apathy on Inaction

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

One of my memories as a teenager was hearing about the murder of Katherine Susan Genovese at Kew Gardens in New York City. Early in the morning on March 13, 1964, she was attacked by an assailant on h...

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

God of justice, you repeatedly call us to action, but we so often fail to respond. Your word convicts us, demonstrating that inaction is just as sinful as the wrong actions. Lord of mercy, forgive us ...

Apathy is the acceptance of the unacceptable.

Apathy is telling yourself, The most important thing is that I make it through to the other side—what happens to everyone else is their business. It’s saying, Change is impossible or inevitable no mat...

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

The unjust steward who, hearing he is going to be fired, doctors his master’s accounts to secure another job, is commended precisely because he acted. The point does not concern morality but apathy. H...

When Rosina Hernandez was in college, she once attended a rock concert at which one young man was brutally beaten by another. No one made an attempt to stop the beating. The next day she was struck du...

You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.

A different world cannot be built by indifferent people.

So fixed are our spirits in slothfulness and cold indifference that we seldom overcome so much as one evil habit.

Another form of unholy unhurry that many of us have heard little about is acedia. Derived from the Greek a (for “not”) and keedos (meaning “to care”), acedia is ultimately a failure of love. It’s a pl...

Let us not confuse God’s silence with apathy. We want to goad God into speaking before it is time. This he does not do. This he will not do. God will not be hurried in his grief. Our God is a God who ...

Almighty God, You are with us no matter what, through thick and thin, yet we don’t live any differently based upon that truth. We tend to ignore You, push You out of minds and hearts so that we can li...

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, a pervasive sense of societal malaise seems to be affecting a significant portion of the population. Journalist and managing editor of Time , Lily Rothman, ...

My temptation is to tackle everything at once, or nothing at all.

Survival requires more than the basic biological necessities we readily acknowledge—oxygen, food, and water. It also demands something less tangible but equally vital: hope. When hope vanishes, the hu...

Gracious God, you have called us to be a unified body, working together that which you have willed for the world. In our apathy, we fail to participate in the work you have called us to do. In our div...

Almighty God, we settle for false peace. We see no need to rock the boat, so we allow injustice to rule and reign. God, give us the conviction to take on the work of peacemaking. Give us the courage, ...

We should not ask, "What is wrong with the world?" for that diagnosis has already been given. Rather, we should ask, "What has happened to the salt and light?"

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.

In 1965 Billy Graham wrote a bestselling book titled World on Fire. In it, he wrote, “Mr. Average Man is comfortable in his complacency and as unconcerned as a silverfish ensconced in a carton of disc...

Sad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever bea...

The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted. Indifference to the divine wonder of living is the root of sin.

The true enemies of progress are doubt, apathy, and blame. They must be conquered in your mind (that is the first battleground) before you can become the revolutionary you were born to be.

Many of us are hunting mice - while lions devour the land.

The reason we are not able to see God is the faintness of our desire.

Righteous God, we receive your grace and forget your justice. You teach us to move with compassion yet we have remained complacent. God, forgive us for our complacency and our apathy. Fuel us with you...

There are many who stumble in the noon-day, not for want of light, but for want of eyes.