It's in the Code Ep. 33: God Helps Those Who Help Themselves
If the notion that “God helps those who help themselves” isn’t in the Bible, why does it still figure so prominently in the experience of American evangelicals? What is the sentiment behind this notion, and where does it come from? In this episode, Dan explores these issues and argues that while the phrase itself may not be in the Bible, the sentiment behind it is pervasive within American evangelical subculture.
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Hello and welcome to the series, It's in the Code, part of the podcast Straight Wine It's in the Code, part of the podcast Straight Wine American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
As always, it is great to be with all of you who take the time to listen, and as always, I want to begin by just giving my thanks to you for doing that.
All of you who support us in so many ways, whether it's on this series, emailing me with questions, comments, themes, topics, I welcome that, want that.
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I'm open to all of that.
Always have to have the caveat that I just can't get back to everybody who responds, but I do my best and really do value that.
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Today's episode, I want to pick up with a theme that I've heard about from a lot of people, and it's one of these topics that I wasn't sure if I was going to cover or not for reasons I'll get into.
It was a little bit surprising to me, though, that I kind of kept hearing this from people and giving it more thought.
more attention, really, you know, realizing, yeah, this is something that I need to need to take into account, maybe think about.
And as I thought about it, really saw some things for myself that maybe I hadn't considered before.
So I want to dive into this.
And here it is.
It is the chestnut that God helps those who help themselves, right?
The, This is a theme I have gotten so many emails about.
I've had people bring it up in my coaching sessions.
I had people bring it up in some of the seminars that I've done.
Different things like this.
And that's what we're going to tackle today, right?
This notion that God helps those to help themselves.
And why then, if I've heard about it from so many people, would I be, you know, sort of unsure about diving into it or reluctant to?
Well, the reason is that at first blush, it's kind of surprising to hear this from so many folks.
And in some ways, especially those coming from conservative, evangelical, what we call biblicist religious traditions, Christian traditions.
That is, Christian traditions that claim to be quote-unquote biblical, that hold the Bible to be a kind of ultimate authority, that have a particular kind of relationship with
They're scriptures and the reason why it's surprising at first blush and and this surprises a lot of people is because that phrase is not it's not in the bible anywhere a lot of a lot of people a lot of americans think uh that this is something that jesus said or something the apostle paul said but it's not um one piece of evidence for how widespread that sentiment is is you know if you google around on this
The number of sort of evangelical Christian websites and ministries and other things that are at pains to elaborate the fact that this is not something in the scriptures, that this is not something that Jesus taught, that this is not something that Paul taught.
Though Paul does say, you know, they don't work, don't let them eat and so forth.
And I think some of that might be harbored in the background.
But it isn't biblical, right?
And that's why people's experience with this sentiment and this phrase was somewhat surprising to me, right?
There are so many evangelical sites and pastors and churches and just kind of on and on and on that go to lengths to explain that it isn't in the Bible, which in their worldview, of course, means that it isn't something to which they're supposed to hold.
This was my own experience, right?
I still remember to this day a sermon I heard as a teenager in church, it obviously was impactful to me at the time, I still remember it, where the pastor said that God helps those who can't help themselves.
He talked about how, in his view, how problematic this notion that God helps those who help themselves was, right?
And so for the pastor who delivered that sermon, it was really a point of insistence.
He spoke about it often, right?
So there is obviously a significant portion or slice of the evangelical subculture that does not hold, at least explicitly, that God helps those who help themselves, right?
And other kinds of Christians also don't tend to emphasize this sentiment, and we'll get to that a little bit later on.
So simply because it's not a biblical affirmation, lots of evangelicals reject it.
And that's the response we might expect.
So the first time I got an email saying, what about God helps those who help themselves?
Well, you know, I mean, it's not that common.
It's not in the Bible.
It's not, you know, it doesn't seem like it's something lots of evangelicals would say, but I think I was mistaken in that because I've heard from so many people, right?
So here's the question that opened up as I began to reflect more on this, right?
As the experiences of so many of you testify, there is also a large portion of the evangelical world that does hold to this.
All those disclaimers notwithstanding.
So the real question is, and I think this is what I want us to think about, this is where we get into sort of cracking the code, into code-breaking territory.
The real question is, why does this sentiment have the staying power that it does within the evangelical world if it's not a teaching of Jesus or a teaching of Paul or something that's in the Bible?
So that's what we're going to sort of think about here for a few minutes.
And as I say, this is where we're sort of cracking the code on this.
Because on the surface, it seems like a sentiment that virtually no evangelical Christian would express, given its lack of a biblical basis.
Right?
But here's the issue.
I think that while this phrase may not play in all evangelical contexts, I think the sentiment behind it does in most evangelical contexts.
That is, I think that even for many of those churches and pastors and congregations that would say something sort of, you know, that sounds theologically correct, let's say, that God helps those who can't help themselves and so forth.
They might reject the phrase, but the sentiment is still there.
And I think it's true in two areas.
I think it's true in the area of a lot of social policies and different things like that.
But I also think it's true in the area of mental health.
And that's where we're going to sort of take a look at this.
So, why do I say that?
What do I mean by that?
What do I mean with the idea that the sentiment is there even if the phrase isn't?
Well, let me start with an idea that some of you might be familiar with, right?
And it's the idea of the so-called Protestant work ethic.
And you've probably heard this at some point.
If you're a certain age as I am, you'll remember grandparents and maybe even parents who sort of talk about this, right?
That notion of the Protestant work ethic, it's a term that comes from a well-known book by a sociologist named Max Weber.
Written at the turn of the 20th century called the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
And I'm not going to I'm not going to launch into a full like Weberian analysis of religion here.
But what Weber essentially argues, he basically argues that the economic development, the expansion of capitalism in Northern Europe It corresponded with Protestantism, right?
Basically, he was like, why is it that predominantly Protestant countries are where capitalism really develops and takes off and so forth?
And his answer was that it corresponded to an attitude toward work and economic activity within Protestantism.
It basically, for him, captured the idea that within that Protestant theological imaginary, that way of envisioning the world, all of people's activities, including their so-called secular occupations, their jobs, what it is that they do to make money, that everything they do is a kind of divine that everything they do is a kind of divine calling.
It's the notion, familiar to many of you, and this is scriptural, that everything you do should be done to the glory of God, right?
That God is so pervasive a part of organizing our lives that everything we do is a calling, an occupation, right?
So the idea in his book was basically that a broadly Protestant culture was one that instilled a certain value of hard work, industry, industriousness, and so forth, okay?
Now, Weber's thesis has been challenged, it's been modified, some people have affirmed it, and so forth, right?
And we could debate whether he described a kind of cultural reality or helped bring it into being.
That is, his book and his analysis was so influential that there are some, I think, who begin to imagine Protestantism as having to do with economic productivity and so forth.
But here's the point.
This idea of hard work as a kind of calling, it becomes a defining feature of the American cultural ethos.
And I think any of us who observe American culture and American history, and again, if you're of a certain age and you had, you know, grandparents or parents of a certain age, you heard this kind of notion, right?
This notion that America is not only a Christian nation, but part of what makes it a Christian nation, it's a nation of innovation and hard work and industry and so forth, right?
This sense of hard work, of being self-reliant and so forth, it becomes not only as American as the proverbial baseball and apple pie, it also becomes a defining part of American Protestantism, what it means to be a Christian as millions of American Protestants experience it.
So let's fast forward, when you get the emergence of what we now identify as American Evangelicalism, which starts to really take shape in the post-World War II period, the 1950s forward.
If you're interested in that, go back, check out some of the early episodes from Straight White American Jesus, where we talk about the development of American Evangelicalism.
As that subculture emerges, it is absolutely a defining feature of that religious subculture.
And this is why when we talk, I mentioned policy and politics and things like that earlier, I think this is part of why conservative Protestants today tend to view the poor as immoral.
They see poverty as a moral failing, right?
This is why they oppose federal or state programs aimed to provide economic help to Americans and so forth.
The idea is that such programs help those who won't help themselves.
The idea is The very American and in many ways very Protestant idea that those who are poor, they must be lazy, they must not be working hard, they must not be industrious, right?
They're not good Americans, they're not good Christians.
So the idea is that such programs help those who won't help themselves.
And so there's a sense in which the notion of God helping those who help themselves, it's wrapped up with those views on economics, poverty, and so forth, and the relation to religious identity.
I think that that's a point, an element of this God helps those who help themselves kind of thing.
That shouldn't be overlooked, that's there, and that's real.
And I think that many of you, again, who've reached out, conversations that I've had, correspondence I've had with people, I know that this is something that some of you can identify with.
But there's another dimension of this that I think is at least as significant, and maybe more pervasive in contemporary society than that, and it has to do with mental health.
Right.
So something I've talked about before, if you go back and listen to the episode on Count It All Joy, right?
I really, I think, talk about this.
It's something we've talked about in the main podcast series that we do in lots of different ways.
But certainly, The American evangelical subculture is well known for denying mental health disorders and accepted treatments or certainly trivializing the significance of mental health, mental health disorders, the treatment of these and so forth.
Common mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression are often viewed as moral or spiritual failings.
They represent a lack of faith or trust in the power of God.
If you just had enough faith, you wouldn't be anxious about the future.
You would trust God to provide for you.
If you truly believed and had faith in the promises that God makes, you wouldn't be depressed and so forth.
This is often the line that's taken.
Those issues, things like, again, anxiety and depression, they're often presented as a kind of emotional or spiritual laziness, right?
The people who experience this are often dissuaded from seeking help from mental health professionals, especially so-called secular mental health professionals.
The idea of medications that would help people to manage these kinds of issues is often really, really frowned upon within evangelical circles.
You'll hear the rhetoric about, oh, they just want to fix everything with a pill.
They want to fix human sinfulness with a pill.
Only God can fix this and so on and so forth, right?
So what does all that mean?
How do I see this connecting?
Well, quite simply, within the evangelical subculture, mental illness is often presented as a failure to work hard enough.
It is a view that mental health disorders, they are maladies that afflict those who won't help themselves.
But somebody say, Whoa, hold on, man, that that kind of makes sense.
But these churches, these congregations, these pastors are all going to say that what we have to do as humans is depend on God to help us, right?
So, so, so how do these two relate?
Because that's the failure to help oneself, right?
The notion is that if you suffer from mental health, Struggles of different kinds.
You have failed to trust God.
You have failed to ask for God's help.
You have failed to accept God's help.
You have not helped yourself spiritually.
You haven't done the hard spiritual work of being a good Christian.
And if you had, You wouldn't be depressed.
You wouldn't experience anxiety.
You wouldn't have post-traumatic stress.
You wouldn't have all of these kinds of things that you're dealing with.
Right?
So very often, I think, again, to get to this notion, it may not be phrased in the explicit terms of, God helps those who help themselves, but that sentiment is there.
If you suffer from a mental health disorder, if you struggle with mental health issues, you have somehow failed in the work of being a Christian.
You have not done what you are expected to do to help yourself.
And I can speak of this out of my own experience, right?
I have heard more sermons about this issue than I can possibly recount.
I have had more casual conversations, sometimes serious conversations, with pastors, with parishioners, with seminarians, people who are training for the ministry, with even some theological educators.
I have had more conversations than I can possibly even recall.
With the easy dismissals of mental health disorders, with the easy assumption that those who suffer from mental health maladies do so because they have failed spiritually.
And I hear from others who experience this same expression, right?
It's not just my experience.
I hear from others all the time.
It's one of these central issues that the clients I work with in coaching are often dealing with.
It's often one of the issues that propelled them out of the religious traditions they left behind because they eventually got to a point where they did seek professional help and it transformed their lives and they came to see how damaging This logic of the sentiment of God is not going to help you unless you help yourself.
God isn't going to help you by sending you to a professional.
God's not going to help you by helping you medicate, you know, in ways that will help balance your body chemistry, right?
Your brain chemistry.
No, no, no, that's not going to work.
I've talked to so many people who have this experience.
So this is for me.
Perhaps even the most pervasive, and I think on the lived experience level of many, many Americans, many American Christians, this is the place where this notion that God helps those who help themselves has the most impact.
The most, and frankly, the most negative impact.
So let me, gotta wind this down.
Let me try to draw together some of these reflections.
I realize, I think I've been a bit scattered here.
Probably every evangelical pastor, I think certainly every evangelical scholar, many evangelicals who are biblically literate, they know that the phrase, God helps those who help themselves, is not literally in the Bible.
Right?
They know that.
And yet, the sentiment that it expresses is pervasive.
What does that mean for me?
It means that in really stark terms, it becomes largely irrelevant whether or not that specific phrase appears in the Christian scriptures, right?
I think if we look at the sentiment behind it, the logic behind it, the effects that it has both in that issue of sort of, say, policy and politics, but also the issue of mental health and mental health care within the evangelical subculture, I think it is such a pervasive feature of evangelical subculture that the phrase may as well be scriptural.
So I think that becomes honestly sort of irrelevant.
Okay.
Second sort of concluding point here.
Once again, I can see the emails now.
People are gonna say, why are you emphasizing evangelical Christianity all the time?
Other kinds of Christians, you know, have the same thing.
That is true.
Okay.
Evangelical churches and cultures are not the only Christian spaces where this sentiment is expressed.
But in general, and again I'm speaking in general, there are exceptions to this.
In general, I think liberal Protestant theologians and pastors and congregations are much more sympathetic and attuned to the realities of mental health than are evangelicals.
It's one of the reasons That so many evangelicals distrust or don't view liberal Protestants as real Christians is precisely because they will say that things like mental health issues are real, that it's not about spiritual attack or demons coming after us or not having enough faith or whatever, right?
I think the Catholic Church is probably more of a mixed bag on this in a lot of ways.
But I think overall the religious antipathy to mental health issues is simply more pronounced among conservative Protestants than it is among other American Christian groups.
Could be wrong about that.
I'm happy to hear from folks showing me that I'm wrong about that.
Always love additional resources that folks can send me helping me to build my own knowledge of these topics.
Okay?
And finally, none of this is intended to deny the reality that most Americans in general also misunderstand the reality of mental health and mental illness.
I'm not in any way trying to give the impression that conservative Christians are the only ones who misperceive the significance of mental health issues and mental health, mental health care in this country and so forth.
But I think that the religious veneer that it is given is particularly dangerous, right?
So, the idea that God helps those who help themselves, it is a sentiment that is pervasive within significant swaths of American Christianity.
It doesn't matter to me that it's not in the Bible because the sentiment is real and pervasive.
And more importantly, I think the effects of that language are real.
And that's where the code comes in, right?
Even many of the churches and the Christians that recognize the phrases in Scripture still embody the impulses And the sentiment implicit in that phrase.
And when we begin to sort of decode it and see the logic behind it, see the work that it does, I think that's where we see that the sentiment is there and is pervasive.
I need to sign off here.
As always, again, to reiterate, I thank you all so much for your time, your support.
Please continue reaching out, danielmillerswage at gmail.com, danielmillerswaj at gmail.
Would love to hear from you.
As I say, love to hear supplements to episodes, ideas for new episodes.
People keep asking how long will It's In The Code be going.
It will go until people tell me that, you know, they've kind of got enough or that we don't have new topics or themes.
But as long as people are emailing in and letting me know what they think and new ideas and topics, I'm happy to keep going with this.
I've got several teed up, sort of queued up for the future.
For now, again, thank you and as always, be well until we meet again in this virtual format.
