Ask almost any Christian: “How did young David defeat Goliath, the giant warrior?” Probably about 99 times out of 100 you’ll get an answer something like: “Because David had great faith in God.” Those who answer like this assume, like the Philistines, that David did not have the power or skill to win a battle with Goliath straight up, but that he needed divine intervention to claim victory. A…
Approaching Horses: Commentary
APPROACHING HORSES and there past the barn I see the horses, grazing out in a field, together, but also alone. I see the horses standing in the sunlit fog. I…
Sips: Commentary
I like the idea of our choices being like sips. We nibble ourselves to death in slow-motion suicides. We build mountains on our own backs made up of tiny, seemingly…
Today is the Next Monotonous Day of the Rest of Your Life (a motivational post)
The problem with all these THIS-IS-THE-FIRST-DAY-OF-THE-REST-OF-YOUR-LIFE folks is that they emphasize the wrong thing. Their intention (noble and pure) is to get you to realize how special THIS day is,…
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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:
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…
Destination: Known
We hunger for a bigger meaning than the world can possibly provide. In this sermon, Dan shows how only God can give us a “meant to be” that satisfies.
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."
