A gem from the late Walter Wink

Finally getting around to reading Walter Wink, particularly his book Engaging the Powers. It’s an interesting experience b/c I bought a used copy in San Francisco that someone had already marked up and dog-eared. Then as I began reading it, the binding came apart. So now it’s more like a sheaf of papers than an actual book, and reading it presents somewhat of an ergonomic challenge.

That said, this book is an invaluable complement to so many other people I’ve been reading recently, including Rene Girard, Simone Weil, Ernest Becker, George Grant, Michael Hardin, Derek Flood, Jared Diamond and Brad Jersak. Highly recommended. Here’s one of many passages I underlined (but the previous reader didn’t!):

The very success of a reform effort helps to produce its decline, since the improved situation reduces the public outrage necessary to sustain opinion and activity on behalf of change. Social change is thus self-limiting; every movement forward is usually followed by at least some movement back. Furthermore, we are usually able to understand only the system that is crumbling, not the one emerging. This means that our perception of reality generally arrives too late to save a society but just in time to explain its demise.