If you’ve been on the internet — or the book aisle at Target — in the last five years, you’ve seen the gospel of self-help. It’s in the TikToks about “cutting off low-vibe people.” The Pinterest mood boards labeled “healing era.“ The books telling you this one essay, one paragraph, one journal prompt will change your life. The therapy-speak captions on Instagram: You are enough. You are your own home. You are the one you’ve been waiting for.
It’s everywhere, and a lot of us are buying in.
To be clear: working on yourself isn’t a bad thing. Neither is therapy, rest or boundaries. Becoming more emotionally aware is good. These are all necessary things.
But self-help culture has morphed into something bigger—and more hollow. What started as tools for growth now feel like a full-blown belief system. One where you’re the problem, the solution, the savior and the success story. One where the goal isn’t to be loved—it’s to be constantly improving.
And somehow, even with all this effort, we’re still not okay.
According to the American Psychological Association, Gen Z is the most anxious, depressed and stressed-out generation to date. We’re more self-aware than ever, but also lonelier. We’re fluent in wellness jargon but deeply unsure what actual healing looks like. We’re optimizing everything except our souls.
“There’s a cultural obsession right now with controlling our inner world—our thoughts, our habits, our emotions,” says Sharon Hodde Miller, author of The Cost of Control. “But it can become this exhausting, endless pursuit of trying to fix ourselves without really knowing what wholeness even is.”
It’s not just secular culture pushing this narrative. Churches have picked it up too—just with more Scripture references. Pastors preach “seven steps to peace” or “how to crush anxiety” like they’re hosting a spiritual TED Talk. You get the sense that Jesus mostly came to give us a better morning routine.
But Jesus didn’t die so we could live slightly more optimized lives. He didn’t offer grace so we could achieve it. The message of the gospel is wildly different from what self-help sells us: it’s not about self-sufficiency. It’s about surrender.
That word—surrender—doesn’t trend well. It’s not empowering. It doesn’t promise glow-ups or brand deals. But it is honest. Because at some point, every single one of us runs out of energy, hacks and willpower. And when we do, what’s left?
Hopefully, something more than a perfectly curated bookshelf of self-help bestsellers.
“Self-help tells you, ‘You are the answer,’” says Christian psychiatrist Dr. Curt Thompson. “But the Christian story says, ‘You are deeply loved—and you need others, and you need God.’ That’s not as sexy, but it’s much more freeing.”
It’s hard to admit we can’t save ourselves. It’s even harder in a culture that treats dependency like failure. But grace was never about you earning your way to wholeness. It was always about God stepping into your mess and staying anyway.
The real Gospel doesn’t shame you for being broken. And it doesn’t ask you to keep fixing yourself so you’re finally worthy of peace. It meets you where you are. It gives you rest. Not because you nailed your self-care routine, but because God’s love never depended on your performance in the first place.
This doesn’t mean you stop growing. It just means you stop trying to grow your way into being enough. You already are. Not because a TikTok therapist said so, but because Jesus did.
So, go to therapy. Drink water. Set the boundary. But maybe also ask yourself—what’s the story underneath it all? Is it making you free or just keeping you busy?
The Gospel doesn’t ask you to be your best self. It invites you to be your real self—loved, limited, in need of grace—and finally at peace with not being the hero of your own story.
That job’s already taken.
