Peace Child

by Don Richardson     |     Book Summary


Author: Don Richardson
Publisher: Bethany House
Date: 1976
Pages: 256

Book Summary of Peace Child by Don Richardson


There still remain out there, in the remote, uncharted territories where few men dare to tread, a smattering of tribes and villages still living with Stone Age-era tools and a primitive understanding of the natural world.

The Sawi of Western New Guinea, like many of these tribes, lead an existence totally alien to life as we know it in the Western world. But more unique to the Sawi is a ghastly, horrifying cultural tradition: the worship of treachery. Betrayal, murder, and cannibalism are sanctified, a time-honored custom and subject of heroic mythology.

How, in a culture like that of the Sawi, can God's divine light be made known? The answer is not simply a matter of exposure and preaching — the Sawi bring an almost unimaginably different vision of reality to the table, a total reversal of Western moral logic. How could Scripture mean anything to these people, who are bored by Jesus and intoxicated by Judas? For whom Judas is the hero of the New Testament?

For Don Richardson, a Christian missionary sent to Western New Guinea, the answer was the 'peace child,' an old Sawi tradition that almost uncannily parallels the doctrine of the Incarnation. In a mammoth effort of linguistic investigation, philosophical inquiry, and empathy, Richardson managed to uncover a handful of key concepts in Sawi culture that bridged the gap between the Christian and the Sawi and, beneath all the treachery and violence, helped find God in the hearts of His lost children.





Peace Child

by Don Richardson

[ Book Summary ]



Book Summary of Peace Child by Don Richardson

Author Don Richardson
Publisher Bethany House
Date 1976
Pages 256


Overview:

There still remain out there, in the remote, uncharted territories where few men dare to tread, a smattering of tribes and villages still living with Stone Age-era tools and a primitive understanding of the natural world.

The Sawi of Western New Guinea, like many of these tribes, lead an existence totally alien to life as we know it in the Western world. But more unique to the Sawi is a ghastly, horrifying cultural tradition: the worship of treachery. Betrayal, murder, and cannibalism are sanctified, a time-honored custom and subject of heroic mythology.

How, in a culture like that of the Sawi, can God's divine light be made known? The answer is not simply a matter of exposure and preaching — the Sawi bring an almost unimaginably different vision of reality to the table, a total reversal of Western moral logic. How could Scripture mean anything to these people, who are bored by Jesus and intoxicated by Judas? For whom Judas is the hero of the New Testament?

For Don Richardson, a Christian missionary sent to Western New Guinea, the answer was the 'peace child,' an old Sawi tradition that almost uncannily parallels the doctrine of the Incarnation. In a mammoth effort of linguistic investigation, philosophical inquiry, and empathy, Richardson managed to uncover a handful of key concepts in Sawi culture that bridged the gap between the Christian and the Sawi and, beneath all the treachery and violence, helped find God in the hearts of His lost children.