today's verse, Matthew 17:20-21 The Message
"You're not yet taking God seriously," said Jesus. "The simple truth is that if you had a mere kernel of faith, a poppy seed, say, you would tell this mountain, 'Move!' and it would move. There is nothing you wouldn't be able to tackle."
The quote to which you refer, "god helps those who help themselves", does not actually originate from the Old or New Testament of the Christian Bible. It was written by Benjamin Franklin, for his Poor Richard's Almanac. He did not mean it to infer that one might obtain heavenly favor by showing one's work ethic, but rather that those who worked to solve their own problems could often find those solutions attributed to divine intervention. Remember, this is the man who also said, "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason", and "Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
Your second quoted passage does bring us full circle, most likely referring to the ninth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, wherein Jesus asks, "O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you?", before eventually proclaiming that "all things are possible to him who believes."
I do, however, agree with your view of the pandering that the Republican Party performs to garner votes from what we refer to as The Religious Right, to assuage whose demands this VP nomination was most assuredly selected. The only thing that concerns me more than the willingness of People With Power And Influence to bow to the wishes of those demagogues, is the willingness of so many common people of faith to blindly vote against their own self-interest in accordance with the wishes of the same.
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