We need to (regularly) calibrate our hearts, tuning them to be directed to the Creator, our magnetic north. It is crucial for us to recognize that our ultimate loves, longings, desires, and cravings are learned. And because love is a habit, our hearts are calibrated through imitating exemplars and being immersed in practices that, over time, index our hearts to a certain end. We learn to love, then, not primarily by acquiring information about what we should love but rather through practices that form the habits of how we love. These sorts of practices are “pedagogies” of desire, not because they are like lectures that inform us, but because they are rituals that form and direct our affections. | James K. Smith, You Are What You Love
This Sunday, we looked at two stories that gave us two very different reactions to Jesus. The first was the chief priests trying to decide what to do about the problem that Jesus was creating through His signs and teaching. He was going to bring Roman retribution on the Jewish people, and so they discussed ways to eliminate the threat.
Then we looked at the story of Mary pouring perfume, worth a year’s wages, on Jesus’ feet and washing it with her hair. This extravagant act was her way of showing that she valued nothing more than the Savior in her midst.
In both of these stories we see an act that displays the content of the heart. The chief priests main concern was the ability to comfortably practice their religion and live their lives. Mary’s heart was oriented toward Jesus and her love for Him overwhelmed any rational financial decisions. Their actions reveal what they love. We talked about how the order of our loves will lead us to worship or sin. That loving the Lord with our heart, soul, and mind, is not only the first and greatest commandment, but it is the key to living as God created us to be.
The difficulty is not in recognizing your disordered love, but in trying to figure out how to reorder it. How do we love God more? In the book, You Are What You Love, James K. Smith describes our love as something that needs to be tuned; we tune our desires through practices and habits. So the way to love God more centrally is to set up a liturgy of life that continually brings all things back to Him. In other words, we structure our priorities to be about Him, and our love for Him will follow. Jesus describes this in Matthew 6, saying:
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. | 19–21
Jesus says that we should be living in such a way that we are investing in heavenly, eternal things that cannot be destroyed. He then tells us that where we place treasure will be where our heart ends up. In this, Jesus is encouraging us to do the work of conforming our heart. We are not stuck in an endless loop of selfishness and sin; we can work to reorient our loves. We do this by placing our treasure, investing all we have, in eternal habits. In other words, we obey the commands of God and follow the order of life that He has revealed to us. This includes regular participation in church, prayer, Bible reading, but also His description of work, family, parenting, and community participation.
What we experience in this is not just a growing love for Jesus, but a greater appreciation for the gift of grace. Not only has Jesus done the work to justify us, but He has opened our eyes to His truth woven through His creation. Our good God has created a way to live and love that allows us to experience the eternal while still living in the temporary. When we put God in His appropriate place, it gives us the perspective to rightly love the rest of His creation. As He said later in the same chapter:
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. | 33
Which is a good reminder to us that we give up nothing in setting our love on God. Our concern, as we order our loves, is that giving all to God will take away from this life. Organizing our habits to give to Him will leave us with less. Things do not work that way in the Kingdom of God. What you give to God and invest in His glory, you will reap eternally. The promise He makes here is that the more that you invest in eternity, the more you will both love the eternal God and be able to live this life with confidence and joy.
Trust Him, act on it, and let your desire to obey follow your habit.