{"id":104,"date":"2008-12-17T11:49:48","date_gmt":"2008-12-17T11:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/textmessages\/2008\/12\/who-said-it.html"},"modified":"2008-12-17T11:49:48","modified_gmt":"2008-12-17T11:49:48","slug":"who-said-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/12\/who-said-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Who said it?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Christianity&#8230;is a perpetual breeding ground for violence, abuse, superstition, war, discrimination, tyranny, and pride. Religion and spirituality is a bottomless pit breeding illusion, deceit, and oppression.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Post your guess below. The answer appears after the jump (no peeking before you guess!).\u00a0<\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">Answer: Eugene Peterson, author of <\/span><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">The Message <\/span><\/span><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">translation of the Bible.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>No, not Richard Dawkins. Not Sam Harris. Not even John Shelby Spong. Rather, one of the most widely read and respected Christian authors of our day.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>The quote appears in a stunning essay about Abraham and the Akedah (ie, the story of the binding and near-sacrifice of Isaac, which appears in Genesis 22), which is chapter 2 in Peterson&#8217;s <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">The Jesus Way<\/span>. Like Soren Kierkegaard, Erich Auerbach, and countless others, Peterson finds in the story of Abraham&#8217;s near-sacrifice of his son a description of raw faith. It&#8217;s a terrifying story, one that makes us question many of our assumptions about God. As Peterson puts it:<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p>How can God, whom our parents and pastors have taught us loves us from eternity, command this cold-blooded cruelty? How can God, whom Jesus tell us has such a tender heart that he is moved even by the death of sparrows, command a father to kill his son, without so much as a hint of explanation?\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In the end, Peterson sees God&#8217;s command to Abraham to slay Isaac as the ultimate test, the ultimate request for sacrifice. And &#8220;sacrifice is to faith what eating is to nutrition. &#8230;Faith, of which Abraham is our father, can never be understood by means of explanation or definition, only in the practice of sacrifice.&#8221; Of course, God offers a way out for Abraham, just as Paul said God would do for us (1 Cor. 10:13). \u00a0<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Peterson&#8217;s summary critique of Christianity as a breeding ground for violence and pride is not a snarky or abject dismissal of a faith tradition; it&#8217;s a brutal acknowledgement of the way that God must see his own people. It&#8217;s an admission of the reality that Christian witness has far too often been a product of human weakness and selfishness, rather than a product of lives well lived after the selfless example of Christ. If we are to be free of such selfishness, our faith, says Peterson, needs testing. Heart-wrenching tests can reveal what&#8217;s lacking, and remove what&#8217;s false. And as horrified as we might be at what God asks, given who we are, who are we to say we do not need the test?\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Peterson has been developing a marked straightforwardness in his latter days. <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">The Jesus Way<\/span>\u00a0is part of a series of books on spiritual theology, preceded by <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places<\/span>\u00a0and <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Eat This Book, <\/span>which constitute some of the most challenging and faith-shaping reading I&#8217;ve done in recent years. Amazing stuff, highly recommended.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Christianity&#8230;is a perpetual breeding ground for violence, abuse, superstition, war, discrimination, tyranny, and pride. Religion and spirituality is a bottomless pit breeding illusion, deceit, and oppression.&#8221;\u00a0 Post your guess below. The answer appears after the jump (no peeking before you guess!).\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-christianity"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Who said it? - Text Messages<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/12\/who-said-it.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Who said it? - Text Messages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;Christianity&#8230;is a perpetual breeding ground for violence, abuse, superstition, war, discrimination, tyranny, and pride. Religion and spirituality is a bottomless pit breeding illusion, deceit, and oppression.&#8221;\u00a0 Post your guess below. 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Religion and spirituality is a bottomless pit breeding illusion, deceit, and oppression.&#8221;\u00a0 Post your guess below. 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