Receiving the Gift of Our Mortality: James K. A. Smith

In his recent book, How to Inhabit Time, our guest James K. A. Smith explains that we must reckon with the past in order to discern the present and have hope for the future. Integrating popular culture, biblical exposition, and meditation, he helps us develop a sense of "temporal awareness" that is attuned to the texture of history, the vicissitudes of life, and the tempo of the Spirit.

Many Christians live a faith that is "nowhen." They are disconnected from the past or imagine they are somehow "above" the flux of history, as if every generation starts with a clean state. They lack an awareness of time and the effects of history--both personal and collective--and thus are naive about current issues, prone to nostalgia, or fixated on the end times and other doomsday versions of the future.

Smith shows that awakening to the spiritual significance of time is crucial for orienting faith in the twenty-first century. It allows us to become indebted to the past, oriented toward the future, and faithful in the present.

James K. A. Smith (PhD, Villanova University) is a popular speaker who has written many books, including On the Road with Saint Augustine, You Are What You Love, Desiring the Kingdom, and Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?--all Christianity Today Book Award winners. He is professor of philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he holds the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview. He is editor in chief of Image, a quarterly journal at the intersection of art, faith, and mystery. Smith has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Washington Post.