On October 13th 2018, the Wretched YouTube channel posted a clip entitled No, God does NOT help those who help themselves. In the video, host Todd Friel addresses two Christian clichés that he believes need to die. The first: "God helps those who help themselves." I absolutely agree with him that this cliché needs to die, and the clip he showed from WWUTT does a great job of explaining why.
But then Todd moved on to the second cliché: the typical diagram shown in the header image where God is on one side of a cliff, man is on the other, and the only possible way for man to get across the chasm is by the cross. Now, I agree with Todd when he says that this diagram is lacking in one thing. The cliff on which the man stands doesn't usually show any motive to cross the bridge to God. Todd suggested the diagram needs to show God's wrath hurling towards the man who isn't on the right side of the cliff. And that's an excellent idea! We need to show what we are being saved from , not just what we are being saved to.
But then Todd, as he is a little prone to do, tends to get slightly nit-picky. This is nothing against him, he's a great guy, he's a brother in Christ, and quite frankly, his ministry has been a great source of edification for me and many others, so I highly recommend him. But in this case, his nit-picking of the cliché has a slight impact on the Bible as well. His complaint is with the idea of the cross being a bridge. Todd doesn't agree with this, because it implies that we have done something to merit our salvation. You have to walk across the bridge to get to God, and that's doing something, which the Bible tells us is impossible.
But the diagram isn't as bad as Todd makes it sound. There are multiple equivalent diagrams wherein we are told to "do" something. As an example, Jesus told us to enter through the narrow gate. Is there much functional difference between entering a gate and crossing a bridge? Both are actions of travel on our part. Both involve us taking a specific route to God. But I can't imagine Todd would walk up to Jesus and say that His analogy is flawed because it borders on preaching works based salvation.
As Christians, we do need to avoid inaccuracies in our explanations, but I contend that the cross bridge diagram, while cliched, is about as Biblically sound and functionally effective as a man can get without divine inspiration. To nit pick it is just not necessary, and may even be unhelpful. Indeed, no analogy will ever be perfect, because to be perfect is to cease to be an analogy, instead becoming the thing itself. The cross bridge analogy, even as it stands, is a decent analogy, and need not die.