1. You are What you love. James Smith, a professor of philosophy at Calvin University in the United States, describes the identity of a person in his book, You are What You Love , in terms of what the person loves and worships. In order to appreciate the spiritual significance of such cultural practices, let’s call these sorts of formative, love-shaping rituals “liturgies.” It’s a bit of an old, churchy word, but I want to both revive and expand it because it crystallizes a final aspect of this model of the human person: to say “you are what you love” is synonymous with saying “you are what you worship.” The great Reformer Martin Luther once said, “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your god.” We become what we worship because what we worship is what we love. As we’ve seen, it’s not a question of whether you worship but what you worship—which is why John Calvin refers to the human heart as an “idol factory.” We can’t worship because we can’t love something as...
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