Daily Inspiration Quote by Hans Kung

A theologian doesn’t reach for “hundreds of millions” by accident. Kung is doing moral arithmetic in public, insisting that suffering isn’t an unfortunate side effect of modernity but its balance sheet. The scale matters: it forces the listener out of the comforting frame of individual failure and into the uncomfortable realm of systemic responsibility. “Increasingly” is the quiet accelerant. It implies trend, momentum, a world allegedly getting richer while more people fall out of its promises.

The list is structured like a descent: unemployment to poverty to hunger, then the kicker - “the destruction of their families.” That last phrase drags the crisis from economics into the intimate, where policy becomes personal. Kung knows that numbers can numb; “families” rehumanizes the statistic and smuggles in a theological claim about social bonds as sacred, or at least morally non-negotiable. The subtext is a critique of a global order that treats labor as disposable, food as a commodity, and social stability as collateral damage.

Contextually, Kung spent much of his career arguing for an ethics with global reach - a “world ethos” meant to speak across religions and ideologies. This line fits that project: it’s a secular-sounding indictment with religious weight. He’s not offering charity as a patch; he’s pressuring modern institutions (states, markets, even churches) with a blunt question: what kind of civilization produces abundance and calls this outcome acceptable?