meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Hank Unplugged: Essential Christian Conversations

You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit with James K.A. Smith

Hank Unplugged: Essential Christian Conversations

The Christian Research Institute

Education, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 809 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2020

⏱️ 63 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

You are what you love. But you might not love what you think. Christians desire to shape culture, yet are often unaware of how culture shapes us—unaware of the ways our hearts are being taught to love rival gods instead of the One for whom we were made. James K.A. Smith joins Hank Hanegraaff to discuss the major themes of his book, You Are What You Love, detailing the formative power of culture and the transformative possibilities of traditional Christian practices. Who and what we worship fundamentally shapes our hearts and James K.A. Smith wants Christians to recognize the critical role of the church in lives of Christians—that church should always be the hub and heart of Christian formation and discipleship. https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-cri2011hup/

Topics discussed include: How historic examples of the Christian faith were lost as Christianity remade itself in the image of the Enlightenment (2:00); the spiritual power of habit (6:10); regaining a perspective of the heart according to biblical language (12:05); the significance of liturgy in the Christian life and the way that disordered or rival liturgies negatively impact our lives (14:55); why James K.A. Smith believes worship is at the heart of discipleship (18:25); the importance of the church in the Christian life and as a means of sanctification to experience union with Christ (20:40); why knowing Church history is so important to our growth as Christians (23:40); James K.A. Smith draws a powerful connection between addiction recovery programs like AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) and effective church discipleship in order to point out the spiritual power of habit as well as the spiritual power of bad habit (27:00); what does it mean to have a proper understanding of worship? (30:10); the disenchantment of the Church and the power of spiritual formation through repetition (34:45); the transcendent strangeness of historic Christian worship as a key element to discipleship and evangelism (41:15); Christians cannot hope to recreate the world if we are constantly trying to recreate the church (50:45); the transformative power of practice and habituation in sanctification (55:00); one of the most powerful passages in all of theology—what does a faithful Christian life look like? (58:15).

Listen to Hank’s podcast and follow Hank off the grid where he is joined by some of the brightest minds discussing topics you care about. Get equipped to be a cultural change agent.
Archived episodes are on our Website and available at the additional channels listed below.
You can help spread the word about Hank Unplugged by giving us a rating and review from the other channels we are listed on.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

And welcome to another edition of Hank Unplugged, the podcast that is committed to bringing the most interesting, inspirational and informative people directly to your earbuds.

0:35.6

And on today's Hank Unplugged, I welcome James K.A. Smith.

0:41.3

He is a professor of philosophy at Calvin College.

0:44.3

He is trained as a philosopher and has expanded on that scholarly platform to become an engaged public intellectual as well as a cultural critic.

0:58.5

He's an award-winning author.

1:00.6

He's a widely traveled speaker, and he has written a number of influential books.

1:07.2

He regularly writes for magazines and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, which I read each and every morning.

1:15.4

But the book I want to focus on today is You Are What You Love.

1:20.6

It's subtitled The Spiritual Power of Habit.

1:27.2

And I think this subtitle is transcendently important. And we're going to talk about

1:33.4

all of that on today's Hank Unplugged. With that, I want to welcome James K.A. Smith. Thank you so much

1:41.8

for being on the podcast. Oh, it's a pleasure. It's great to talk to you. Thanks for your interest.

1:47.1

Well, I'm truly interested in your book. As I was telling you before we started the podcast,

1:52.3

one of my sons gave me this book, and he was very, very taken by the book for a number of reasons.

1:59.0

But in this book, you addressed the question of what kind of people we must become in order to be effective agents of renewal in today's culture.

2:10.9

And you start the book, or maybe I should say the premise of the book, with the notion that we've been taught to assume that human beings are fundamentally thinking things.

2:23.3

And you think there's something wrong with that. Can you elaborate?

2:26.3

Yeah, it might seem somewhat counterintuitive to imagine that the dominant working model or assumption in our culture is that

2:36.5

we are thinking things. But I do think that there's all kinds of cultural forces that still

2:42.7

tend to assume that human beings are kind of information processors at root. That is, we project on human beings this picture that we are

2:54.0

kind of brains on a stick. And we imagine that we make our way in the world by sort of rationally

3:02.1

processing information and making all of these logical decisions. And I think there's just curious ways that we overestimate the role that sort of cogitation, that thinking plays for human beings.

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Christian Research Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Christian Research Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.