MONEY-AFFLUENCE

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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

Reconstruction to a Wartime, not a Peacetime, Lifestyle, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, William Carey Library, 1981, p. 815.

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Material success is no measure of spiritual health. Nor is apparent affluence any criterion of real godliness. And it is well for us that the Shepherd of our souls sees through this exterior and takes steps to set things right.

Phillip Keller

A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, Permission by Zondervan, www.zondervan.com, 1970, p. 59.

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