I had a conversation last week on the subject of austerity in the inner-city public schools, attended mostly by poor minority children, with a woman who said she homeschooled her two daughters because “God helps those who help themselves.”
She is Christian, and she used the saying to support her argument that poor people didn’t deserve help from the government because they had fallen into a life of inactivity, one from which they never even try to pick themselves up to escape poverty. Forget that they have never had the opportunity to crawl out of poverty, since my conversation partner clearly had no clue about the circumstances of poor minority families. In the interest of promoting understanding and caring between the different sides of our equilateral triangle, here, let me explain the faults of her logic.
(Non-Christian readers: Please understand that I’m acknowledging certain Christian beliefs in this post, which you may or may not believe to be true. My evidence and only support for every assertion is the Christian Bible, primarily those parts that tell the story of the life of Jesus.)
Origin and Christian application of the saying
First, Christians will acknowledge that the saying “God helps those who help themselves” is not in the Bible. Nor can it be reasonably inferred from anything in the Bible, which actually tells the story many times that God usually helps those who are unable to help themselves.
In the Hebrew scriptures, according to the Book of Isaiah (25:4), we find, “For [God has] been a defense for the helpless, a defense for the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat,” and so on. In the Christian New Testament, the apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the church at Rome (Romans 5:6), “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”
The saying is often incorrectly attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who used it in Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1757. But Algernon Sydney used it first in his 1698 article entitled Discourses Concerning Government.
Despite the saying’s absence from the Bible, there may be some application of the saying in Christian teaching. The use of the word “help” may tell Christians that even though God needs to provide guidance—as Christians who take the Bible as God’s primary source of guidance believe—God never said he would do all the work. He will “help,” but Christians don’t actually believe they should take a front row seat to watch God do the work.
For example, Christians often pray for God’s help in finding a job. But God won’t write or mail out résumés. He won’t send hiring managers from Fortune 500 companies to your doorstep. The Bible teaches, though, that in situations where you might find yourself helpless, God will help if you ask for his help. If you’re just going to sit idle, however, as in “not helping yourself,” don’t hold your breath waiting on God.
Evidence for God helping primarily the helpless
I started researching this post, looking for some database on the circumstances of every single person Jesus is reported to have “helped” in some way. But finding none, I could have undertaken the search myself, but there is insufficient time for such research on my part.
It would have been a database unlike any I could find on the Internet that contained a reference to all the people Jesus helped and some reference to their circumstances. Were they helping themselves when Jesus helped them? Were they able to help themselves at the time? Etc.
For example, it was reported that he forgave the sins of a prostitute (see John 8:3-11) who had been condemned to death by the law of Moses (v. 5). Since I find myself playing the role of a writer quite often and since Christians believe Jesus was truly God who came to Earth as a human but is still totally divine, I’m a bit partial to this passage. It’s the only recorded instance of God writing something outside of the time when he reached his finger down from heaven to write the Ten Commandments given to Moses.
This woman’s circumstance was that she wasn’t rising to help herself. People dragged her in front of Jesus in order to trap him, but she was completely unable to seek Jesus on her own accord. In fact, if people didn’t want to trick Jesus, the prostitute’s sins might have still tarnished her eternal soul, as Christians would believe. That’s not how it happened, so let’s dispense with the hypothetical scenarios.
Jesus did forgive her, and she was presented to him as a helpless person who would not have been before him. In this instance, we would have to conclude that Jesus, who Christians believe is God, helped a woman who was unable to help herself. We would also have to conclude that this case does not support the statement “God helps those who help themselves.”
So, my idea was to go through and determine all the instances of Jesus helping someone and categorize their circumstances at the time they received the help as either “helping themselves,” “not helping themselves,” or “unable to help themselves.” My hypothesis was that most of the cases would be categorized as “unable to help themselves.” I haven’t done this research (yet), but I suspect my theories would be correct, based on many things I’ve read out of different Christian churches.
In the case of our schools
Before launching into any kind of position statement here, let me talk about how I would categorize children who attend poverty-ridden schools in our inner cities. I can’t say they are “helping themselves,” because even if they are helping themselves in their hearts, the message isn’t getting through. The schools and learning materials are still in terrible condition.
On the other hand, I can’t say they aren’t helping themselves, either. This year, especially, we have seen a dramatic rise in activism on the part of schoolchildren in Philadelphia, Chicago, and other cities about education issues. The problem here isn’t that they’re not shouting their message from the highest mountain they can climb; the problem is that the mountain isn’t high enough. The resources just aren’t there, even for those who scream at the top of their lungs. So, given how hard people appear to be trying but can’t seem to improve their own situation very much, if at all, I have to conclude they’re unable to help themselves, just like the prostitute.
If Christians aspire to be “Christ-like” when and wherever possible, I might suggest looking to inner-city schools and the children there who are unable to help themselves. Districts like Chicago and Philadelphia have been dragged before us Americans, not by the inner-city schoolchildren themselves but by mayors and education commissioners who are trying to trick us, again, just like the circumstances that brought the prostitute before Jesus.
If we fail the test, the cost will be charter schools, good teachers who don’t want to stay teachers, good people who don’t want to become teachers, and a whole group from our young generation who are ill-prepared for college and the workforce.
If we succeed in helping these people who cannot help themselves because opportunities have been denied them, the victory will, I hope, bring the permanent dismissal of all assaults on public education in America. I end with a quote from the Bible passage used above:
Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
