God helps those...

"God helps those who help themselves" is a phrase most of us are familiar with. Many mistakenly believe that it is from the Bible or incorrectly attribute it to Benjamin Franklin, it seems to have actually originated in ancient Greece and through the centuries it has popped up over and over again in a wide variety of places, including the Quran. In America it has been widely accepted by Christians, even lacking a Biblical source, as a theological truth and as a way of incorporating US cultural concepts of independence into Christianity. Other Christians, however, see it as the antithesis to the Bible's message of charity and caring for those in need without giving a thought to the class of the person. So how can Christians be so divided over a simple phrase that originated thousands of years ago in a culture that most Christians would see as debauched and paganistic? Who is it that God helps? Which side gets it right?

I think both sides get it wrong. One side uses the phrase to condemn those who they see as lazy and looking for a hand out, the other side uses the phrase to condemn those who they see as greedy and unwilling to help others. This means they are both forgetting what the phrase actually says. "God helps those who help themselves" is not the same as "God helps those who help themselves and no one else". Of course, from a Biblical perspective, God helps those who help themselves but God also helps those who can't or don't help themselves. Some turn over all of their problems to God first and others turn to God as a last resort, but in both cases God helps. With this phrase, as with everything else, people tend to take what they want to out of it, excluding or dismissing those who take something different from it. Most of the time we can find a way to make any set of words, any situation, any set of facts, fit into our own personal world view. We emphasize what we want to and ignore what we need to and in most cases we fail to see the big picture.

I recently read an article about George HW Bush and how he is receiving a Profiles in Courage award for backtracking on his "no new taxes" pledge when he saw that raising taxes was in the best interest of his country and more important than a campaign pledge. He is being celebrated for doing what was right instead of what was politically beneficial. The article states that his fellow Republicans have looked at this same set of events and decided that what President Bush did wasn't courageous but a political blunder that cost him his reelection and they refuse to make the same mistake. Two different groups looking at the same circumstances and seeing two completely different lessons to be learned. Either way America still faces a huge debt and growing inability to deal with its economic problems.

We have to realize that we are all guilty of seeing only what we want to see. We have to realize that it requires a strong effort to see what the other side sees. We have to realize that we can't be aware of the big picture until we put forth that effort. We have to realize that we can and should learn from those who disagree with us and that doing what is right is more important than being right. If we don't, if we keep following leaders who feel it is more important to rally their base instead of rallying their country we will continue into this downward spiral that all sides seem to agree that we have entered. At least there is one thing we all agree on, maybe we can use that as a starting point to turn things around.