Kill the Body and the Head Will Fall

Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali had one of the greatest rivalries in boxing history. "The Thrilla in Manilla" still ranks as one of the best matches of all time. It was the third fight against one another, with Frazier taking the first, and Ali taking the second. Because of Ali's strategy of clinching and holding, he ended up defeating Frazier in the second bout. This prompted Frazier and his camp to devise a strategy that would allow them to do damage to Ali, even when he was clinching. "Kill the body and the head will fall." That was their strategy.In other words, Frazier was to relentlessly attack Ali's body. Or as he stated in an interview, "Once I've stopped your organs—when those kidneys and liver stop functioning, he can't move so fast... The organs in his body have to be functioning. If you slow them down, he cannot do what he wants to do." In other words, what his body wills, his head can't help but obey. Kill the body, and the head will fall.This axiom is true not only in boxing, but also in education and formation. Or, should I say, (re)education and (re)formation. The path to helping people become different does not run primarily through their head, but their kardia (in Greek, the affective center of our being." Our heart, or gut).The approach of Christian education, from Sunday school to the academy, has been primarily aimed at the head. That is, it's aimed at getting ideas and beliefs into the minds of people.Unfortunately this approach has not worked. It has not yielded the transformation that it promised. Instead, as Dallas Willard pointed out, we are now in a predicament where, "The average church-going Christian has a head full of vital truths about God and a body unable to fend off sin."That's not just a cool quote, it's a sad reality. Most church-goers would be able to pass an entry-level theology exam, but they are not able to do the things they know.The reason for this is because the place we live from is not primarily our minds. We are not, as James K.A. Smith notes in You Are What You Love, "Thinking Things." But this is what the curriculum driven, information cramming, approach assumes. It assumes that by giving enough information to think on, right action will follow. So, to return to the boxing analogy, Christian educators have been aiming at the head, going for the knockout blow, as it were. But it hasn't worked. Instead, people find themselves knowing right, but doing wrong. That is, doing what is in the center of their being.

Smith says it well, "the church has been trying to counter the consumer formation of the heart by focusing on the head and missing the target: it’s as if the church is pouring water on our head to put out a fire in our heart."

So the situation looks like this. We live in a world that targets our hearts. It presents to us a vision of the good life and invites us to buy into it. Get this, wear that, drive one of those, have this physique... And as our hearts are captured by the vision, we willingly and happily engage in rituals that promise to help us realize that vision (we worship). We are in love, even if we know better.This is why the information driven–"attack the head"–form of Christian education is almost worthless. Because it's fighting against love. It may be a disordered love, as Augustine says, but it's still love. Have you ever tried to convince a person who was soooooo in love that the object of their affection was no good for them? A fool's errand, right? Rod Stewart displays this perfectly, "If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right!"But that's been the approach of Christian education. We've been trying to educate people out of love. We've been attacking the head, and it hasn't yielded the desired results. The center of our being keeps saying, "Fine, I don't wanna be right."So, instead of jamming the head with more information, we need to understand that people are guided by their loves (their gut), and focus our efforts there. We do so by telling a more captivating story about the good life than the current story that has taken residence. But we don't simply feed more information, we capture their hearts and introduce rituals that will lead them toward the good life.In the gospels Jesus didn't go about head hunting, as it were; he wasn't primarily dropping off nuggets of information, but he did snatch people's hearts right out of their chests (metaphorically speaking, of course). People were absolutely gaga over him as he proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom. That story was far better than the good-life stories on their current best sellers lists. And once they heard it, and saw it embodied in him, they were in love. One woman even sacrificed costly oil for him. He had their hearts, and their heads (belief system, and Christian ideas) followed.As they fell in love with him they soon began wanting to inculcate his habits to become like him. "Lord, teach us to pray."This should be the aim of discipleship and Christian education today. The information is important, but if the center of our being has another love, the information will be almost useless. All it will do is condemn us for not doing what we know. But if we tell the story, proclaim the gospel of God's kingdom, and display the reality of it, that will do the work. And as we live in the kingdom, we can help introduce rituals that people will eagerly participate in, so that they can realize more of that vision.You kill the body, and the head will fall. Too crude or violent? Fine. You captivate the kardia (the affective center of a persons being), and then their head will be captivated, too. They will be transformed.