Is this a contradiction?

[semi-auto-mato]

God helps those who help themselves is not in the bible. I think it's a phrase Ben Franklin made up or one of them. Man plans God laughs is a play on proverbs 19:21. It's up to u how u interpret it. U can look at like man plans but the world is unpredictable but there is nothing God can't do. He is ur counselor so when things go crazy seek him and trust him. His will will prevail.

 

[5 Grand]

There's an old parable. I'm not sure where its from but I'll try to summarize it.

This guy was on a cruise ship and it started to sink. So the guy starts praying for God to save him. So the Captain of the ship starts giving out life preservers but the guy just kept praying. So when the ship was about halfway sunk the Captain and the crew got the emergency life boats and started climbing into the lifeboats. In the meanwhile the guy kept praying.

Finally the ship sunk.

The guy gets sent to hell and doesn't understand what happened. He said, "I kept praying". And the devil said, "yeah and God gave you life preservers and a life boat and you didn't use them."

 

[atribecalledgabi]

Inb4 DoU

 

[BiblicalAtheist]

This would be so much easier to answer if humanity knew what constitutes 'helping oneself' and 'god's plan'.

 

[Trollio]

Where the titties at

 

[AZTG]

What if you helping yourself is gods plan?

Or, even crazier, what if gods plan is you helping yourself?

 

[Plutarch]

Some people will say:

God helps ones who helps themselves.

They will also say:

Man plans, God laughs.

As someone else noted, I'm not quite sure that these two sayings are strictly scriptural or, for that matter, literal.

How does one help him self w/o a plan?

One obviously does not necessarily need a plan to help oneself?

Whats the purpose of a plan if God will make a mockery of it?

I don't think that many theists believe that God will make a mockery of their plans. Failures and successes (let's not forget that plans can obviously also succeed) are simply a part of life. What's more important is how you respond to those successes and failures.

This sounds like one of those "If God exists, then why do bad things happen to good people" type of questions. Life will always be hard, and this universe will always be impossibly incomprehensible if not paradoxical, but that doesn't mean that life (or parts of life) is senseless, pointless, or worthless.

 

[mryounggun]

This doesn't really seem that hard to understand for anyone who's goal isn't just to somehow shit on religion and religious people, but...

...'Man plans, God laughs' is just like any other hyperbolic statement; meaning it's overly dramatic to drive home a point. And the point is that man isn't in charge of his fate, when it's all said and done. God is.

 

[atribecalledgabi]

This would be so much easier to answer if humanity knew what constitutes 'helping oneself' and 'god's plan'.

We not supposed to know gods plan. We supposed to chase an invisible idea we will never live up to by design.

 

[5 Grand]

Yeah there's a saying that suffering is universal.

I'm Black but I grew up in the suburbs. I grew up with both parents and they both had college degrees. In my school kids from the city got bussed in. So there were a lot of Black kids from the city. I used to catch hell because I had parents. People used to gang up on me and start shit with me whenever I mentioned my parents. It didn't make sense to me at the time. I mean there was nothing I could do to change the fact that I had two parents and they didn't.

What I'm saying is that being wealthy, or being born into a wealthy family is a gift and a curse. The way I see it, those poor kids from the city had each other. They might not have had the material things I had growing up, but they didn't feel the hatred that I felt from people that didn't like me because I was light-skinned and from a good home.

I went through hell in high school and it took me a while to figure out why people hated me.

 

[7figz]

Because it's bullshit.

 

[VIBE]

Here's the contradiction..

God's plan

Ppl pray against it

If it goes their way, Gods will

If not, Satan or not enough faith

it's all bullshit

 

[DoubleShotHelix]

"fuck this shit, I'm out"

Jesus

 

[Fosheezy]

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”James 4:13-15

You can plan what you want, but it don’t mean it will work. There’s a lot of stuff we can’t/don’t control, and plans can fail for several reasons which have nothing to do with God.

At the same time, faith without works is dead James 2:20. You can believe you will pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, but if you don’t go about putting in the work to back this up, then you don’t even have a chance.

With the proper understanding it’s not a contradiction.

 

[leftcoastkev]

People are programmed to believe in God outside of themselves. So they move through life and rationalize all of their outcomes through the lense of that programming. Believing in God outside of yourself absolves you of the responsibility you have in the outcomes and circumstances you don’t like....and allows you the choice to take credit for the things you want to.

 

[5 Grand]

People are programmed to believe in God outside of themselves. So they move through life and rationalize all of their outcomes through the lense of that programming. Believing in God outside of yourself absolves you of the responsibility you have in the outcomes and circumstances you don’t like....and allows you the choice to take credit for the things you want to.

Cosign.

I don't believe in the bible. I don't believe in heaven or hell either. I believe heaven and hell are a state of being while you are alive.

As far as the bible goes, its just a book that jews wrote to manipulate people.

jews don't follow the bible.

 

[Brian B.]

kinda like when they say

"god don't make no mistakes"

then someone dies young & unexpectedly

"it wasn't his/her time to go"

so, god made a mistake? lol

 

[blackrain]

People are programmed to believe in God outside of themselves. So they move through life and rationalize all of their outcomes through the lense of that programming. Believing in God outside of yourself absolves you of the responsibility you have in the outcomes and circumstances you don’t like....and allows you the choice to take credit for the things you want to.

Part of having a true and honest belief in God is personal accountability. Meaning that you ultimately choose your own path even though it may be the opposite of what "God" has planned out for you. It doesn't absolve you of personal responsibility if anything someone who is truly religious shows an extreme amount of it and will blame themselves for everything that goes wrong in their life

 

[VIBE]

kinda like when they say

"god don't make no mistakes"

then someone dies young & unexpectedly

"it wasn't his/her time to go"

so, god made a mistake? lol

he makes mistakes in the Bible.. for one, the humans that he killed to rid the world of evil and sin.. then to think it would work.. then to not know Aaron was lying about the golden calf.. it can go on and on

 

[Colin$mackabi$h]

God is good all the time...