In 2008, if you wanted to get to Machu Picchu, you had to take a long, blue train that rolled slowly through Peru’s jungle and mountains. The train stopped several times along the way so riders could refresh, and maybe shop, at little shanty markets, with buildings made of concrete blocks, plywood, and thatch roofs. At one of these stops I asked a merchant for a baños and he pointed…
What Was So Funny?
I carry something precious deep inside me but I cannot access it. I possess an absolute treasure-trove that sparkles and glows somewhere just out of reach. I think you possess…
Levitating with Augustine
Somewhere in my early teens I wanted to levitate. The thought of defying gravity struck me as an obvious life skill only a fool would neglect. I went to the…
To Judge or Not to Judge? Seeking God Among the Pigs and the Dogs (Matthew 7:6)
Jesus kicks off Matthew 7 with a firm warning about the dangers of judgement, then follows this up by mocking those who judge the speck of dust in the eyes…
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Confident Humility:
Becoming Your Full Self Without Becoming Full Of Yourself
"In the spirit of Dallas Willard... Dan addresses one of the most persistent problems that Christians face: Why does our faith in God’s transforming love transform us so little?”
-From the foreword by Greg Boyd, author of Letters From a Skeptic
Almost all self-help books emerge from one of two flawed views of the self, and these mutually exclusive ditches are destructive. The Ditch of Smallness says that people are fundamentally bad and that humanity's greatest spiritual threat is pride. The Ditch of Bigness says the exact opposite: people are fundamentally good, and shame is our greatest danger.
Dan Kent presents a third view, a road between the ditches. He shows how the humility Jesus revealed offers the most accurate and freeing view of the self. Whereas shame and arrogance are dysfunction steroids (making our depression darker, our anxiety tighter, our addictions stickier, and so forth), humility, as Jesus teaches it, counteracts both shame and pride, thereby subverting two major psychological forces that thwart us.
Once we embrace this new way of seeing ourselves--how Jesus sees us--we begin to relate to ourselves, to others, and to the world around us in a way that allows us to overcome a whole host of vices and self-sabotaging behaviors. Furthermore, whereas the ditches both lead to powerlessness and passivity, humility as Jesus teaches it is empowering, fosters proactivity, and serves as a scaffold for true confidence.
Confident Humilty Learning Tools:
Miracles & Microscopes
Dan Kent shows us how faith & science can work together and complement one another. He then offers the “Unity of Consciousness” argument, then shows how the miracle of the self can ground our personhood, our dignity, our equality, and the wide range of amazing teachings of the Bible, like: prayer, immortality, free will, the Holy Spirit, and so much more!
One With Authority
Jesus spoke with authority, but what does this authority mean for today when we tend to distrust authority figures? Dan addresses why acting on Jesus’s teaching is so crucial to actually understanding what Jesus said. Jesus’s teachings are not merely facts we believe. They are deep truths we can only fully know when we live them out.
The Absurdity of Loneliness
Why didn’t Jesus leave us any of his own writings? The answer to this may shine a light on the profound loneliness crisis the world is experiencing…
Study Guides
Daniel Kent (@thatdankent) was born to a 14 year old mother in the humorless tundra of Northern Minnesota. He went to college to figure out if God exists and taught his first college course when he was 25. He wrote his first novel when he was 12 (a nature adventure story, hand-written on 20 sheets of loose-leaf paper and sent off to New York for publication. Unfortunately, the publishing company was "not considering material of this type at this time").
Due to a chronic tendency to underestimate the difficulty of a task, combined with a spirit of stubborn determination, Daniel decided to learn programming. Realizing he was a lousy programmer, he returned to his love of writing. His first book ("The Training of KX12") has been a surprise hit. In 2019, Fortress Press published his best-selling book: Confident Humility: Becoming Your Full Self Without Becoming Full of Yourself.
He is the editor in chief (and occasional contributor) for Greg Boyd's blog ReKnew.org and is the host of the wildly popular podcast: "Greg Boyd: Apologies & Explanations."
