How Can Fear Become Our Self-Help?

The title ‘Self-Help’ above a bookstore shelf has a plain meaning. Pun-prone people would say the title speaks for its SELF.

In essence, self-help books say the self can improve with better thinking and corrective behavior. Just wise up and tug harder on those bootstraps.

While much self-help advice is beneficial, listeners can be forgiven for hearing the simplistic command to “Heal thyself.”  They might be tempted to ask “How can I heal my bad thinking, for example, if I’m doing the thinking and fixing? Don’t I need someone to assist me?”

“Yes” is the answer provided by Alcoholic Anonymous’ highly successful recovery program, Twelve Steps. One of its steps is reliance on a higher power. While the program permits participants to interpret “higher power” for themselves, the key lesson is to surrender to that power.

How to do that? Using God as the higher power, the Bible advocates fearing Him—not recoiling in terror but respecting Him for the gifts He graciously provides, one being wisdom. Proverbs 9:10 states that respectfully fearing the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. Psalm 31:19 describes respectful fear of the Lord as taking refuge in Him —humbly relying on Him rather than taking the world’s self-help advice to rely on ourselves.

Relying on God involves behaviors the world deems ironic, even nonsensical, and this is just one example: Relying on the Lord to gain wisdom is a great form of self-help.