We all know what help is — it is an assist of one kind or another. Of course, it comes in ‘all shades of gray’ from overt to occult, from miniscule to maximal, from intended to accidental or incidental, from desired to rejected, etc.
When we interject God into the equation of ‘help’ as the ancient Greeks did, we create a new dimension beyond our control or insight. They are given credit for coining the phrase, ‘God helps them who help themselves’. The obvious implication of such a saying is that one must help himself first before God will ‘assist’.
When I was a child, my mother often repeated the adage that ‘heaven helps them who help themselves’ — a rather obvious reference to the Greek saying. That entire idea centered on the fact that, if one wanted something done, he must apply himself to the task before any assistance from God could be expected. That was a stern admonition to me and my siblings that we were responsible for our success or failure — work hard and God will assist and therefore, success is likely — be lazy and non-applying, God will ignore you, and failure will likely be guaranteed.
So, I learned at a very tender age of five or six that God would not put our seeds in the ground, cultivate the soil to assist their growth, or remove the weeds from our crops — if we did those things dutifully, then God would assist with warm sunshine and rainfall and a successful crop might be expected. Notice, I said ‘might’ be expected — nothing was guaranteed, but experience had shown success to be the norm. The bottom line was ‘hard work, and dedicated persistence’ was the best way of assuring God’s assistance —a lesson I never forgot.
I didn’t know how God’s assistance worked except I could see that most of the time, God provided the essentials of nature which, combined with my hard work, led to success. There were times however, when God did not provide the essentials for healthy plant growth — usually manifested by either too much or too little rainfall. Those were the times when we, as a devout Catholic community, came together in prayer begging God to assist us with proper amounts of heavenly water.
Way too often, to our chagrin, nothing changed, and our crops continued unabated in their torment — I was dismayed. Seeing my mother and father struggle so hard to provide a living for their six boys, and then seeing God not answer our pleading for help was extremely stressful for me. I was twelve years old and good friends with our parish priest. His answer to my question of ‘why wouldn’t God help’ sent my head spinning. He said,” It’s God’s will”.
That statement tore into shreds my mother’s adage of ‘heaven helps those who help themselves’. The obvious question for my maturing, inquisitive mind was, why? Why were we doing all that praying if God would not listen? I had no clue, but one thing was for certain, I would find out.
The first difficulty I encountered was attempting to understand who God really was. I learned in my history lessons that the ancient Greeks and Romans recognized a God for nearly every niche and cranny of human consideration. They relied on those Gods to bring success to whatever endeavor they chose.
Then, I learned that the Israelites discovered there is only ‘one true God’, and all the others are pagan myths. The latter info came by way of Bible studies and Catholic Catechism classes. All of that seemed well and good but still did not solve my dilemma about why God seldom answered our prayers when we most needed him.
As I grew and studied more, I made a very startling discovery — everyone talked about God as though he was their ‘next door neighbor’ but no one could tell me exactly who God is. In fact, I discovered that absolutely no one had ever been able to decipher the God about whom he spoke. Additionally, no one could prove that a God actually existed.
Out of seemingly nowhere, along came Jesus of Nazareth injecting a dramatic new piece into the puzzle of God. I discovered through research of biblical writings that for centuries the Israelites had been expecting a messiah who would restore Paradise just for them. When Jesus began his public ministry, the Jews were being severely oppressed by both their own government with its money-making machine of sacrificial religion, and the Roman Empire under whose ultimate control they existed and for whom they toiled — with that understanding the plot thickened for me.
I am as certain as I am sitting in my chair right this moment that Jesus has been totally misrepresented. I believe without doubt that Jesus’ representation as God’s only Son who was sent by God to die as the ‘perfect sacrifice’ for forgiveness of our sins is a fabrication of untruth intended to perpetuate the total control over human lives as was the custom of the Jewish hierarchy.
Whereas the Jewish religion offered Perfect Bloody Sacrifices of animals for appeasement of their angry God, the new ‘Jesus-religion’, Christianity, would offer a ‘Perfect Unbloody’ sacrifice to that same God in the form of a ‘recreated’ Jesus. Of course, true to form, that recreation and offering could only be done by the ‘priest’. Consequently, the Holy Roman Catholic Church was formed at the urging of Roman Emperor Constantine in 325AD. Things went well until the death of Constantine’s son who succeeded him.
Later Emperors were not as friendly to Christianity as Constantine. There was a rather constant haggling over unsolved religious concepts as various theologians and bishops struggled to define exactly what ‘Christianity represented’ and how it was to be practiced and considered. Many of those were driven and engendered by ascetics such as Augustine and Jerome whose philosophy was so restrictive as to propose that humans should deny their sexual identity — sex became the ‘whipping boy’ of Christian society and persisted as such until recent years. Of course, as might be expected, the proponents of sexual dampening became its greatest abusers.
Eventually, because of differences in concepts about the Holy Ghost as well as power struggles between the Roman Church and the Eastern Church, The Great Greek Schism occurred in 1065 or thereabouts — the cat was out of the bag. I am not as familiar with the continuing history of the Eastern Church as with the Roman, but it is quite obvious that differences of one kind or another existed there also because of the number of Eastern Orthodox Churches that sprang into existence.
Meanwhile, in the Roman Church, there were periods of relative tranquility. However, because the papacy was not only a religious headquarters, but was also an extremely important and powerful political position, prominent powerful families dominated the papal seat, frequently resulting in the many and frequent atrocious abuses. As time progressed, many Christians had seen enough, and the inevitable breakaway of the Protestant Reformation began.
That breakaway set the stage for what we see today — over 44,000 so-called Christian sects, branches and denominations, each claiming superiority of spirituality. Not only those divisions in Christianity, but, just as importantly, the constant tension between the western Christian world, the mid-east Muslim world, and the far-east Buddhist and Hindu worlds generated continual wars and threats thereof.
All that division and hostility has been, and continues to be, generated by one simple cause — not one of them could then, nor can now, define the essence of its God which led directly to the absolute misunderstanding, presentation, and projection of Jesus of Nazareth. Everything from the first word Moses wrote to this very moment has been and continues to be pure mythology —they always have been, and still are, worshiping a ‘mythical god’.
So, When I came to that stark realization, I was ‘forced internally’ to solve and resolve the problem — if there is a God, its essence must be defined — we must know who God is. My encounter with Quantum Mechanics enabled me to understand who that God must be. I understood from that encounter that there is a perfect rationality in this universe which generates and maintains a perfect truth system outside of which there is no truth. Immediately, I knew who God is. God is a Perfect Rational Being. The implications of that definition are staggering — many, many of them are examined and explored in my two sequel books to Wilderness Cry, Peace In Spirituality and Provocative Catholic.
Additionally, that definition of God immediately explained graphically the Trinity as here described. A perfect Intellect reflecting upon itself sees a mirror image of itself, which is the universe and everything in it, The Son. Father and Son viewing each other perpetually and eternally have no choice except to accept, love, choose, will each other—the Holy Spirit or Will of God.
That realization instantly created a major question — what about Jesus? As I backtracked and studied the New Testament more vigorously, it became suddenly obvious that nowhere does it say why the Jews wanted Jesus dead — the bible we have is very careful to hide that fact. Also. I discovered that nowhere does Jesus say he came to die for our sins — my understanding is it took several centuries for the Church to completely develop that philosophy. What I did observe was Jesus saying he would give us two commandments: Love your God with your all and love (accept) your neighbor as yourself. (paraphrased). Then I chanced upon The Gospel of Thomas which was rejected by the Church Fathers as canonical for obvious reasons — it painted an entirely different picture and understanding of Jesus. In it Jesus kept explaining over and over, using different examples, that he, they, and everything in this universe are one in God —we are in God and God is in us. That’s what he told them one last time at his ‘last supper’ — the bread and wine they were eating and drinking were one in him, and them, and God. He advised them to always remember and reflect upon that truth each time they supped.
With that understanding, it rapidly became obvious that Jesus’ purpose was to eliminate the oppressive, illegitimate religion of the Jews and replace (supplant) it with an understanding that God is all love — he needs no appeasement— he needs nothing — he loves (accepts) all without strings. Therefore, our only justifiable prayer is thanksgiving to God for our existence in him.
Jesus plan for supplanting the Jewish religion was to remain in the outlying areas away from the authorities while he indoctrinated his apostle and acolytes so they might continue to spread his doctrine long after his death — Jesus knew he would eventually be crucified as a traitor.
Quite obviously, Jesus’ efforts were totally fruitless. Villains and scallywags, using his name but distorting his teachings to suit themselves, formulated a Church patterned exactly after the oppressive sacrificial religion of the Jews which Jesus despised — a house built on a false foundation will inevitably crumble. And crumble it did— the grains of meal continue to fall from the loaf which was rotten from the beginning.
So, where does “heaven helps them who help themselves” come into the picture? Knowing who God is makes that answer simple. God has created for us a perfect universe in which to function. All we need to do is apply it by helping ourselves. If we grow food, we utilize the conditions available to us for growing crops suitable to our climate. If we work at a ‘public’ job of any kind, we are helping ourselves by earning money with which to buy food and other necessities and luxuries of life while simultaneously producing equipment, supplies and technology used by others in their endeavors. It should be obvious that all who are capable must apply themselves to a task or possibly multiple tasks so that all may benefit — God has given us a ‘perfect system in which to operate’ and make our efforts productive. That alone is the sum of God’s interest.
Those who beg God to do this or that and those who expect God to perform miracles just for them have been terribly misguided, but they are not to blame — we all have been brainwashed into believing such nonsense — such are the fruits of irrational religion. Religion benefits only those who perpetrate and perpetuate it. Religion is the biggest money-making, empire building, scheme the world has ever known and it is, equally, the most destructive force the world has ever known.
So, if there were a utopia in this life, which there is not, it would be a world where every capable individual diligently applied himself to a task so that collectively, we all might share in the necessities and luxuries of life. That would be Communism. But there is no utopia. Consequently, brave men with great minds and determination have designed the best system of government yet discovered — Democratic Capitalism. While not perfect, it has proven to be the best yet. It only works because it attempts to control to some degree the God ordained, built-in quality of greed which every living entity possesses and exhibits.
As I have noted many, many times before, I have published three books on this subject. I strongly urge you to read Wilderness Cry. Likely then, you will want to read Peace in Spirituality and Provocative Catholic. For a little historical and autobiographical humor, you might like Growing Up In Fancy Farm Kentucky. All available Amazon-Kindle, and from me— handg@comcast.net
baptism Bible Buddhaism catholic catholic-church catholicism Christianity church Eternity exodus Faith Future of Christianity God God's Will gods Hilary L Hunt MD Hinduism HolyGhost Holy Spirit homily Islam Islam Christianity Jesus Judaism Judaism Buddhism Money moses Philosophy pope-francis Power Religion religions saints salvation Science sin theology The Trinity
WILDERNESS CRY by Hilary L Hunt MD 