The Christian Self-Actualization Plan

In her excellent book on following Jesus in the suburbs, Ashley Hales describes one of the ways in which our discipleship has been influenced by modern secular trends such as the desire for self-actualization:

There’s also a particularly Christian version of the self-actualization narrative: it’s found in hearing how the salvation story revolved around me and God’s wonderful plan for my life. This story wound its way around us so that mission trips were validations for the goodness of a soul. It grew a vocabulary around a person’s seriousness about living for Jesus, and a…