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Don’t Be Duped by This Year’s Biggest Religious Trend
“We save us.”
According to the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture, the dominant religious trend of 2025 can be summed up by this phrase. A top religious trend of 2024 was similar: “Self-care as the new religion.”
In her book Promise Land: My Journey Through America’s Self-Help Culture, Jessica Lamb-Shapiro humorously tells the story of the time she attended a writers’ conference for self-help authors. What she describes is less humorous: “I witnessed a pedagogy more befitting a tent revival than a classroom.” When a popular self-help author gave his keynote speech, “his congregants exulted, swooned, and wept.”
The religious zeal with which the world pursues self-help isn’t surprising. Lacking a Savior, nonbelievers will look inward to solve their problems. But it’s concerning when self-help methods begin to trickle into Christian thought and teaching. In Colossians, Paul warns the church not to be taken captive by any human doctrine that is “not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8).
As believers living in a “We save us” world, we need to pay careful attention to how self-help culture offers a false doctrine of salvation.
Salvation by Self-Help
Theologians sometimes refer to salvation in three phases: the believer’s past justification by faith, her ongoing sanctification by the Spirit, and her future hope of glorification in Christ.
If we evaluate self-help claims with this theological framework in mind, we’ll find that most are aimed at one of these three phases of salvation. But they try to achieve it through the power of self, rather than through the gospel of Christ. Consider the following examples.
Justification
Self-help resources aimed at justification apart from Christ contain messages like “You are enough” or “You are worthy.” Consider one of the most popular TED Talks of all time: Brené Brown argues that vulnerability is the antidote to shame and that we overcome our innate fear of vulnerability by believing that “we’re enough.”
As believers living in a “We save us” world, we need to pay careful attention to how self-help culture offers a false doctrine of salvation.
With more than 69 million views in the 15 years since it first aired, Brown’s message of “You are enough” has become a creed for the current age, and it rolls off the tongues and through the feeds of Christ-followers far too often. Occasionally, it’s even quoted in Christian books and sermons.
“You are enough” is a false gospel that looks within to find forgiveness, love, and grace, rather than looking into the face of a gracious and compassionate God who is enough on our behalf.
In no uncertain terms, the Bible teaches that Christ alone is enough and that he is the antidote to shame. The good news of biblical justification is that we aren’t enough but Christ’s finished work on the cross is.
Sanctification
A vast number of self-help resources have always been aimed at sanctification apart from Christ. Why? Because most people have an innate awareness of their imperfection, even if they don’t acknowledge that they “fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). Deep down, we all want to be better. How we get better is the multibillion-dollar question the self-help industry keeps trying to answer.
Self-help “sanctification” tends to overemphasize habit formation as the secret to self-control. As believers, we sometimes fall prey to this trap when we tire of the slow process of sanctification. We long for a shortcut—five simple steps that will help us stop living this way and start living that way—so we spend more time reading books and watching videos that promise life hacks than reading our Bibles and praying for the Spirit’s help.
Self-help methods may yield small-scale behavior change, but they can never deliver lasting heart change. (Hence Paul’s angst in Romans 7.) By definition, self-help is antithetical to sanctification because it pursues heart change without the regenerative power of the Helper himself (Titus 3:5).
Glorification
A growing number of self-help books seem to preach a form of glorification apart from Christ. With the rise of social media, many people have become obsessed with perfecting their physical bodies.
I was recently disheartened when I walked into what I thought was a Christian bookstore, only to be confronted with cover after cover of books displaying ripped and toned shirtless bodies, each promising some new and improved method for diet and exercise. One self-help bestseller even boasts the title How Not to Die, promising its readers that premature death can be avoided by eating a plant-based diet.
Diet and exercise are important parts of faithfully stewarding our physical bodies, but only Jesus Christ has the power to reverse the curse. The biblical doctrine of glorification promises we’ll one day be conformed to Christ’s image—forever released from the ravages of sin and completely renewed from the inside out. Then, and only then, will we escape the physical effects of the fall.
In the meantime, we shouldn’t spend more time and money perfecting the perishable than we spend pursuing the imperishable crown of righteousness (1 Cor. 9:25–27; 2 Tim. 4:8).
Salvation Is Greater than Self-Help
If we want to be faithful to Christ in a culture where self is god, we must carefully guard against these cultural headwinds. We can start by evaluating our lives to consider what they reveal about where we’ve vested our hope.
We shouldn’t spend more time and money perfecting the perishable than we spend pursuing the imperishable crown of righteousness.
Do our lives bear witness to a hope that transcends self-help, or do we look more like the “We save us” generation that seeks life hacks in all the wrong places? Are we eager ambassadors for Christ, or are we evangelists for the latest health, beauty, and productivity trends?
We don’t have to disregard industry leaders when their research uncovers new ways of doing life prudently or efficiently. All truth is God’s truth. But we must test their methods against Scripture and refuse to peddle any claim that is “not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8). More than anything, let’s relentlessly herald the true gospel: “He saves us!”
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