As a child, I roamed the woods behind my house, creating mental trail maps that transformed the unknown ‘wilderness’ into an ordered world. A consequence of exploring is getting lost. I still remember the unsettled feeling of being lost in the woods, unsure of which trail to take as twilight settled in. Most of us recognize the experience of being lost—in space, at least. James K. A. Smith’s latest work teaches us how to find our way not in space, but in time.

Many Christians suffer from dyschronometria, argues Smith, that disease that renders us unable to know what time it is. Smith’s not talking about plotting yourself on an eschatological chart, either. In fact, those charts are a symptom of the problem. They express a desire for us to transcend our creatureliness, to live atemporally. But that’s not how we’ve been created to exist. Smith states it clearly: “To be a creature is to be passing away, amid things passing away” (23).

Knowing what time it is means living in the present, not the past. Christians are called to resist the the dehumanizing lure of nostalgia and it’s darker cousin, shame. We live through seasons towards a future not yet fully revealed.

Eden is never celebrated as our destination. Our pilgrimage is not an Odyssean return. We are pulled toward a home we’ve never visited. (150)

How to Inhabit Time draws on Smith’s earlier work. You can hear echoes of Who’s Afraid of Relativism in his call to embrace our contingency. You can hear his love for Augustine, more fully expressed in his earlier On the Road with Saint Augustine. As with all of Smith’s books, you’ll find generative interaction with major philosophers. In this case, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl, and Heidegger. As you might expect given the last two names on that list, phenomenology looms large.

This book is an ideal book to read during your 40s or later. If you’re younger than that, you may not have lived enough to grasp the significance of Smith’s perspective. How to Inhabit Time is nothing less than a call to embrace our past, recognize our present, and live into our future.

Smith, James K. A. How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now. Brazos Press, 2022.