I didn’t let my kids tell me they didn’t like certain foods. I had two reasons. First, I didn’t want them to tie what they ought to do too tightly to their preferences. What we like or dislike does not determine what we should do. In fact, often we are called to do the very things we don’t want to do, and we must find a way to do those things joyfully whether we prefer them or not. Making them try foods they didn’t like was good training ground for a dynamic they were going to face for the rest of their lives.
But I had another reason: preferences are not static. God has designed human beings with a remarkable capacity for changing what we like. We can train ourselves to learn to love things we didn’t previously prefer. I didn’t like math until I was asked to teach it. Now that I’ve been teaching it for three years, I’ve grown in my appreciation of math’s beauty and now love the subject. I know I’m not alone in this, for friends often tell me about things they enjoy now that they despised when they were children.
Notice that we’ve transitioned from talking about preferences to using words like “love,” “enjoy,” and “despised.” When we talk about preferences, or what we like or dislike, we are entering the domain of what older generations called “affections.” Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) located the very core of a person’s religious devotion in the affections. Affections are the inclinations of the soul, informed by knowledge, that provoke a person either toward some object or away from it. Affections are what drive people to act in the ways that they do.
Stronger and more permanent than emotions, a person’s affections are abiding inclinations of the will. Affections are manifested positively in love, desire, hope, joy, and gratitude toward certain objects, and negatively in hatred, fear, anger, and grief away from other objects. For Edwards, these inclinations of the will reveal the true devotion of the soul.
Having the core of one’s affections oriented toward God is the primary distinguishing mark of a Christian. A genuine Christian, in other words, will be driven by affections of love and joy toward God and the things of God. Someone who does not follow Christ will be driven in their affections either toward things that are forbidden by God or inordinately toward things allowed by God. In other words, affections are disordered, not only by being directed toward evil things, but also when they are directed toward good things out of proportion.
While human preferences for food or favorite football teams may be value neutral, preferences are not always so. We are commanded by God to prefer certain things. Or to shift again to the language of affections, God calls his people to rejoice in, love, and desire certain things and to despise other things. Our affections, in other words, are not always value neutral. We are responsible for training them according to the revealed will of God.
I never told my children to eat their tomatoes as a moral issue of right and wrong. Instead, I wanted to use the food on their plates as a training ground to teach them that their preferences, their likes and dislikes, are flexible. I wanted them to learn that they could teach themselves to prefer things they didn’t previously like. This training, I prayed, would be helpful in the future as they tried to line up their affections with the priorities of the kingdom of Christ—a matter of great moral consequence.
Our culture teaches us that preferences are static. We can’t help what we like and dislike. We’re born a certain way and thus destined to continue down a certain deterministic path. When it comes to affections, we’re passive. We can’t help it if we don’t like certain things!
In church culture, I’ve run into this mindset quite a few times. For example, I’ve had church members through the years tell me, “I don’t like children.” My response is some version of, “You need to repent.” Jesus doesn’t give us the option of liking children or not. He rebuked his disciples when they sought to turn children away, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Mark 10:14-15). I also once heard a pastor say, “I don’t like people.” Again, that’s not an option for any of Christ’s people and certainly not for pastors.
If you are in Christ, you ought to be training your affections toward such things as worship, fellowship, missions, mercy, truth, justice, and righteousness. Christ’s people must learn to love what God loves and hate what God hates.
How do you do this? To begin, I’d recommend two practices. First, pray the Bible. The Bible is God’s word, the revelation to mankind of God’s affections. When we pray the Bible, we train our hearts to prefer what God prefers, to will what God wills. Second, invest your life in God’s priorities. Our hearts will always follow our investments. If you spend all your savings on a new car, you are going to care about the condition of that car. Likewise, if you invest your time, money, and effort in the priorities of God, you are going to train your heart to love what God loves.