Don The Armour

Recently, I was reading a kind of “self-help” article in which the author was speaking primarily to men, saying that we needed to imagine the type of man we want to be or the type of man we want to be around and try to become that man ourselves. It was a way of creating an archetype, or an ideal, in your mind so that you have something to strive for.

Reading this got me thinking about how the vast majority of the self-help material that is so pervasive these days is just trying to achieve what Christianity does but without Christ. They are reinventing the wheel but trying to leave out the hub.

As Christians, we don’t have to try to invent an ideal man; we strive to be like Christ. We have been meditating, “visualizing,” and acknowledging gratitude for thousands of years; we call it prayer.

Once I noticed this, I couldn’t “unsee” it. It revealed to me how stubborn man is and the lengths he will go to avoid submitting to God. It is a perfect image of original sin – man doesn’t want to be under God; he wants to find his own way.

Seeing all of this through a gospel lens reveals how foolish fallen man is. As the Proverb above (and Psalm 111:10) says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Without the fear of God, we’re running around in circles, trying to solve problems our own way that God has already solved.