Self-help books are wildly popular, including among Christians. But can they keep their promise to improve us?
Heaven helps those who help themselves.” So opens Samuel Smiles’ 1859 book Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct—an appropriately self-published work that birthed the modern genre.
Today, more than 10 million self-help books are sold annually, with topics ranging from time management to pop psychology to discovering one’s true calling. While some focus on how to navigate career or relationships (think Dale Carnegie’s 1936 How to Win Friends and Influence People), others guide readers to success through reformation or reassessment of their unique interior worlds (such as Brené Brown’s 2010 The Gifts of Imperfection). What unifies the genre is a message of self-improvement delivered in a personal way by a confident figure who inspires readers to pursue their “best life now.”
But if heaven helps those who help themselves, what exactly is the role of “heaven”? And how should citizens of heaven read these books—if we should read them at all?
Despite its current popularity, improvement literature is not new. Ancient Egypt produced conduct books like The Maxims of Ptahhotep, while Rome left us Cicero’s On Duties. The Bible contains its own form of “self-help” in the genre of Wisdom Literature: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and even Job help readers make sense of the world and their roles within it. And in the Middle Ages, “courtesy books” taught courtiers how to navigate the social norms of the palace.
For much of history, such writings were limited to the upper classes, intended to train and develop future leaders. (Ptahhotep, for example, was a vizier, a high-ranking official analogous to a prime minister.) But today’s …
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