Love & Passion Quote by Vance Havner

Havner lands the punch with a folksy what-if that doubles as a theological provocation: what if charity is good at keeping people comfortable but bad at getting them changed? By dragging the “social gospel” into Jesus’ most emotionally loaded parable, he frames modern welfare-minded Christianity as a well-meaning detour around repentance. A bed and a sandwich become symbols of institutional kindness that can anesthetize consequence. The prodigal’s hunger isn’t just suffering in this story; it’s the alarm clock that wakes him up.

The intent is polemical, but it works because it exploits the parable’s uncomfortable logic: rock bottom is not an accident, it’s part of the narrative’s moral architecture. Havner implies that a safety net can inadvertently freeze a person in the far country, substituting maintenance for return. He’s not arguing against feeding the hungry so much as against treating material relief as the whole of the gospel. The subtext is suspicion of a church that wants to manage symptoms rather than name sin, a critique aimed at a 20th-century Protestant trend that recast Christianity as social reform.

Rhetorically, the line is slippery in a way that makes it effective. It dares you to object to feeding someone, then pivots to a deeper claim: mercy without transformation risks becoming a kind of spiritual enablement. The discomfort is the point. Havner is betting that readers will feel the moral tension and, in that tension, hear his warning about trading conversion for consolation.