Daily Inspiration Quote by Hans Kung

Kung’s line is a quiet rebuke disguised as optimism: if a “better global order” hasn’t arrived, it’s not because we’re broke, ignorant, or metaphysically empty. It’s because we’re choosing, structurally and repeatedly, not to spend what we already have. The sentence shifts the argument away from scarcity (the classic excuse of politics) and toward responsibility (the uncomfortable terrain of ethics). “Possesses” is doing the heavy lifting: it implies ownership without implying use, like a nation sitting on stockpiles while insisting its hands are tied.

The triad matters. “Economic, cultural and spiritual” is a deliberate expansion of what counts as actionable power. Kung won’t let technocrats claim the future on economics alone, and he won’t let religious institutions retreat into private consolation. Culture is included as the middle term: the narratives, habits, and shared meanings that make policy legible and sacrifice imaginable. If you can’t change the story a society tells about itself, you can’t change its institutions for long.

Context sharpens the intent. Kung spent his career trying to make faith credible after catastrophe: postwar Europe, Cold War brinkmanship, Vatican conflicts, globalization’s winners and losers. His “global ethic” project argued that pluralism doesn’t require moral silence; it requires common minimums. The subtext is pointed: modernity already has the tools for decency. What’s missing is not capacity but coordination and conscience - and that indictment lands on states, markets, and churches alike.