Last night my twelve-year-old daughter and I dove into deep conversational waters. I was attempting to explain character and how it differs from what most people mean when they say personality. This was harder than expected.

After many false starts, something like this came out:

“Character is where your inner compass of what’s right naturally points. It’s who you are when no one is watching and how you treat those who aren’t useful to you.”

I suppose that’s in the ballpark. But considering character formation is one of God’s primary aims for humans on earth — it’s why Christians aren’t immediately beamed up into the sinless and painless age to come — I wanted a better definition.

This led me to a book by W.S. Bruce published in 1908 called The Formation of Christian Character (free on Google; we also posted an excerpt this week). His words are a great help, but they do highlight why it’s hard to define character. Put on your thinking cap…

Character is nature and nurture. It is nature cultured and disciplined, so that natural tendencies are brought under the sway of the moral motive… Above all, [character] includes a choice, a settled habit or bent of will, so that it can be seen in its outcome in conduct. Character takes up the raw material of nature and temperament, and it weaves these into the strong, well-knit texture of a fully moralized [personhood].

In Renovation of the Heart, Willard provides a definition that’s a little easier to digest…

“Our character is that internal, overall structure of the self that is revealed by our long-run patterns of behavior and from which our actions more or less automatically arise.”

Character takes time to form, and like concrete it can seem to ​“set” after a certain point. Thankfully, Dallas adds:

“But character can be changed. And that, of course, is what spiritual formation in Christlikeness is about.”

To which I lift a hallelujah and a prayer for help: ​“Father, help us put on the character of Christ, which we can only do as we yield to and cooperate with your Spirit living in us.”