America today is a save-yourself society if there ever was one. But does it really work? The underdeveloped societies suffer from one set of diseases: tuberculosis, malnutrition, pneumonia, parasites, typhoid, cholera, typhus, etc. Affluent America has virtually invented a whole new set of diseases: obesity, arteriosclerosis, heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, venereal disease, cirrhosis of the liver, drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, battered children, suicide, murder. Take your choice. Laborsaving machines have turned out to be body-killing devices. Our affluence has allowed both mobility and isolation of the nuclear family, and as a result our divorce courts, our prisons and our mental institutions are flooded. In saving ourselves we have nearly lost ourselves.
— Ralph Winter (1924–2009), Missiologe
Topics: Meaning & Identity, Time & Transience, Ethical Questions
Occasions: For Reflection
All quotes by Ralph Winter (2)
You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
Augustine of Hippo
Jesus calls us not to a new religion, but to life.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.
Henri Nouwen
To love a person means to see them as God meant them to be.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Inner dignity remains, even when performance capacity and social role decline.
Anselm Grün
There is a God, and I'm not him.
John Mark Comer
God has put eternity into our hearts and filled it with longing.
John Piper
Prayers are tools not for doing or getting, but for being and becoming.
Eugene Peterson