The popularity of self-improvement, or self-help,
books throughout the history of publishing is rather amazing. The
reasons given for the wide acceptance of such books, historically, and
especially in our day, are many, but they all boil down to man’s desire
to improve his condition or situation, whether financially, socially,
educationally, physically, psychologically, spiritually, or “all of the
above.” Although the goals are improvement and the bettering of one’s
circumstance, the primary method and motivation is
by self and
for self : how can
I improve
me ?
Since
self is the fundamental focus of self-improvement,
we need to give some serious thought to what it is. A gathering of
definitions from contemporary dictionaries reveals self to be: the
entire person; an individual’s typical character or behavior; an
individual’s temporary behavior or character; a person in prime
condition; the union of elements (as body, emotions, thoughts, and
sensations) that constitute the individuality and identity of a person;
personal interest or advantage. Simply stated, it’s you and me and all
that makes up each of us as individuals. The definition of “self”
becomes more confusing, however, when words are added to the front or
back of it, such as one’s
true self or self-
realization
. Moreover, the number of hyphenated “self” words are in the hundreds,
from self-actualizing to self-worth, and each one adds its own meaning
or nuance to “self.”
Two “self”-related adjectives convey the best and the worst condition of self.
Selfless
: concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with one’s
own: “an act of selfless devotion.” Its synonyms clarify its wonderful
qualities: unselfish, altruistic, self-sacrificing, self-denying;
considerate, compassionate, kind, noble, generous, magnanimous,
ungrudging, charitable, benevolent: “Her love was manifest in selfless
service.”
Selfish , on the other hand, has no redeeming
qualities: (of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for
others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure: “I
entertained them for selfish reasons.” Synonyms include: egocentric,
egotistic, egotistical, egomaniacal, self-centered, self-absorbed,
self-obsessed, self-seeking, self-serving, wrapped up in oneself;
inconsiderate, thoughtless, unthinking, uncaring, uncharitable; mean,
miserly, grasping, greedy, mercenary, acquisitive, opportunistic;
looking after number one: “He is just selfish by nature.”
Scripture uses the term “self” in a very straightforward way, i.e.,
the entire person, and most often as reflexive pronouns such as
“himself” and “themselves.” So the “secret” of the biblical use of the
term is not in its definition but in what the Word of God says about
self and what it instructs us to do with it, which is in direct
opposition to what the so-called wisdom of the world advocates.
According to our world, which has been heavily influenced by
humanistic psychology (the contemporary breeding ground of all the
selfist teachings), “self”—meaning the entirety of a human being—is
innately good
. Flaws or dysfunctions within a person’s life stem from sources of
influences external to the person himself, e.g., his parents, or his
physical, social, and educational environment, and so forth. The belief
in inherent goodness is involved in all psychological counseling—and not
as an option; it is foundational. The reason is obvious. If a person is
not inherently good but has a fundamental defect in his nature that
affects to some degree every aspect of his life, there is nothing a
psychotherapist can do to alter the defect and its ultimate
consequences. It’s like the proverbial attempt to change a leopard’s
spots. One could dye the leopard’s skin or cover it in some fashion, but
such superficial acts would do nothing to truly change the spots. The
leopard’s genetics won’t allow it.
But if self is indeed innately good, then it’s simply a matter of a
psychological counselor getting a client to recognize the goodness of
his “self” and to psychotherapeutically remove all the things that are
preventing the success of that belief. There are more than 500 different
psychotherapies that have been conjured up to do just that. But many of
them conflict with one another, and none of them proves or even makes a
plausible case for man’s inherent goodness. Consequently, all of the
methodologies only address a client’s problems as symptomatic issues,
because they can do nothing to change the nature of humanity. However,
what is impossible for man is possible with God!
The Bible declares unequivocally that the heart of man is
not good :
The heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked: who can know it?; For from within, out of the heart
of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,
thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye,
blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within,
and defile the man. (Jeremiah:17:9; Mark:7:21-23)
Scripture tells us that “men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil” (
John:3:19) and that “all have sinned…” (
Romans:3:23).
These verses, and many more, describe the fallen nature of humanity,
and there is nothing that anyone can do to change it or improve it.
Only God can change self and make it better, but He doesn’t do it by
man’s way. That’s the “secret” of biblical self-improvement, which is
only secret in the sense that Christianity has lost sight of what the
Scriptures clearly teach and what the church has practiced since the
time of the apostles. That blindness began in earnest in the middle of
the last century as psychological counseling made deep inroads to
Christendom. By the 1970s some of the most influential names in the
evangelical media were Christian psychologists, psychotherapists, and
psychiatrists such as James Dobson, Frank Minirth, Paul Meier, Gary
Collins, John Trent, and Gary Smalley, to name but a few. Books
promoting “self” flooded the Christian marketplace, including
Hide or Seek: How to Build Self-esteem in Your Child by psychologist Dr. James Dobson and
Self-esteem: the New Reformation by Robert Schuller, whose book was sent out
gratis
to 250,000 evangelical pastors. Self-love and self-esteem became new
doctrines that were taught by most of the popular evangelical pastors of
the day.
What too few Christians realize is that the rise of the unbiblical
teachings of self-love within the church in our day is a matter of
prophecy being fulfilled. In 2 Timothy 3, the Apostle Paul warns Timothy
about a “perilous” time when self-love will be foundational to sins
that will wreak havoc among believers: “This know also, that in the last
days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own
selves
… ” (vv. 1-2). Some might wonder why that is prophetic,
when mankind has had a self-serving bias going clear back to the fall of
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Looking out for “number one,” Adam
blamed the woman whom God had given him, and Eve blamed the serpent
(i.e., Satan), who seduced her into disobeying God.
Self-love has created problems for humanity throughout the
centuries, but it wasn’t until the last 100 years or so that the
selfisms were promoted as the basic solutions to nearly all of mankind’s
ills, especially our mental, emotional, and behavioral problems. Much
of that began with the “looking within” and the self-analysis practiced
by Freud and Jung, but ironically—and more specifically—it involved a
chiding by anti-Christian Friedrich Nietzsche that Christians didn’t
love themselves enough. That was picked up and promoted by psychologist
and humanistic philosopher Eric Fromm, as Dave Hunt noted:
Fromm, an atheist, popularized the idea of self-love. He got it from Nietzsche. One of Fromm’s books was Ye Shall Be as Gods . He took the lie of the Serpent for its title. In his book, Man for Himself
, he justified the idea that we all hate ourselves and need to learn to
love ourselves by saying that Jesus taught it when He said, “Love your
neighbor as you love yourself.” (TBC, Q&A, 9/1986)
That distortion of the Scriptures was then accepted by increasing
numbers of evangelical preachers and teachers who should have known
better. First of all, it’s a simple error in math. The proponents of
self-love have made loving one’s neighbor as oneself into a third
commandment, whereas
Matthew:22:37-40 declares:
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it,
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the law and the prophets.
It’s
two commandments, not three. Furthermore, as Dave
points out, “…if we were deficient in self-love, Jesus wouldn’t have
said to love your neighbor as you love yourself, because he said it to
everybody and not to a certain class or category of people. So it’s a
given—we must
already love ourselves. And he couldn’t say ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ (
Matthew:7:12) if we all innately hated ourselves and wanted to do ourselves harm.” That error is further contradicted by
Ephesians:5:29: “For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.”
Loving self before loving God and others is mankind’s natural bias,
whether he or she is a committed Christian or not, and the consequence
of that is associated with nearly all of the difficulties we experience
in life. Paul’s words to Timothy give a litany of the after effects of
loving self:
…covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers,
disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection,
trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those
that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more
than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power
thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into
houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with
divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of
the truth. (2 Timothy:3:2-7)
So that’s the bad news. What, then, of the good news of how God can
change our nature and improve self? It can happen only by turning to Him
for the salvation that He alone has provided for all of mankind. That
involves being reconciled to Him by admitting our sinfulness and
accepting Christ’s full payment for our sins by faith alone. Nothing
more is required to receive the gift of eternal life, other than
trusting in Jesus for saving us from the infinite penalty that our sin
deserves. That’s the gospel, and it’s the only way that humanity can be
saved.
Once a person puts his trust in Jesus for salvation, he becomes a
new creature: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature:
old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (
2 Corinthians:5:17). He has been purged from his old sins and is no longer under the bondage of sin (
2 Peter:1:9;
John:8:31-32). As a believer in Christ, he has been born again spiritually,
is in communion with God, and is fully able to love and obey Him. This
was impossible prior to becoming a new creature in Christ. He is a “new
man,” a new
self (
Ephesians:4:24), someone who can now live his life according to God’s instructions in His Word.
The first instruction for a blessed and fruitful life is, however,
that just as he could not save himself, neither can he do the things
that will improve his life
by himself . Biblical
self-improvement is nothing like the world’s “self-improvement”; in
fact, it’s the opposite. Although a believer’s new life in Christ has
set him free from the bondage of sin, he still retains his old nature
with its self-serving bias. That is a major battleground for every
believer in Christ. Yet for all who have committed their lives to the
Lord, He has provided through His Word and the enablement of the Holy
Spirit all that they need to win the battle over their flesh and to do
the things that please God. Contrary to the world’s loving, esteeming,
glorifying, even deifying self, Scripture tells us to deny self—to
submit oneself completely to God and the instructions of His Word:
And he [Jesus] said to them all, If any man will
come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and
follow me. (Luke:9:23)
Denying self is not the same as denying one’s existence. For the
believer, it’s the recognition that although “self,” which was formerly
in rebellion against God, continues to have autonomy (the capacity to
make moral decisions for good or evil), it has now been enabled to
choose and to live in righteousness in one’s desire to please the Lord.
Scripture abounds with verses exhorting us to put the Lord and
others before ourselves. “Be kindly affectioned one to another with
brotherly love; in honour preferring one another” (
Romans:12:10); “Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s [well-being]” (
1 Corinthians:10:24); “Let every one of us please his neighbour for his good to edification. For even Christ pleased not himself” (
Romans:15:2-3). Furthermore, the Word of God gives us instructions on how we
can do those very things, in essence “biblically improving self.”
Ironically, it involves a dying process.
We are to die to self—that is, to our autonomous will (also known as
self-will)—not only by turning it over to the Lord and submitting to
Him, but also by allowing Him to live His life
through us:
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the
flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave
himself for me. (Galatians:2:20)
The issue of self is one of the most confused and distorted
doctrines among Christians today, including those who profess that the
Bible is their authority in all matters of faith and practice. That’s
the primary reason why the troubles of non-Christians differ little
statistically from those who profess to be Christians. The hope for this
series is that we might clarify what the Bible says about self and how
we can biblically improve it. There is no doubt that such an
understanding and a carrying out of what the Scriptures teach will
transform us and improve every aspect of our lives in Christ.
TBC
Source: http://www.thebereancall.org/content/secret-biblical-self-improvement