http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2016/june/kids-want-what-we-teach-them-to-want.html  

翻译: Ruth Wei

Habit proves to be powerful liturgy.

习惯是有力的敬拜仪式。

——Jen PollockMichel

“Do your kids ever complain about going to church every week?” my friend asks.

我朋友问我：“你的孩子有没有抱怨过每周都要去教会？”

She and her husband were raised in small countryside churches in the south of France, and while they were never zealous for the faith, they dutifully attended mass on Christmas and Easter until recent years. My friends accept the seeming inevitability of spiritual lapse.Sunday worship, hardly exhilarating in its own right, stands to compete with birthday parties, competitive sports, and the luxury of sleeping late.

朋友和她丈夫都是在法国南部的小乡村教会长大，直到近年来他们才对信仰大发热心，之前都是义务性的去参加圣诞节和复活节。朋友们都认为灵性低潮是必然的。周日的礼拜本身并不能让人兴奋，反倒是一些生日聚会，竞技运动和晚睡更让人高兴。

Remarkably, our five children don’t complain. This isn’t to say that our 13-year-old son doesn’t occasionally look bored during the sermon. It isn’t to deny that our twin eight-year-old boys wiggle distractedly during prayer, asking in loud whispers, “When is this going to be over?” On any given Sunday, our children may be more or less engaged in the 90-minute liturgy that moves us from a call to worship to a final benediction,but they do come willingly.

显然，我的五个孩子没有抱怨。这并不是说我的13岁的儿子在听讲道的时候不无聊，也不是说8岁双胞胎儿子在祷告时不分心，他们经常大声的问：“什么时候结束？”每个周日，我的孩子们都参加大概90分钟的礼拜，从敬拜开始一直到祝福结束，他们都是乐意的参加。

Everyone is a worshiper, and every habitis a liturgy. This is the central premise of James K. A. Smith’s research in the last several years, whose work David Brooks highlighted in his recent New York Times column, “Putting Grit in Its Place.” Brooks laments that our educational system, with its emphasis on grade-point average, forges “grit”—the mindless perseverance for extrinsic reward. But grit can only get us so far.Citing Smith’s research, Brooks reminds readers that what really motivates human beings is desire. Our lives are oriented by our vision of the good life.

每个人都是敬拜者，每个习惯都是一种礼拜仪式。这个是詹姆斯·K.A.史密斯最近几年研究的中心，而他的观点也被作者大卫布鲁克斯引用到《纽约时报》专栏：“各就其位”。布鲁克斯哀叹我们的教育系统只注重平均积分点，以盲目的追求外在的奖赏为目的来塑造“个体”。至今我们也就不过如此。引用史密斯的研究，布鲁克斯想要读者明白真正能够激励人类的是渴求。我们的生命也是由我们追求好的生活来导向的。

Smith’s research has been important notonly for my work as a writer, but also as a parent. He argues against the Enlightenment idea that “thinking” is most fundamental to human person hood,illustrating instead that the human being is primarily a desiring animal. Inother words, human beings do not act according to their deepest held beliefs; Instead, they do (and are) what they love. The formation of longing is the business of parents and educators, pastors and politicians. We can’t simply teach our children, our congregation, or our citizenry to know the right thingor to act in right ways. We must help them to love right things.

史密斯的研究不但对作为作者的我很重要，对作为家长的我也是非常重要。他不同意“思考”应该是人格的最基本的观点，指出做为人类更基本的应该是渴求。换句话说，人类并不是靠着深厚的信仰而生活，而是靠着他们喜欢做什么。而渴望是要靠家长，教育者，牧师和政治家来形成的。我们不能简单的教导我们的孩子，会众或市民分辨是否或是正确的去做事情。我们必须帮助他们去爱正确的事。

The trick is that the only way to cultivate right desires is to practice our way into them. This isn’t a new idea, even if behavioral and sociological research seems newly interested in the power of habit. Ancient wisdom characterized virtue as the acquisition of good habits. To develop the character of courage, self-restraint, cooljudgment, and determination, one needed an everyday training regimen that routinized “good” behavior and eventually educated the impulse—or, as we might say, formed the right desires. To become a kind person, for example, was to choose kindness a thousand times, against the will, enabling one to choose it willingly on the thousandth-and-first time.

只有一个培养正确渴望的方法，那就是将我们的方法适用到他们身上。虽然行为学和社会学研究都对习惯的功效非常感兴趣，但是这并不是新观点。古代智慧将美德定义为养成良好习惯。为了培养勇敢，自制，公正，还有果断，那个人必须每天受到“好”行为的培训，最终才能养成动机或更正式点说美好的渴望。举个例子，如果要成为一个良善的人，那就必须要上千次的违背自己的意愿去选择向善，这样才能在一千零一次的时候乐意去行善。