Daily Inspiration Quote by Lionel Blue

“This Christian poison hasn’t stopped yet” lands like a slap because it weaponizes the language of illness against a faith that, in polite interreligious settings, is usually handled with velvet gloves. Lionel Blue was not an outsider heckling from the street; he was a British rabbi and broadcaster with a keen ear for how “good news” can become bad history. The line’s power comes from its refusal to treat harm as a closed chapter. “Hasn’t stopped yet” turns Christianity from a past persecutor into a continuing force, pushing the listener to notice what still gets excused as tradition, doctrine, or mere “difference.”

The word “poison” is doing double duty. It suggests slow, cumulative damage rather than a single dramatic act: ideas seeping into law, culture, and self-understanding. It also implies a seductive quality. Poison often comes disguised, and Blue is indicting not only overt violence but the softer, institutional habits that have historically marked Jews as suspect, obsolete, or spiritually “completed” by Christianity. That framing makes the quote less about individual believers and more about a civilizational pattern: conversionary pressure, supersessionism, and the way Christian majorities have shaped the moral commons while claiming neutrality.

As a clergyman, Blue’s bluntness reads like moral triage. He’s not aiming for balance; he’s trying to puncture complacency. The sting is strategic: if you want reconciliation, he suggests, stop asking the injured to admire the medicine while the toxin is still in the bloodstream.