I have a confession; I don’t like women’s books. When I see books with obnoxiously girly covers targeted at my gender, I flee immediately. I don’t know why, but anything exclusively for women rarely interests me. Therefore, Enough About Me: Finding Lasting Joy in the Age of Self by Jen Oshman is not a book I would typically read. However, the topic interested me.
Enough About Me is a call for women to take their eyes off themselves and set it on Jesus.
We live in a self-obsessed culture, and its central message is to live for oneself. The self-centered movement has even infiltrated the church. We now have scores of “pastors” making the Bible all about us and preaching how to live our best lives now, “worship” music elevating us instead of God, and Christians reading themselves in the Bible.
And as Oshman said in her book, this movement is most influential among women. A vast majority of women’s book — secular and Christian alike, focus on us. We are told to wash our face and stop apologizing, we are our “shero,” and are solely responsible for our joy. Consequently, we keep focusing on what to do to improve ourselves rather than look at what Jesus has already done.
This message is crushing us.
In Enough About Me, Jen Oshman explains why this constant navel-gazing is destroying women. Self-help, self-love, self-care, etc. will never give us everlasting joy; only Jesus can. He created us for His glory, not ours. So He must be the focus of our lives.
She said. “God says, I made you in my image to live for my glory. Culture says, be self-made in whatever image you like and live for your own glory. This is a counterfeit calling, and it’s killing us.”
The book has only seven chapters, “The Siren of Self,” “What the Giver of Life Intended,” “Rooted in Christ,” “You Are What You Eat,” “Built Up in Christ,” “Established in Christ,” and “Finding Lasting Joy.
It begins with various cultural norms and practices that ushered the self-movement we have today and why it makes women unhappy. Then the rest of the book contrasts this self-movement with the contradictory message of the Holy Scriptures and shows us why God is the only one who can make us truly happy.
There are several things I loved about Enough About Me. The chief one was that it wasn’t about me!
The book is faithful to its title, and it is Christ-centered rather than self-centered. Oshman saturated the pages with Gospel truths and faithfully used Scriptures to tear down the destructive lies about focusing on self.
She wrote winsomely and encouraged me to lift my eyes to the cross and rest in Jesus’s works. It is a much necessary reminder that we all need to hear often because of our tendency to seek our glory rather than God’s.
I appreciated the research Oshman put in for Enough About Me. She mentioned several historical facts, and liberally quoted from a multitude of past and present theologians throughout the book. I also loved the study guide at the end of each chapter. The questions are profound, thought-provoking, and points readers to further study in the Scriptures.
I highly recommend Enough About Me. In a world where hundreds of books published yearly are all about us; it was a breath of fresh air to read a women’s book that is all about Jesus and faithful to the Holy Scriptures.
*Crossway publishers graciously gave me a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.*
