I have no problem with self-help books, broadly defined. I’ve found books like Atomic Habits and The 5AM Club* to be immensely helpful. But the Bible isn’t a self-help book. The Bible isn’t about how you can help yourself, it’s about how God has rescued us because we’ve harmed ourselves.
Sometimes Christians talk about the Bible like it is a 12-step program: “work the steps and it’ll all work out.” Don’t get me wrong, obedience to Jesus is necessary for salvation (Luke 6:46; Heb. 5:8), but deducing God’s revelation to a self-help program misses the point.
If the Bible is analogous to a self-help book or a 12-step program, faith would be unnecessary. Rote obedience to the Bible’s moral principles and commands would result in salvation regardless of what one believes1. If God’s Word was a self-help book, there would be no supernatural power in it at all. It would be like any other helpful book on the shelf. Instead, it is the power of God, imperishable seed, and the source of new life (Rom. 1:16; 1 Pet. 1:22-25; Jas. 1:18).
The Bible can’t be a self-help book because, apart from Christ, we are dead in our sins and trespasses. We are unrighteous. We don’t understand. We don’t seek God. We are unprofitable. None of us does good. We don’t know the way of peace. We have no fear of God. We’ve all sinned and fallen short of His glory.
Does that sound like the kind of people who can help themselves 100% by their own strength? Read Romans 3:10-18 and Ephesians 2:1-3 and ask yourself if people meeting those descriptions can pull themselves up by their bootstraps without God’s aid, help, initiative, power, or grace.
We need God—not just to do what God says—but Him. I can try my best to live like Jesus, to love my neighbor as myself, and to believe in God. But, without “the exceeding riches of His grace” (Eph. 2:7), I am lost. I can jump through the hoops and “work the steps,” but without “the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5), I have no hope.
This doesn’t give us license to sin — it gives us the opposite! When we realize how bad off we have it without God and how utterly dependent we are on Him, our lifestyle reflects a level of thankfulness that wouldn’t dare traipse back into the pigpen.
There’s a reason Jesus said, “without Me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). We need Jesus. We can’t know Jesus without God’s revelation. But if we memorize the revelation and miss Jesus, we miss everything.
Self-help books can be helpful, and I’ve known people who have changed because of 12-step programs. But God’s Word is so much more. We need Him. We need to know Him. We need His power. Yes, read the Bible. Yes, obey it. But don’t forget how dependent you are on the author.
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In AA, for example, it’s possible for a man to work the steps and find relief no matter how he defines the “power greater than oneself.”