I am all about self-help.
One of the many things I inherited from my mother is an unabashed love of self-help books. (OK, maybe I’ve been a little abashed in the past, but these days I’m here to own it.) As someone who’s always trying to perfect my life (and remains eternally optimistic about my chances of actually doing so), I can devour a self-help book in an hour or two.
Even if a whole entire book turns out to be crap, I still can usually glean at least one question, nugget, exercise, or homework assignment worth using—and besides, discarding crappy books still has the advantage of making me feel superior.
It’s true, though, that I rarely spend more than a couple hours on any particular book—because they all tend to say the same thing: you have to change your paradigm. If you want to change or achieve something in your life, you have to interrupt the excuses and take action. You have to set yourself up for success by changing something about your usual patterns—then follow through with the new mindset, habit, choice, or system you’ve set up.
I also like self-help books because they say what they are. It’s usually on the cover somewhere: SELF-HELP. People can make fun of the category all they want, but those people are assholes and disparaging others certainly isn’t measurably improving their lives. There’s an optimism and a straightforwardness to the whole self-help section of the bookstore.
My appreciation for that honesty might explain why I have the opposite reaction to self-help books masquerading as Christian books. The ones that say a couple of simplistic sentences about why God supports their system, then leave God out of the entire rest of the book; or worse, the ones about how to manipulate God into helping you get what you want. They offer a step-by-step plan to fix your money, fix your marriage, or get your dream life, with a sprinkling of cherry-picked Bible verses calculated to wedge the book into the lucrative Christian target market.
Self-help is not Christianity.
When I go to the self-help section of the bookstore, I know I’m getting someone’s idea about how I should live my life; but I still have to make a decision about whether I’m going to trust them. I read the book with a shrewd eye: what is the new paradigm this person wants me to adopt? Do I agree with it?
Even if I do adopt a self-help book’s paradigm, it won’t usually claim to deal with the ultimate things in life. It may offer to revolutionize my eating habits or increase my productivity 1000%, but I don’t link those changes to the meaning of life, my eternal destiny, or ultimate peace and joy.
The Christian bookstore, on the other hand, can have an aura of authority around it. I run the risk of taking the author at their word just because they used a Greek word or threw in a story about church. Too often, they end up saying things that appeal to me—putting a chirpy, churchy seal of approval on the Pinterest board of my life—when what I need is an invitation to real transformation. I’m getting a budgeting system when what I need is God’s generosity, discipline, and trust. I learn five ways to try and control my dating relationship when what I need is God’s courage and love.
Christianity is not self-help.
If I say Christianity isn’t self-help, I can imagine a chorus of agreement from two distinct sides. One side would cheer because of course what I’m saying is that only God can help us. Another would expect that of course I mean Christianity is about helping others.
Of course I really mean neither of those things in particular, and if they’ve leapt so quickly to those conclusions, I’d have to ask them whether there isn’t an element of the self-help mindset in their definition of Christianity. If your Christianity boils down so easily to one thing, a step-by-step life plan (whether it’s find meaning and purpose by helping others or accept Jesus to fix your sin problems), maybe you don’t worship a God of mystery; maybe you worship the life plan.
If God is just the facilitator of a system for getting out of hell or having a nice family or dealing with the problem of evil, then God’s not really the ultimate thing in your life; heaven, or family, or peace of mind is.
I wince as I write this. It sounds harsh to me, and a little impossible. How could we ever untangle our love for an invisible God from every single one of God’s gifts? We all need family and peace and purpose, and God wants us to have them. And doesn’t the Bible offer plenty of wisdom about how to get what you want? Well, yes and yes.
All I mean by my accusations is that we are too quick to declare ourselves innocent of idolatry. I mean that I constantly forget to let those good gifts point me on farther to the good presence of God. I am distracted by the toy and oblivious to the giver—then when the toy breaks, I either blame the giver or demand a replacement, even though God is right there, grieving with me for the lost thing and so often, patiently offering something better in its place.
For so, so long I studied theology earnestly, taking every opportunity to scorn Joel Osteen, while at the root I was still just asking the question, how do I live my best life now? What will make the world make sense? Who will show me how to fix things? I claimed to study theology, but my question was rarely, Who is God?
The classic definition of theology is faith seeking understanding—but mine was bewilderment seeking control. I wanted a paradigm that explained the world more than I wanted a relationship with the mysterious One who holds it in their hand.
Christianity isn’t justice
I’m afraid I’m diminishing those self-help, world-help questions a little too much. We cannot all sit and contemplate the divine all day, and it is vital that our religion come to bear on the practical aspects of life; in fact, God is often calling us to do something to change circumstances, in our own lives or in society.
But I also think it’s far past time for a moment of clarity about what we really mean when we say Christian or theology or God wants _____. Because so often, when we think we’re defending Jesus, he’s not really what we’re attached to at all. So often we’ve tangled Jesus up into our program for the world, wrestled love onto our side of a debate, and turned God’s story into our argument.
Yesterday when I told someone about our church, she exclaimed, “Oh, it’s a social justice church!” I nodded along, but what part of me wanted to say was this:
Justice is part of who we are, but we don’t worship justice. We worship a God who brings justice, and freedom and beauty and light and life, but always and only through love. We work for social justice when we donate and vote, but also when we sing and play and wash dishes and make art, because God is more than a well-functioning system, more than the absence of poverty or the tolerance of outsiders. God is abundance and peace, care and attention, humility and courage and joy, and God is transforming us (in God’s own time) to participate in those things as well.
We don’t worship social justice; frankly that’s an easy, comfortable thing to do. We worship and wrestle this wild God who has died of injustice and risen again of love.
So we live in an invisible kingdom, coming of love; we work for justice but we worship One far beyond justice, beyond all we hope for and all we fear, who does not only help but transforms, redeems, resurrects, who loves us into an existence we hardly fathomed when we lived only for the hope of better circumstances.
We’re a social justice church and a family church and a fire church and a silence church and a dirt church. We’re a God-in-the-world-here-and-now church, and somehow justice is growing in hidden places along the way of our churching; and though this answer must hardly satisfy a right-minded person, perhaps if it could be perfectly explained, it couldn’t possibly be true.
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