David Watson > Quotes

“We are condemned to be modern. We can’t escape the facts of our history or of living in an age dominated by instrumental rationality, even as we look for ways out of it... But it has become our historic responsibility to acknowledge the continuing importance of myth, at a level beyond science, in realizing a more organic, holistic relation to the world. A future social ecology would transcend both anti-Enlightenment reaction and [a] reified Enlightenment counter-reaction, which remain only fragmented polarities within bourgeois modernity.”
― David Watson, Beyond Bookchin: Preface for a Future Social Ecology

“We should be cautiously open to the spiritual and non-rational, and skeptical of the more invisible magical thinking—what we might call “magical reason”—pervading secular thought and experience in modern society. Science and technology are for most people a new religion, and their orthodoxies are believed with the same fervor.”
― David Watson, Against the Megamachine: Essays on Empire & Its Enemies

“Learning does not require faith, just intellect. Obedience requires faith.”
― David Watson, Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Discovery

“Learning does not require faith, just intellect. Obedience requires faith. It”
― David Watson, Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Discovery

“With a doctrine-centered discipleship program, one must teach everything to ensure a person has the knowledge to be obedient. With an obedience-centered discipleship program, the emphasis is on how we can be obedient to Christ in every area of our lives and in every circumstance. When a new disciple asks a question, my answer is always the same: What must you do to be obedient to Christ? I”
― David Watson, Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Discovery

“The very act of mentoring changes and matures the mentor as well as the mentee. This is the reason it’s so important to encourage mentees to mentor others. Unless and until they mentor others, the mentoring process is of limited value.”
― David Watson, Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Discovery

“Most people have no idea how to pray for you. If you want them to pray something more than, “Be with [fill in the blank] as she works with lost people in [fill in the blank],” then you need to teach them how to pray. Teaching them how to pray effectively is your responsibility.”
― David Watson, Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Discovery

“Most people already know what they are supposed to do, but they choose not to do it.”
― David Watson, Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Discovery

“Grace and mercy are God’s love language to mankind.”
― David Watson, Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Discovery

“Algorithms are not 'just like us'... by anthropomorphizing a statistical model, we implicitly grant it a degree of agency that not only overstates its true abilities, but robs us of our own autonomy... It is always humans who choose whether or not to abdicate this authority, to empower some piece of technology to intervene on our behalf. It would be a mistake to presume that this transfer of authority involves a simultaneous absolution of responsibility. It does not.”
― David Watson

“Consistency. Absolute consistency is required if you want to impress God’s love and commands on your physical and spiritual children.”
― David Watson, Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Discovery