I have a really hard time with self-help books. I am always finding them to be either too specific or too generic. Either the book gives you a blueprint for the exact 12 things you need to do to improve whatever in your life or it gives no practical advice whatsoever. I generally find the overly specific suggestions laughable. I’m okay with lists of possible ways one can say encourage creativity in your kids – I have the freedom then to adapt what I find useful to my circumstances. But I’m not a fan of the formulaic step-by-step scripts for ensuring a compliant child or showing your husband you appreciate him. How cheezy is it to assume that all people are exactly the same and that saying a certain sequence of words will have the same effect on every child or husband? Maybe it’s my inner non-conformist emerging, but I don’t do scripts like that.
But I also equally dislike overly generic self-help books. These books present ideas that sound great – of course I want to “be a better friend” or “love my child unconditionally” – but they are lacking in specific advice for how exactly to do that. I’m sick of books that latch onto one phrase and repeat it incessantly without ever fleshing it out. I find this a lot in devotional books. They can be all about drawing closer to God, but I think they assume that if they just convince me that I need to draw closer to God (by endless repetition of that phrase) then it will magically happen. Did they ever stop to think that I would never have picked up the book if I wasn’t already looking for ways I could make that happen? That’s why I don’t “do” devotional books, I find them generally pointless. I’m Goldilocks searching for the just right balance motivational concepts and practical advice and so far it’s been hard to find.
So as I was reflecting on some of the disappointing books in this genre recently, I began to think about how this relates to some of my issues with the Bible. Often the way the Bible was presented to me fell into one of these extremes. Either it was taught in sweeping generalities (if you just believe/trust/pray everything will work out). Or it was interpreted with the addition of long lists of how exactly one should live (here are the words you can never say, the movies you can never watch, the ideas you can never question in order to be a good Christian or a Christian at all). I got sick of these interpretations. The Bible felt trivialized, it was just another bad self-help book that didn’t deliver. It felt wrong to read a single verse about the early church praying in Acts and then be told just to pray more (or be given the formula for prayer). It didn’t work for me.
It took years before I realized why this self-help spiritualization of scripture bothered me. As with most self-help books it didn’t come across as genuine or authentic. I wanted something that made sense within the context of real life, not just a mantra I could chant. So it helped once I started reading whole passages at a time from the Bible and paying attention to the historical context of the whole thing. Verses no longer mere devotional ideas, but part of a bigger picture. The church in Acts didn’t just pray, they prayed for specific things and “therefore” certain things occured in their communities. It was all authentic and meaningful within certain contexts and in relation to individual lives. To me that’s much more meaningful than slogans or lists of rules. Ideas, plus guidelines, plus examples make sense to me. That’s the type of “just right” advice I can follow and learn from. But maybe that’s just me.