Savior Complex Quotes

From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex. The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening. The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm. This world exists simply to satisfy the needs - including, importantly, the sentimental needs - of white people and Oprah.

The whitest thing I have ever done in my life was not repeatedly trying to get bangs after seeing pictures of Zooey Deschanel. The whitest thing I've done in my life was trying to save the Flint youth while I was visiting there.

The personality complex of a liberal savior is one that fascinates me, as I believe it to be centered on extreme narcissism. I imagine them to be addicted to the feeling of accomplishment that is derived from helping someone inferior to them.

While we as people of  God are certainly called to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, that whole "we're blessed to be a blessing" thing can still be kind of dangerous. It can be dangerous when we self-importantly place ourselves above the world, waiting to descend on those below so we can be the "blessing" they've been waiting for, like it or not.

There is a strange attitude and feeling that one is not yet in real life. For the time being one is doing this or that, but whether it is a woman or a job, it is not yet what is really wanted, and there is always the fantasy that sometime in the future the real thing will come about. If this attitude is prolonged, it means a constant inner refusal to commit oneself to the moment. With this there is often, to a smaller or greater extent, a savior complex, with the secret thought that one day one will be able to save the world; the last word in philosophy, or religion, or politics, or art, or something else, will be found.

The savior complex manifests differently for everyone, but for the most part it's a form of self-sabotage hidden in helping someone else... A desperate need to be understood by people who continue to show you that they barely understand themselves will shackle you to the most emotionally debilitating situations. But it's often deeper than just wanting to be understood. A lot of us want to feel needed, because with that comes a sense of purpose outside of ourselves.

The ad-hominem of reducing people with an inclination to help as having a “savior complex” is merely a display of their own defense-mechanisms acting as a resistance to action or responsibility. No thank you.

I took the job because I wanted to. How could I not? Helping people when they need it most, when they think all is lost? Of course I’d agree to it.” “Like Jesus,” Wallace said solemnly. “Got that savior complex down pat.” Hugo burst out laughing. “Yeah, yeah. Point taken, Wallace

Atonement theology assumes that we were created in some kind of original perfection. We now know that life has emerged from a single cell that evolved into self-conscious complexity over billions of years. There was no original perfection. If there was no original perfection, then there could never have been a fall from perfection. If there was no fall, then there is no such thing as “original sin” and thus no need for the waters of baptism to wash our sins away. If there was no fall into sin, then there is also no need to be rescued. How can one be rescued from a fall that never happened? How can one be restored to a status of perfection that he or she never possessed? So most of our Christology today is bankrupt. Many popular titles that we have applied to Jesus, such as “savior,” “redeemer,” and “rescuer,” no longer make sense, because they assume

They just like taking pictures...They don't care that we are embarrassed by our dirt and torn clothing, that we would prefer they didn't do it; they just take pictures anyway, take and take.

We need not look anywhere but to the eyes of our Savior for our true identity, an identity which is profoundly complex, unfathomable, deep as the sea, and yet can be boiled down to one little word: beloved. That's it. And that's why it's so silly (and perilous) to use your gifting to clothe yourself with meaning. Those clothes will never quite fit.

Women (...) have been encouraged since they were children to be dependent to an unhealthy degree. Any woman who looks within knows that she was never trained to be comfortable with the idea of taking care of herself, standing up for herself, asserting herself. At best she may have played the game of independence, inwardly envying the boys (and later the men) because they seemed so naturally self-sufficient. It is not nature that bestows this self-sufficiency on men; it's training. Males are educated for independence from the day they are born. Just as systematically, women are taught that they have an out - that someday, in some way, they are going to be saved. That is the fairy tale, the life-message (...) We may venture out on our own for a while. We may go away to school, work, travel; we may even make good money, but underneath it all there is a finite quality to our feelings about independence. Only hang on long enough, the childhood story goes, and someday someone will come along to rescue you from the anxiety of authentic living. (The only savior the boy learns about is himself.)

Despite white feminist narratives to the contrary, there is no absence of feminism inside Islam, the Black church, or any other community. The women inside those communities are doing the hard and necessary work; they don’t need white saviors, and they don’t need to structure their feminism to look like anyone else’s. They just need to not have to constantly combat the white supremacist patriarchy from the outside while they work inside their communities.

Intuition is that internal eternal tutor that has experienced all but nothing, tests one's knowledge on everything by subjecting them to smilingly complex questions, riddling them with life's perplexities whose answers are never wrong or right, then mocking her student with radical paradoxes and experiences that yet seem real but are merely illusions. There is no greater teacher, Buddha, master... in tuition; serve the one that comes by simply tuning in to one's inner Lord and savior. Say "I Am...". Class dismissed.

In the eternities of time past, a vast, complex plan for mankind unfolded on the inside of God. In His infinite wisdom, He left nothing out as He looked down through the ages. He passed through generation after generation, planning every intricate detail of every life that would live on the face of the earth. God’s desire was to recover as many as possible from Satan’s rebellious camp and to gather unto Himself a people He could call His family. Somewhere in the midst of this divine planning session, long before the eons of time began, God came across your name! Then He formulated a perfect plan just for you that is unlike any other plan for any other person who has ever been born. Imagine — God the Father looked out across the great void of space and time and saw the moment in time when you would live on this earth. Then He decided precisely how that moment should be filled! We Must Choose His Plan God conceived a wonderful plan for every one of us. In His plan, we were predestined to become His sons and daughters at the Cross. But one potential obstacle stands between us and God’s perfectly conceived purposes: Using the free will God has given us, we must choose to walk in the plan He has ordained for our lives. God looks for a way to approach each of us in order to present His personal plan for our lives. He begins with the preaching of the Cross that encourages us to accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. If we accept Jesus, we take our first step into the plan God predestined for us before the foundations of the world. But if we reject Him, then like so many before us, we will live and die without ever taking that first step — salvation — into the divine purpose for our existence.

CHOOSING THE GOOD LIFE And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. John 16:23-24 NKJV God offers us abundance through His Son, Jesus. Whether or not we accept God’s abundance is, of course, up to each of us. When we entrust our hearts and our days to the One who created us, we experience abundance through the grace and sacrifice of His Son, Jesus. But, when we turn our thoughts and our energies away from God’s commandments, we inevitably forfeit the spiritual abundance that might otherwise be ours. What is your focus today? Are you focused on God’s Word and His will for your life? Or are you focused on the distractions and temptations of a difficult world. The answer to this question will, to a surprising extent, determine the quality and the direction of your day. If you sincerely seek the spiritual abundance that your Savior offers, then follow Him completely and without reservation. When you do, you will receive the love, the life, and the abundance that He has promised. It would be wrong to have a “poverty complex,” for to think ourselves paupers is to deny either the King’s riches or to deny our being His children. Catherine Marshall A TIMELY TIP Don’t miss out on God’s abundance. Every day is a beautifully wrapped gift from God. Unwrap it; use it; and give thanks to the Giver.

The Christian principle that needs to be at work is Spirit-generated selflessness—not thinking less of yourself or more of yourself but thinking of yourself less. It means taking your mind off yourself and realizing that in Christ your needs are going to be met and are, in fact, being met so that you don’t look at your spouse as your savior.

The lack of such dependence leads to a host of complications and problems. We are quick to look to the world to provide our comforts and our hopes, especially when life grows dark. We seek to serve false saviors that promise comfort and hope, instead of living on the promises of God. Spiritual insincerity emerges in our hearts. And when our perceptions of the world are governed by self-wisdom, we can quickly grow lukewarm in the attempt to find comfort and security in the world’s riches, lusts, and powers. By failing to trust in God’s wisdom and timing, we grow spiritually insincere, and some may eventually shipwreck their own souls by the complexity of self-wisdom and indecision. An inability to fully trust God creates a toxic “duplicity of conduct” that poisons the Christian life.

Skill Doesn't Make Worship More Acceptable before God While God values skill, he doesn't accept our worship on the basis of it. Even if I can play the most complex chord progressions, write better songs than Matt Redman, or play a song flawlessly, I still need the atoning work of the Savior to perfect my offering of worship (1 Peter 2:5).

So why don’t the CDC and the AHA admit uncertainty, even at the potential cost of public health? Perhaps because dictating dietary rules, a sacred role that was once the province of priests, contributes to a savior complex. Saviors must remain unwaveringly certain about their mission. They cannot reverse positions, because doing so undermines their authority in the eyes of their followers. And in the case of dietary rules that require substantial willpower to follow—like drastic reductions in sodium—any uncertainty on the part of dieters can lead to failure. Better to conceal scientific ambiguity than to compromise the willpower of your followers.

For a number of reasons, the church has become widely viewed as either irrelevant, the object of contempt, or both. The situation is complex, but two factors stand out. First, a narrow approach to the idea of salvation, as expressed in the blood atonement and with Jesus as the exclusive divine Savior, has played into the hands of a church seeking political power at the expense of the inclusive wisdom of its own gospel. “Getting saved” not only is a static and highly individualistic phenomenon but narrows and domesticates the redemptive activity of God in ways that conform all too conveniently to the worldview of the new American empire. In a land of entitled bargain hunters, salvation becomes the ultimate bargain. Second, the notion of covenant as a collective expression of gratitude and mutuality has been trampled beneath a culture whose real devotion is to private ambition. The religious impulse, born in epiphanies that awaken us to our responsibilities to and for one another, is fundamentally corrupted when it is reduced to an individual balm. Faith is always supposed to make it harder, not easier, to ignore the plight of our sisters and brothers. In short, the church must make a crucial choice now between wisdom theology and salvation theology— between the Jesus who transforms and the Christ who saves. One is the biblical ethic of justice; the other is a postbiblical invention that came to fullness only after the Protestant Reformation.

Over the years, I have grown to see people in need of a savior so bad that they would eat grass, drink petrol, and be fed rats and snakes all in the name of finding a messiah. I’ve seen people attempt to deal with the loss of their jobs or school or other livelihood forms or desperately attempt to scramble out of poverty by believing in the most laughable of saviors and ‘miracle workers’. I’ve witnessed women battered, scorned and stripped of their poise and essence because they could not walk away from scoundrels they’d previously deemed their ‘saviors’. Such relationships lead to a savior-martyr relationship. In other words – a certified disaster-in-waiting. Martyr complex is a collateral product of blame. You blame someone for your current misfortunes therefore you go looking for someone else to save you. You blame yourself for your shortcomings and therefore there must be someone out there who can redeem your broken self.

You won't become a saint through other people's sins.

Being a token can be misleading at first. It can make you feel wanted, admired, and special. Who doesn’t want to feel that way, especially after a lifetime of not feeling seen or validated? You hear the message “We really value your unique perspective,” which really means “You have something we want from you!” I have to admit that I’ve been lured in by this message, along with my own savior complex and sense of overresponsibility. When you become a token, it’s hard not feel owned by a system that continually pats itself on the back for being so open-minded and progressive for hiring you while simultaneously putting you in your place. Good intentions say nothing about a system’s capacity to change. For me, even monetary compensation is no longer the main motivator for being cast as the token because I know there are many hidden, unacknowledged costs, and I choose self-love and self-respect.

People having a victim complex are not apt to count on themselves in dealing with problems and they tend to wait for a savior

I thought as much. You have a savior complex.” “I do not!” Elle sputtered. Severin cracked a feline smile at her. “You do. And you are nearly as proud as I am.

We need not look anywhere but to the eyes of our Savior for our true identity, an identity which is profoundly complex, unfathomable, deep as the sea, and yet can be boiled down to one little word: beloved. That’s it. And that’s why it’s so silly (and perilous) to use your gifting to clothe yourself with meaning. Those clothes will never quite fit.

The problem with soldier sob stories is that they feed a civilian savior complex, the hope we have of being able to save/help/fix/repair veterans.

We sometimes use the term “savior complex” to describe an unhealthy syndrome of obsession over curing others’ problems. The true Savior, however, seemed remarkably free of such a complex. He had no compulsion to convert the entire world in his lifetime or to cure people who were not ready to be cured.

In a related context, Nigerian American novelist Teju Cole once tweeted, “The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.

Stop a moment and look around. This is our Father’s world. We are sacred, you and I. And that’s the answer to the question that ended chapter 2: Who do I think I am, anyway? We need not look anywhere but to the eyes of our Savior for our true identity, an identity which is profoundly complex, unfathomable, deep as the sea, and yet can be boiled down to one little word: beloved. That’s it. And that’s why it’s so silly (and perilous) to use your gifting to clothe yourself with meaning. Those clothes will never quite fit.

I’m committed to helping Vali, but I want you to be happy too.” “Why?” “The Member for the Fae would have you believe I’m a do-gooding Mary Sue with a savior complex, but really, I just have shitty boundaries and an inability to say no to a sad origin story.

Mere human efforts (education, environment, therapy) cannot cure the sin problem. My brokenness, like yours, is very complex. Parts of it have to do with my wounds and my scars and my disappointments, but at the core is my natural inclination towards sin. It is deeply embedded in our souls, and it is literally killing us. We cannot change this condition, but we can free our souls from its power over us by recognizing that it is there, daily seeking God's forgiveness and strength, and living the way he designed us. It is only when we surrender to God and his ways that our souls experience freedom. We may stumble along the way, for no one is perfect. But we serve a perfect Savior who is patient and always ready to forgive us when we fail.

The leader of Hyperianism never mentions Illuminism. Not ever. And that’s because, if he ever did, he would be exposed as a messenger for others rather than the Savior he wants to pose as. His own narcissism and Messiah Complex have destroyed him because they have made him constantly lie about the fundamental basis of Hyperianism. His egotism forbade him from accepting the role he was supposed to have – that of messenger. He didn’t have his own message; he was delivering the message of others. That’s the blunt fact of it. There is nobility and worth in the messenger role, but the leader of Hyperianism wasn’t satisfied. He was compelled to present himself as the Main Man. He never was, and never will be.

There’s an impulsive desire to fix, to be the hero of the story, to swoop in and rescue and, for some, it also comes from a place of superiority and/or a desire to be forgiven. It feeds into something called the “White Saviour Industrial Complex” – a term first coined by Harvard professor and novelist Teju Cole in 2012.

Many lower class Americans view protesters as disreputable and unhelpful, as ‘professional activists’ who are entirely disconnected from the working class because they’ve never experienced struggle in their own personal lives, and who protest mainly to find personal validation.” In a related context, Nigerian American novelist Teju Cole once tweeted, “The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.

The Christian principle that needs to be at work is Spirit-generated selflessness - not thinking less of yourself or more of yourself but thinking of yourself less. It means taking your mind off yourself and realizing that in Christ your needs are going to be met and are, in fact, being met so that you don't look at your spouse as your savior.

Every one of them who got into turnouts, and took their bodies and their minds into open flames for little money and lots of risk, for strangers, for animals they didn't own, for houses they didn't own, for people they weren't related to … they were all insane. Because this was the other side of the adrenaline rush, the savior complex, the fight. Tragedy was but a moment. Responsibility for it was forever. And eventually, the latter turned you dark on the inside, molding over your emotions, making you toxic and uncleanable even as you looked the same on the outside. For every firefighter she knew who'd been hurt or died on the job, she knew even more who were corpses in their own skin. They didn't tell you about all that when you were in the academy. Good thing, too.