July 07 +James Self help

More than three million ‘Christian’ books are sold in the U.K. each year.  Alongside these are another three million which might vaguely be called ‘religious’: the ones which now tend to dominate the ‘Religion’ section of most large bookshops. Some of these are about other world faiths. But most of them, as any regular browser will know, fall firmly into the burgeoning ‘self help’ category.

Avid self-helpers can quickly learn how to do almost anything. Detox, get fit, lose weight, be at peace, banish stress, become an amazing lover, influence others, heal yourself – the list is endless, and most of the titles sound fairly harmless or even quite a good idea. After all, who doesn’t want to lose a little weight or be a little less stressed? We may smile at some of the more extravagant promises on the dust jackets, but that’s about as far as any hesitation about their content is likely to go.

What we may not realise is the extent to which many of those books propagate ‘New Age’ thinking. This is all about an ‘awakening of the higher self’ as the goal of human life, and a recent Roman Catholic report commented that this has become such an apparently normal part of everyday life that we no longer notice it. In fact, we often assume it’s really quite Christian.

I first became aware of this syndrome when reading the sequel to ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’ (‘Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason). As well as finding it extremely funny, I was fascinated by a section on Bridget’s array of self-help books. Her boyfriend Mark looks at the huge collection and asks “Why on earth do you buy this stuff?” “Well, actually I have a theory about this.” I began excitedly (because actually I do have a theory about it.) “If you consider other world religions such as ....” “Other world religions? Other than what?” “Other than self-help books.” “Yes, I thought you might be about to say that. Bridget, self-help books are not a religion.” “But they are! They are a new form of religion... what I mean is if the organised religion collapses then people start trying to find another set of rules. And actually, if you look at self help books they have a lot of ideas in common with other religions....”

The author Helen Fielding has her finger on the pulse of twenty-first century spirituality. For large numbers of people today, that ‘spirituality’ is all about self-examination, self-discovery, self-realisation, self-awareness – and ultimately the ‘self-help’ she highlights, whether through so-called ‘positive thinking’ or crystals. This is the socially acceptable face of selfism in our society, and it is a far cry from the looking towards God, and looking towards others, the self sacrifice, which lies at the heart of Christianity.

So there is an important challenge here for the Christian Church, since this is the context in which much of our ‘mission’ is being considered. People are looking for transformation. They want their lives to be changed. Perhaps it is because they don’t see enough change in the lives of Christians and the life of the church that they look elsewhere.

+James Newcome, Bishop of Penrith