You wanna know the secret of how I kept my hundreds so crisp and flat? I’d take 5 or 6 bills and place them in the middle of a Bible commentary, then stack those commentaries on the floor, Romans on top of Matthew, on top of John, on top of Exodus, and so forth. After a day or so: crisp, flat bills. Just about every day I brought home a…
15 Reasons Open Theism is TRUE (a reply to Andrew Wilson)
Recently, Andrew Wilson shared an impressive critique of open theism called: “Responding To Open Theism In Fourteen Words.” Andrew’s article didn’t persuade me, but it did challenge me (seriously!). Below…
Must I Become Less?
Have you ever proclaimed a theological belief loudly and publicly only to have the Bible seem to proclaim the exact opposite? In 2019 Fortress Press published my book Confident Humility.…
Was Jesus “Crazy”?
“Do you believe I’m the messiah,” the man asked, his voice part tenor, part nasal-congestion. He rubbed his robe collar between his thumb and index finger. This detail sticks in…
Now Available!
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:
Was Jesus “Crazy”?
This sermon addresses the question of whether or not Jesus was of a sound mind, and then claims that the only sane human to have ever lived was Jesus, and what the implications of that are.
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.
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."
