Description
After twenty years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, a global pandemic, protests against racial violence, and frequent shootings, more Americans than ever are living with the effects of trauma. The good news is that Jesus was born and died in a traumatized world, and his story speaks forever to wounded people worldwide. Army veteran and Episcopal priest David Peters explores Jesus’ life story through the post-traumatic lens with which the Gospel writers first wrote it—as people who had seen their leader executed by the same oppressive government that had already shrouded their whole lives in anxiety and fear. Meeting the post-traumatic Jesus—the only Jesus the world has ever known—can be a balm to the wounds of modern Christians and spiritual seekers.
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Reviews
“Life-altering trauma can raise profound questions about our relationship with ourselves and with God. David Peters’s penetrating insights in this new book offer a lifeline of healing and hope to those of us who are courageously trying to make sense of our faith journeys in the midst of our woundedness.”
—Mark Allen Bourlakas, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia
“Peters writes a book crucial for our time. As our world reels from the pandemic, injustice, violence, and climate change, we long for Jesus. Peters immerses us in Jesus’ world and helps us understand our trauma through a new, and healing, lens. Post-Traumatic Jesus is essential reading.”
—Sarah Gaventa, Dean of Students at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
"Peters excels at conveying the interplay of human and divine trauma, but his greatest gift to readers may be the distinction he draws between what people have to offer and what Jesus does. People who are traumatized imitate Christ with the figurative stigmata they suffer. But people lack in their relationships with neighbors what Jesus shared with his celestial father: true salvation. Healing happens in relationships, but so does injury—and we humans invented the art of sin." - The Christian Century