The modern age is an age of revolution — revolution motivated
by insight into the appalling vastness of human suffering and
need. Pleas for holiness and attacks on sin and Satan were
made for Centuries in response to the human situation. Today
such pleas have been replaced with a new agenda, Political and social critiques yield recipes for revolutions meant to liberate humankind from its many bondages. And on the
individual level various self-fulfilment techniques promise
personal revolutions bringing ’freedom in an unfree world'
and passage into the good life. Such are modern answers to
humanity's woes.
Against this background a few voices have continued to
emphasise that the cause of the distressed human condition,
individual and social ~ and its only possible cure — is a spiritual one. But what these Voices are saying is not clear. They point out that social and Political revolutions have
shown no tendency to transform the heart of darkness that lies deep in every human being. That is evidently true. And amid a flood of techniques for self-fulfilment there
is an epidemic of depression, suicide, personal emptiness, and
Escapism through drugs and alcohol, cultic obsession, consumerism, and sex and violence — all combined with an inability to sustain deep and enduring personal relationships so obviously the problem is a spiritual one and so must be the cure."
- Dallas Willard. The Spirit of The Disciplines.
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