The quote is just brilliant on the life sapping nature of ‘self’ that is not God-centred:
But in our current culture, “soul”has given way to “self”as the term of choice to designate who and what we are. Self is the soul minus God. Self is what is left of soul with all the transcendence and intimacy squeezed out, the self with little or no reference to God (transcendence) or others (intimacy). “Self”is a threadbare word, a scarecrow word. “Soul”is a word reverberating with relationships: God-relationships, human-relationships, earth-relationships.
– Eugene Peterson
