"We have been told the lie ever since we can remember: human beings are basically nice and good. Everyone is born equal and innocent and self-sufficient. The world is a pleasant, harmless place. We are born free. If we are in chains now, it is someone's fault, and we can correct it with just a little more intelligence or effort or time.
How we can keep on believing this after so many centuries of evidence to the contrary is difficult to comprehend, but nothing we do and nothing anyone else does to us seems to disenchant us from the spell of the lie. We keep expecting things to get better somehow. And when they don't, we whine like spoiled children who don't get their way. We accumulate resentment that stores up in anger and erupts in violence. Convinced by the lie that what we are experiencing is unnatural, an exception, we devise ways to escape the influence of what other people do to us by getting away on vacation as often as we can. When the vacation is over, we get back into the flow of things again, our naivete renewed that everything is going to work out all right - only to once more be surprised, hurt, bewildered when it doesn't. The lie ("everything is OK") covers up and perpetuates the deep wrong, disguises the violence, the war, the rapacity.
Christian consciousness begins in the painful realization that what we had assumed was the truth is in fact a lie. Prayer is immediate: "Deliver me from the liars, God! They smile so sweetly but lie through their teeth." Rescue me from the lies of advertisers who claim to know what I need and what I desire, from the lies of entertainers who promise a cheap way to joy, from the lies of politicians who pretend to instruct me in power and morality, from the lies of psychologists who offer to shape my behavior and my morals so that I will live long, happily and successfully, from the lies of religionists who pretend to promote me to the office of captain of my fate, from the lies of pastors who "get rid of God's command so you won't be inconvenienced in following the religious fashions!" (Mk 7:8). Rescue me from the person who tells me of life and omits Christ, who is wise in the ways of the world and ignores the movement of the Spirit.
The lies are impeccably factual. They contain no errors. There are no distortions or falsified data. But they are lies all the same, because they claim to tell us who we are and omit everything about our origin in God and our destiny in God. They talk about the world without telling us that God made it. They tell us about our bodies without telling us that they are temples of the Holy Spirit. They instruct us in love without telling us about the God who loves us and gave himself for us."
Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, pp.26-27
