Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Marketplace mentality with people

From Eugene H. Peterson's "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology" (p. 38):

"We live in a culture that has replaced soul with self. This reduction turns people into either problems or consumers. Insofar as we acquiesce in that replacement, we gradually but surely regress in our identity, for we end up thinking of ourselves and dealing with others in marketplace terms: everyone we meet is either a potential recruit to join our enterprise or a potential consumer for what we are selling; or we ourselves are the potential recruits and consumers. Neither we nor our friends have any dignity just as we are, only in terms of how we or they can be used."

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