases in order to properly understand the sentence and to then gradually work back in the phrases I'd omitted. C.S. Lewis had a similar issue with prose in his signature classics, but that his are, in my opinion, more forgivable because they are transcriptions of radio broadcasts versus Smith who went directly to the written medium and still neglected to alter his prose to a more easily-comprehensible style. My only other complaint is against myself for being an undergraduate-educated seminarian who could not follow some of the more advanced vernacular of this outstandingly written piece. Throughout the first chapter I found myself running to my dusty theological dictionary every page or so to refresh myself on the meanings of words with which the author expects me to be intimately familiar. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, but do yourself a favor and set aside some time and a notepad in order to follow the beautifully chaotic truths laid out to show that we are defined by the kingdoms we desire, or to put in a way more approachable to Augustinian schools of thought: we, as people, are defined by the love we practice.

I am enjoying the book itself thus far, but in translating this to an e-book there are MANY places where commas have been omitted and words have been merged together. It's not unreadable, but definitely distracting, and makes me wish I had just ordered the hard copy.

Its mind burgling academic piece which is right about human motives at church . I m waiting for my hard copy I m struggling with ebook access.