"We can stand affliction better than we can prosperity, for in prosperity we forget God"
About this Quote
Moody’s line is a velvet-gloved threat, the kind evangelical revivalism wielded with calm certainty: suffering can be borne, but comfort is spiritually dangerous. The provocation isn’t that affliction is good; it’s that prosperity is sedative. It dulls the senses that faith depends on, making prayer feel optional and dependence on God feel like an embarrassing relic from harder times.
The specific intent is pastoral and tactical. Moody is trying to reframe hardship as evidence of spiritual vitality rather than failure, while casting wealth and ease as a moral test most people flunk. That inversion matters in a culture where material success reads as virtue. By warning that prosperity makes us “forget God,” he doesn’t merely scold the rich; he targets the middle-class drift toward self-sufficiency, the quiet belief that we’re fine on our own.
Subtext: affliction forces clarity. It strips away the illusion of control and exposes how contingent our lives are. Prosperity, by contrast, supplies distractions and plausible explanations that don’t require transcendence: hard work, good planning, the right connections. The word “forget” is doing heavy lifting. It implies God isn’t disproved by success; He’s simply crowded out by comfort.
Context sharpens the edge. Moody preached in an America industrializing at speed, minting fortunes and anxieties in the same stroke. His revivalist message offered a counter-narrative to Gilded Age optimism: progress can enlarge the bank account while shrinking the soul. The line endures because it diagnoses a modern habit with unnerving accuracy: we don’t renounce faith so much as we outgrow the need for it, or pretend we have.
The specific intent is pastoral and tactical. Moody is trying to reframe hardship as evidence of spiritual vitality rather than failure, while casting wealth and ease as a moral test most people flunk. That inversion matters in a culture where material success reads as virtue. By warning that prosperity makes us “forget God,” he doesn’t merely scold the rich; he targets the middle-class drift toward self-sufficiency, the quiet belief that we’re fine on our own.
Subtext: affliction forces clarity. It strips away the illusion of control and exposes how contingent our lives are. Prosperity, by contrast, supplies distractions and plausible explanations that don’t require transcendence: hard work, good planning, the right connections. The word “forget” is doing heavy lifting. It implies God isn’t disproved by success; He’s simply crowded out by comfort.
Context sharpens the edge. Moody preached in an America industrializing at speed, minting fortunes and anxieties in the same stroke. His revivalist message offered a counter-narrative to Gilded Age optimism: progress can enlarge the bank account while shrinking the soul. The line endures because it diagnoses a modern habit with unnerving accuracy: we don’t renounce faith so much as we outgrow the need for it, or pretend we have.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
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