My friend recently told me about meeting her cousin’s latest girlfriend. In her early twenties and with little life experience, my friend was shocked to find out that this young lady’s profession was that of a “life coach”. What exactly she was offering was unclear…but what is apparent is that life coaches are popping up all over the shop making bold claims about how to make our lives better.
There is an increasing market for coaching in all areas of life. So topical is the subject of “coaching” that Cosmopolitan magazine ran an article in November investigating the different types of coaching available and whether there was any weight to their claims. If you google life coaching, you come up with all sorts of diplomas and certificates that anyone can pay to do as well as various coaches claiming to “unleash your brilliance” and help you “attain greater fulfilment”. Funnily enough the top question that comes up is also “what do life coaches actually do”.
To be clear, I am not entirely anti-coaching. Some forms of coaching can be useful in the right context. In fact, there are different coaching tools that I use in my job as a careers adviser to help people think about their skills and strengths and how best to use those in their career of choice.
I have also met people who have greatly benefitted from coaching methods in overcoming certain difficulties- the Cosmopolitan article highlights that increasingly people are choosing coaching over therapy to help them move forward rather than delve into past traumas. Sports coaching can be used effectively to improve sports performance.
But some forms of coaching should without a doubt be approached with care, by Christians and non-Christians alike. Firstly, because there is no regulatory body for coaching and anyone can claim to help them get their dream job, heal their relationships and decide whether or not to get a pet. Scammers flood the coaching market ready to take advantage of our deepest insecurities and longings to make a quick buck.
More importantly though, Christians should be extremely careful of what lies coaching can feed us. Colossians 1:9-12 has much to say to address these lies.
Lie number 1: you need a coach to “become your best self”
The primary focus of coaching is to help you “become the best version of you”. This should send all sorts of alarm bells for the Christian. The ever-increasing obsession with the self has no place in the Christian walk. The Bible sets out what the best version of us is… and it is that “He must increase and I must decrease” (John 3:30).
Paul’s prayer for the Christians in Colossae states “We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father”.
Our best selves do not need coached out of behaviours or coached into thinking we are the bees knees. We need God to do the work in our hearts that only His Spirit can do. Our calling is not to love ourselves more, but to know and love Him more, to live lives that are “worthy of the Lord” “bearing fruit in every good work”. Less introspection and more Holy Spirit leads to a joyful heart (v12).
Lie number 2: Performance leads to satisfaction
One of the key trappings of the life coach is to focus on your flaws and struggles in order to help you “overcome” and “self-actualise”. If you do take these steps you will finally be complete and happy.
The reality for the Christian is that it is not our flaws, or how well we overcome them, that will ever define us. It is the work of the Risen Lord Jesus. As Paul writes in verse 9 we are “qualified to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light”. Where coaches encourage us to “work on ourselves”, Jesus says “It is finished”. He has done the work. We are qualified only because of Him. As Tim Keller writes in the Freedom of Self Forgetfulness:
“The verdict is in. And now I perform on the basis of the verdict. Because He loves me and He accepts me, I do not have to do things just to build up my résumé. I do not have to do things to make me look good. I can do things for the joy of doing them. I can help people to help people – not so I can feel better about myself, not so I can fill up the emptiness.”
Any coaching achievement, whether it’s how you handle your finances or confidence in public speaking is only ever going to leave us empty. Lifting our eyes to Jesus alone, who declares us to be His, to be holy and in the kingdom of light is where true satisfaction will only ever be found.
Lie number 3: You need a coach to help you make decisions
In the Cosmopolitan article the journalist trials various coaches and in particular wants help deciding which city she should settle in. She muses that the coach was insightful but finishes by asking if perhaps a good friend would have come to the same conclusion.
As Paul writes we are part of a “holy” people. We are not lone rangers figuring out life on our own. God has brought us into a community of believers. When a Christian friend of mine started dating her now husband who was a recent convert she was worried about what people would think. I boldly declared to her it didn’t matter what anyone thought as long as she knew it was right.
Fortunately my advice was quickly corrected by a third friend who gently told us that it did matter what people thought, it was which people she listened to that mattered. We belong to a church family, a fellowship of believers who are charged with caring for us, correcting us and loving us. This means that weighty decisions that feel too heavy to bear can be brought to trusted Christian friends and church family who will speak truth and wisdom into our lives which no coach ever could.
