You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit | Examining How Culture Shapes Us | Deepening Discipleship through Christian Practices - Hardcover

James K. A. Smith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 158743380X ISBN 13: 9781587433801

Publisher: Brazos Press, 2016

Synopsis

Christianity Today Book Award Winner ● Martin Institute and Dallas Willard Center Book Award

You are what you love. But you might not love what you think.

Who and what we worship fundamentally shape our hearts. We may not realize, however, the ways our hearts are taught to love rival gods instead of the One for whom we were made. And while we desire to shape culture, we are not often aware of how culture shapes us.

In this book, popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith helps us recognize the formative power of culture and the transformative possibilities of Christian practices.

Includes:
● film, literature, and music illustrations to engage readers
● new material on marriage, family, youth ministry, and faith and work
● individual and communal practices for shaping the Christian life

About this title

About the Author

James K. A. Smith (PhD, Villanova University) is a popular speaker and the award-winning author of a number of influential books, including Desiring the Kingdom, You Are What You Love, On the Road with Saint Augustine, How to Inhabit Time, and How (Not) to Be Secular. 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. Smith served as editor in chief of Comment magazine (2013-2018) and Image journal (2019-2024). He has written for Christianity Today, The Christian Century, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.

From the Back Cover

You are what you love. But you might not love what you think.

Who and what we worship fundamentally shape our hearts. We may not realize, however, the ways our hearts are taught to love rival gods instead of the One for whom we were made. And while we desire to shape culture, we are not often aware of how culture shapes us. In You Are What You Love, popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith helps us recognize the formative power of culture and the transformative possibilities of Christian practices.

"A user-friendly introduction to the sweeping Augustinian insight that we are shaped most by what we love most, more so than by what we think or do. If sin and virtue are disordered and rightly ordered love, respectively, and if the only way to change is to change what we worship, then this will lead us to rethink how we conduct Christian work and ministry. Jamie gives some foundational ideas on how this affects our corporate worship, our Christian education and formation, and our vocations in the world. An important, provocative volume!"
--Tim Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City

"What do you love? is the most important question of our lives. With his characteristic ease, energy, and insightfulness, Smith explores in this compelling book not only what it is that we should love but also how we can learn to love what we should."
--Miroslav Volf, Yale Divinity School; author of A Public Faith and Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World

"In this wise and provocative book, Jamie Smith has the audacity to ask the question: Do we love what we think we love? It is not a comfortable question if we strive to answer it honestly. Smith presses us to do so and then shows us the renewed and abundant life that awaits Christians whose habits and practices--whose liturgies of living--work to open our hearts to our God and our neighbors."
--Alan Jacobs, Honors College, Baylor University

"Desiring the Kingdom influenced me more than any single book of the past decade. I--and the rest of the church--owe a great debt to Smith's scholarship, now made particularly accessible in You Are What You Love. As a means for reimagining the task of discipleship, this book should be required reading for every pastor, lay leader, and parent."
--Jen Pollock Michel, author of Christianity Today's 2015 Book of the Year, Teach Us to Want

From the Inside Flap

"Smith has an exceptional gift for disentangling things. Here again his efforts disentangle our minds and our hearts so our imaginations can be set free to be captured by and reflective of the kingdom of God. In these ways, Smith gives us a profound gift so we can seek and find what we need most."
--Mark Labberton, president, Fuller Theological Seminary

"Attention, all 'general readers'--not academics or specialists (though they're welcome too), but people who are tired of shoddy thinking and trendy slogans: this is the kind of book you've been hungering for. It's a bit like one of those 'Great Courses.' An inspired teacher, a compelling subject, and you. What are you waiting for?"
--John Wilson, editor, Books & Culture

"Informed by the insights of St. Augustine, You Are What You Love explores the substance of Christian discipleship as total life transformation through worship and liturgy. More than any other contemporary writer, Smith has helped me to understand how belief is embodied in us primarily through our habits of desire, and that God himself is the true satisfaction of our hungry hearts. This book should be read by every follower of Jesus."
--Sandra McCracken, singer and songwriter

"Jamie Smith writes with enormous understanding, authority, and warmth. Masterful!"
--Cornelius Plantinga Jr., president emeritus, Calvin Theological Seminary; author of Reading for Preaching: The Preacher in Conversation with Storytellers, Biographers, Poets, and Journalists

Edition details

• Publisher: Brazos Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 158743380X
• ISBN 13: 9781587433801
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224