A Better Encouragement: Trading Self-Help for True Hope

This upbeat if impractical outing by Carlson (Growing in Godliness), a pastor’s wife, urges readers to lean on God in times of need. “Better encouragement provides God’s promises to God’s people in order to help us endure with our hope set on Christ,” Carlson writes, critiquing secular self-help volumes and describing how Christians can find fortitude in God and Christ. The author suggests that many self-help books suffer from “an overemphasis on self-esteem, self-sufficiency, and self-empowerment” that prompts looking inward when readers should instead be looking to God. A more substantive source of encouragement, Carlson contends, comes from steadfast faith in Jesus’s coming Resurrection, which “fills the Christian’s life... with the promise of his abundant riches.” She urges readers to pray to God for spiritual sustenance and to offer affirmation and inspiration to others. The emphasis on social support systems brings a welcome community focus to the self-help genre (“You are a member of the body of Christ; every other Christian in the body is a fellow team member”), but the lack of actionable advice will likely leave readers without a clear idea of how to implement the principles laid out here. This has a lot of heart, even if the recommendations are undercooked. (June)