Ever since the eighteenth century modern man has believed in a progressive history in which future consequences were both the real test of a right action and also the primary motive for it. We made a God out of history, and usually had no other God. Now we live in a period of history in which we must find the test of right action in something other than future consequences because we do not know the future certainly enough. … We had forgotten that each moment of life, each task, each duty, each event and responsibility has its own intrinsic worth and does not depend altogether on tomorrow. …
The whole historical enterprise is more hazardous than we had believed. History does not move as simply as we thought toward some kind of world community. People do not become better merely because they grow older; and that is true of the life of mankind as well as of individuals. … True religion must be more concerned with qualitative depth of every moment and be less distracted by future hopes and frustrations.
From “Today’s duties and tomorrow’s perils” by Reinhold Niebuhr
