Who Helps Those Who Cannot Help Themselves?

Overcoming hardship is more complicated than pulling oneself up by ones bootstraps.

I once had a pastor who often preached “God helps those who help themselves.” Most people in the church just blindly agreed with him. And often repeated those platitudes. I personally didn’t think it sounded right. I did a word study of “help” in the bible. I found that it really didn’t match what was in the Bible. Eventually this pastor came before the congregation and confessed that he had been teaching several false things. That specific statement was one of those false teachings. After prayerful discussions with the elders, he decided to step down as senior pastor so he could spend time studying and relearning.

Recently a story has circulated about a millionaire who decided to become homeless to demonstrate that it is possible to build back. He put all of his belongings in storage. He found something he could sell, and started saving and working his way up. After several months, he actually was doing fairly well. He was not on track to return to being a millionaire within a year. But was making a descent income. Several months into his experiment, he announced that he had to give up. He had been diagnosed with a severe illness, and needed to return to the support of his family. He took is stuff out of storage. Put his money back into his bank account. This man failed at being poor and returned to being a millionaire.

When I first read that story I wanted to scream “Okay God, I give up! Make me a millionaire!” The absurdity of someone who is “homeless” giving up and going back to being a millionaire is beyond audacious.

Many news stories had misstated the intention of his original project. Sadly, people had taken his project as though he was trying to show that someone should be able to pull themselves up from their bootstraps. Several weeks later there had been a follow-up article about how his story had been mis-used. That wasn’t the intention of his project, but it had come across as very condescending.

Many Christians often buy into the the motivational Jesus. The millionaire to rags back to riches story has a major fallacy especially when it comes to long-term hardship. Their experience places them on a different foundation. This millionaire who “walked away” from being a millionaire knew he had a safety net to fall back on. The experience of a life of plenty and a safety net are major luxuries most people don’t have.

Hardship usually isn’t contrived like it was in the homeless millionaire story. Even in the instantaneous losses, you have a good history to fall back on. With some catastrophic event, you more likely than not have some safety net. When hardship is ongoing for many years, the safety net and foundation crumbles. If it was ever there at all.

I recently came across the concept of learned helplessness. Researchers handed the participants a quiz. Each question was timed. So the participants were instructed to write the answer for the first question and raise their hand. If they couldn’t answer in the time allotted, they would have to move on to the next. Half of the participants had easy questions while the other half had nearly impossible questions. You can imagine the frustration of seeing your neighbor who had a question like “2+2” raise their hand quickly while you are pondering a question like “5679 * 3453 / 2399”. After many questions, it feels like you are the only one that can’t get it. The final question was the same for all. The ones who had struggled to complete the earlier questions, struggled to answer the final question. They had come to expect failure. When struggles are ongoing over a long period of time, we become conditioned to hardship.

There is also the concept of learned optimism. Which gives someone whose life has been going well a boost even when dealing with a short-term loss. This is where many motivational speakers and people of faith come from. So many times we hear the story of “I lost everything, but I pulled myself back up.”

Well woohoo, good for you! Honestly, the motivational pep talks, words of affirmation or contrite faith more often than not made me want to either vomit or punch someone in the face.

—I will now kick the soapbox away before climbing onto it—

We were 10 years into Debi’s illness, and still several years from getting a diagnosis. Several people prophesied that we were coming to the end of our struggles. I think someone said God is going to put us on a fast train to the end. The prophecy was that we were coming to the end of the trials and things would get better soon. There were numerous prophesies about ships at sea in the storm and the like. Somehow the end of the line for our bullet train was a cliff. That train just went right on over. The storm turned into a hurricane. The ship blew apart leaving us in a nest of sharks. All the prophecies of things getting better never came to pass. No one prophesied what really happened. No one told use things were going to go from bad to worse to OMG WTH?!

We felt helpless, but we never gave up. Maybe those prophesies were a way to encourage us to keep going. The biblical reality isn’t found in those kinds of prophesies. It is found Hebrews 10 and 11. Some of those verses are taken out of context to imply that everything is going to be wonderful soon. The verses are encouragement to keep going, yes. But don’t ever let it turn into false optimism. It is summed up in Hebrews 11:13.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. (NIV)

There were so many abilities Debi kept losing. Between muscles weakening, growing neurological problems, and even losing her eyesight. When she could no longer do certain things, we found other things she could do. Along with her illness, our financial situation kept deteriorating as more and more of my income went toward medical bills. And it kept going for many many years.

We were living in the mountains. Our motorhome was about to be repossessed. We were facing homelessness in winter in the mountains. I could go anywhere and live anywhere. Debi couldn’t. I cried out to God. I told him that honestly, it would be easier for my to take off to someplace warmer and start over. I wouldn’t be able to take her with me. I didn’t want to leave her behind, but I didn’t see how we were going make it. God’s response to me nearly blew me over…

You are right. You can leave. I wouldn’t blame you if you did, and I (God) would continue to take care of her. You see, you are not doing it on your own. You are not the one taking care of her. I am taking care of her through you.

I realized

1. If God is using me, I can also trust Him to help me.

2. I can trust him to provide solutions as needed for her and for me.

3. Many times they are not the solutions I am expecting, but I need to be open to alternative solutions.

4. I can seek out help from others.

The burden wasn’t mine alone!

Our help comes from God and often that is through others. And often we have to grab ahold of someone to pull them along while we are being carried too!

Its God working through community. Its God working through our past and inner resources. But never was it me on my own. That is where I found my hope to keep going when I felt completely and utterly helpless.

---

I write about my life building up others while rebuilding my own life. I am on a mission to encourage you to look for the good you can do. Regardless of your situation. I also use my experience in technology and business to support community projects. I go where God takes me, which currently is in Brazil. To support my work and my projects you can buy me a coffee…or a bug spray. In Brazil, coffee is cheap and mosquitoes are many.