For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel, will save it. Mark 8:35
“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, 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…
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 in “Reconsecration to a Wartime, not a Peacetime, Lifestyle” in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, 2nd edition (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1999) 706.