The Myth of the American Dream Quotes

“I thought about the famous line from indigenous Australian writer and activist Lilla Watson, “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
― D.L. Mayfield, The Myth of the American Dream: Reflections on Affluence, Autonomy, Safety, and Power

“William Cavanaugh believes that desire in a consumeristic society keeps us distracted from the desires of those who are truly hungry.8 It numbs us not only by encouraging us to want more and more but also by negating our God-given desire to work toward the common good. Consumeristic societies, like the one I live in, only exist by making the individual supreme. Everywhere we look there are people who are seen by God in an empire that despises and devalues them, even as it exploits them for profit. Learning not just to see but to learn from them is the only cure I know for finding our way out of the never-ending maze of the American Dream.”
― D.L. Mayfield, The Myth of the American Dream: Reflections on Affluence, Autonomy, Safety, and Power

“Asking people to do good, to give, to be charitable, becomes easy in these kinds of societies; asking them to be neighbors with those they most wish to help is not, since it points out an inconvenient truth that most of us try hard to forget all the time: some of us have worked hard to make sure we are only neighbors with certain kinds of people, and now we have to live with the results.”
― D.L. Mayfield, The Myth of the American Dream: Reflections on Affluence, Autonomy, Safety, and Power

“The more I try to follow Jesus, the more I realize that if the gospel isn't good news for the poor, the imprisoned, the brokenhearted, and the oppressed, then it isn't good news for me either.”
― D.L. Mayfield, The Myth of the American Dream: Reflections on Affluence, Autonomy, Safety, and Power

“When people of privilege pursue affluence, autonomy, safety, and power above everything else, not only do they miss out on the liberating and restorative work of Jesus, but they participate in greater inequality, segregation, and suffering for the most marginalized people in their community. When people of means pursue what is best for them and their own in an unequal society, their actions inevitably harm the common good. People like myself end up disobeying the central commandment of Jesus - to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves - all in the name of pursuing a dream life for ourselves.”
― D.L. Mayfield, The Myth of the American Dream: Reflections on Affluence, Autonomy, Safety, and Power

“We Who do not own ourselves, being free, Own by theft what belongs to God, To the living world, and equally To us all WENDELL BERRY”
― D.L. Mayfield, The Myth of the American Dream: Reflections on Affluence, Autonomy, Safety, and Power

“Theologian Lisa Sharon Harper writes that “Shalom is what the kingdom of God smells like.”
― D.L. Mayfield, The Myth of the American Dream: Reflections on Affluence, Autonomy, Safety, and Power