I love the story of David and Goliath. It so beautifully illustrates the strength of humility and the weakness of pride. Humility gave David victory over Goliath. David understood that God was the source of his strength, and with a humble heart, he battled the proud giant and was victorious.
I’ve often looked to this story when I’ve felt like the underdog in a difficult situation. When I was about thirteen, an older girl from a neighboring town seemed eager to make friends with me, and one day she asked me to come over to her house after school. She didn’t seem like someone who shared my values, but at the time, I was struggling with self-esteem, and I was grateful that she wanted to be friends, so I rode my bike to her house.
Once inside, I realized that her parents weren’t there, but her much older boyfriend was, and he was trying to intimidate me into doing something I didn’t want to do. I was scared. Like David being taunted by Goliath, I felt taunted by this girl and her boyfriend.
As a student in a Christian Science Sunday School, I was very familiar with the story of David and Goliath. While I didn’t feel confident about my ability to get out of this situation, I remember thinking about David. And even though I had been struggling to understand God’s presence in my life, at that moment I knew He was with me, guiding and protecting me.
Within seconds, the phone rang. It was the girl’s mom. The call immediately altered the dynamics of the situation, and I was able to get out of the house. I got on my bike and rode away as fast as I could.
After that, I crossed paths with the girl and her boyfriend from time to time, but they never again tried to intimidate me. When I look back on that incident now, I realize just how protected I was that day.
So how did David, small in stature relative to Goliath, defeat the giant without armor or a sword? David’s victory illustrates how pride inevitably leads to a fall. When taunted by the Philistine, the young shepherd responded, “You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts” (I Samuel 17:45, “Amplified Bible”). We, too, experience this spiritually sourced protection when our consciousness is so filled with divine Love that we naturally abandon self-will and increasingly take direction from God. And as David did in his defeat of Goliath, we can give God full credit for every victory.
Christian Science teaches that believing in a personal power apart from God is a roadblock to spiritual progress. Doing so tends to keep our thoughts focused on a limited sense of God, and therefore of ourselves. Referring to this mistaken concept as personal sense, Mary Baker Eddy writes in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” “A personal sense of God and of man’s capabilities necessarily limits faith and hinders spiritual understanding” (p. 312). This limited view would convince us that we are separate from God and live independently of Him. It suggests that we each have a matter-based personality.
Humility silences this personal sense of ourselves and helps us accept that intelligence and power come from God. Attaining this humility requires a radical shift in thought – from a materially focused consciousness to one overflowing with love for and trust in God, Spirit – a consciousness dependent on God for every thought, motive, and action. We can do this only by emptying our thought of limited material concepts and replacing them with the purely spiritual view of ourselves as God’s offspring, which is everyone’s reality as God’s image or reflection.
Humility is not weakness or self-deprecation; it’s acknowledging God as the source of our worthiness. To the degree that we allow ourselves to be purged of personal sense by Christ – the true idea of God, exemplified by Jesus’ life and healings – we are raised up in the understanding of our spiritual perfection as God’s beloved children.
The replacement of old, negative patterns of thinking with pure thoughts from God, Love, requires alertness. But this becomes more natural the more we let Love fill our thinking. Having a humble heart opens the door to a life filled with divine Love guarding and guiding us every step of the way.
Adapted from an article published in the Aug. 3, 2026, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
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