Monday, March 14, 2011

Quotable

Self-help appeals to the will of the people by challenging them to apply biblical principles without necessarily applying the gospel to their hearts. In self-helpism Christ as example is placed above Christ as Savior … Self-help preaching does not take the pervasiveness of sin seriously because it assumes that people want to obey and can obey, they just need to be told how to do it. Such preaching is not biblical because completely discounts the reality of human resistance to obeying God.

Self-help preaching many times makes the Bible character “like us.” We are David, and our problems are like Goliath, and so forth. A straight line is drawn directly from the character’s struggle or victory to us without connecting any of it to the person and work of Christ.

Thus, it produces consumeristic, shallow people because it does not bring them face-to-face with God.

— Darrin Patrick,Church Planter, p. 139.

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