Hadn't hears the Simone Weil one before, but it will stick with me as well. Thanks Joel.

"When we think, speak, and act in ways contrary to how we were designed to think, speak, and act, we cultivate the wrong desires."

When I read this, it immediately made me think of one of my favorite quotes by C.S. Lewis:

“The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we so contains an appeal to desire…Indeed if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We—are far to easily pleased.”

Which in turn makes me think of another of my favorites, this from Simone Weil, who helps me understand why I'm so "easily please" by speaking to how we've shifted our understandings of good and evil:

“Nothing is so beautiful, nothing is so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and
perpetual ecstasy as the good; no desert is so dreary, monotonous and boring as evil. But
with fantasy it’s the other way around. Fictional good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied, intriguing, attractive, and full of charm.”

Beautiful connections, first of all. The interplay between desire and idolatry and the role of the church (and the academy for that matter) as necessarily confrontational are ideas I've been reflecting on lately.

Have you read James K.A. Smith's book "Desiring the Kingdom"? I believe this book speaks to both your posts on theological education and this most recent reflection on idolatry and desire. I can't sum up the entire book without killing the nuances but here are a few summaries:

1) Human beings are fundamentally creatures of desire and love (affective) and these loves and desires are most often shaped implicitly in a pre-cognitive manner through bodily practices.

2) This affective orientation is always directed, through practice, toward some vision of human flourishing, the good life or what Smith calls "kingdom"

3) The dominant culture in the West pulls us toward visions of human flourishing primarily through the cultural liturgies of the marketplace, the stadium, and nationalism.

4) Right ideas or "beliefs" are not enough to redirect these deep seated desires oriented as they are toward the dominant cultural visions of human flourishing or kingdoms.

5) The church (and academy) must "educate" desire through bodily counter practices or liturgies that address, confront and recalibrate the imagination with a vision of human flourishing rooted in the kingdom of God.

Must read!