anyone heard of the old saying “god helps those who help themselves”…
is this helpful …
Then God help me help myself. What if I’m too weak to help myself?
Christians have told me this all of my life. So much so that many believe it’s a Bible quote. But it comes from ancient Greece. So once again the Christians borrowed it from the pagans.
It’s helpful, since it undermines conventional beliefs about God.
what conventional beliefs…
God performs miracles for you if you pray and have faith. The saying undermines this.
People get the saying backwards.
The idea comes from the predestined performing good works.
It’s not that those who help themselves are helped by God after the fact.
It’s that those helped by God in advance of the fact help themselves.
In other words, people are chosen for destiny.
Yeah, some for premature death … when we bomb them with our shock and awe,
It merely means that you are a part of the fix, miracle or not.
And if you do not do your share, however small it might be, then you can’t expect a great deal of favor.
An investment broker will tell you the same thing.
…and it doesn’t undermine anything.
Not to, say, all the starving babies in the world.
Yes it does.
If they don’t do their part in trying to eat, then more of them will die than if they do.
I’m not saying it’s a good thing.
I’m just saying it’s an excuse taken for internal versus external locus of control. People who are successful claim to be chosen. When they encounter others who aren’t successful, they expect others to work hard to prove their worth and evoke God’s favor.
It’s a vain endeavor, but the successful enjoy their negligence, and benefit from the struggle of the naive.
Ah, so that’s it. The 20,000 children aged 5 years and younger who will starve to death over the next 24 hours [in one or another Third World hellhole] do so because they are not doing their part by eating. God gave them the capacity to experience hunger pangs, but it’s not His fault they don’t do something about it. Just as with all the children in the path of one or another natural disaster. It’s not God’s fault they couldn’t figure out how to get out of the way.
I don’t get it. If you want to do something about starving babies, you have to get involved and do something about it. How does this not help?
I grew up on that saying… amongst other such similar proverbs - they haven’t been around for centuries for nothing you know.
Well, if you think that doing something (about your problem, to get what you want, etc.) will have no effect or you believe that God will always save you or give you what you want and you might as well do nothing,
than it certainly could help, especially if it is correct.
What saying is helpful to starving babies?
I would say crying, grasping for a breast, chewing and swallowing what is given, would all be kinds of minimum helping themselves. But the saying is not really aimed at babies or just anyone. It is aimed at people who think that God will always lift up the good, whatever they do or do not do, and punish the wicked, so inaction and not trying is never a bad choice. A distraught suffering baby is likely not in this category.
This saying can be translated into a non-theistic idea.
Often when looking at a problem, it can seem like there is no solution. However if you begin to put in an effort, help can arrive from ‘outside’ you. You go to the employment center and the social worker does nothing, but you make some contact with another unemployed person that does lead to help. If you do not move, often solutions ‘from the universe’ cannot reach you.
This idea is partially covered in ‘the longest journey begins with the first step’, but that only catches the ‘let’s break this down into manageable portions’ part. There is also this way that reality or God or the Buddha or your higher self or your intuition or ‘the kindness of strangers’ or helpful chance meetings and so on, have an opportunity to be used by you or help you if you are moving towards helping yourself.
If you lie in bed waiting for any of these to help you, you may get helped, but the odds go up if you at least make a couple of calls.
My point is aimed more at a God who chooses not to help those unable to help themselves. Why doesn’t He help them? Personally, I spent over 25 years working in one or another radical political organization that never failed to make the connection between the world economy and the mass starvation of children.
Mass starvation is a political problem. And always will be until an alleged loving, just and merciful God – said to be omniscient and omnipotent – decides to get off His ass and puts an end to it.
That is not what was stated.
The statement is NOT a guarantee of protection against all harm if you help yourself.
The statement is merely saying that you will get more than merely your own effort if you at least make your contribution.
It implies no guarantee that there will be enough.
“Why should I help fight for your cause if you don’t?”