I’m currently reading my way through James K. A. Smith’s new book on relativism, which is a lot more interesting than it sounds.¹  A third of the way through the book, Smith brings up Augustine and his book on education and doctrine, Teaching Christianity, in the context of understanding the relationship between things.  Great quote about the different between “use” and “enjoyment.”

There are some things which are meant to be enjoyed, others which are meant to be used, yet others which do both the enjoying and the using.  Things that are to be enjoyed make us happy; things which are to be used help us on our way to happiness.

“Things that we enjoy,” Smith adds, “are ends in themselves, ultimate goods.  In fact Augustine says that the things we enjoy are the things we love.”  Returning to Augustine:

Enjoyment, after all, consists in clinging to something lovingly for its own sake, while use consists in referring what has come your way to what your love aims at obtaining, provided, that is, it deserves to be loved.

Smith again: “What you love is what you enjoy; and what you enjoy is what you love– what you treat as ultimate, what you treat as an end in itself. . . . Some things are meant to be used, while other things deserve to be loved. . . . This order of evaluation and obligation is what Augustine calls the ordo amoris, the right order of love.”

I really like this.  For Augustine, of course, God was the Ultimate Good.  People, I think, should be in line somewhere behind Him.  As much as I enjoy good movies or good books, I’d like to think that I love people more, that I enjoy being around them (and that they can be enjoyed for their own sakes).  I fail at this miserably, I think, but it is definitely something worthwhile to keep in heart and mind.

Oh, to love rightly.

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¹  The book is Who’s Afraid of Relativism? and it’s a great deal over my head.  But it contains one of the best discussions of one of my favorite movies, Lars and the Real Girl.  Smith is on something of a roll right now.  His book on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age is brilliant. [the picture, by the way, is from wikipedia.org]