God and Self-Help

I recently read a self-help book claiming that man doesn’t need God. This book said that man is basically good and to the extent he needs moral improvement, he can accomplish it with better thinking. Implication: Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

I’ve not had much success doing this. If I know the remedy, I‘m unable to make it work. It’s as if human nature is working against me.

And it is!

No one likes to hear that by nature, we are prone to spiritual shortfalls, but sadly we are. In Genesis 8:21, God says “every inclination of (man’s) heart is evil from childhood.” The Apostle Paul agreed. Using personal experience, he admitted that “nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out” (Romans 7:18). If Paul couldn’t, I sure can’t.

Fortunately, we are not doomed to spiritual difficulties. Paul goes on to say that we can counteract our fallen nature with the help of God’s son (Romans 7:24-25). Help also comes from the Holy Spirit. “Live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (Galatians 5:16).

I used to overlook my sinful nature by believing that at least, I was better than most people. Ironically, this relativist thinking was a subtle manifestation of my sinful nature distracting from the central problem: me. And I need more than self-help to fix that problem.