Oh my God

Gladstone had read Wemtraub’s book, The Abraham Dilemma, in which he analyzed the relationship between a God who demanded the sacrifice of a son and the human race who agreed to it. Weintraub had reasoned that the Old Testament Jehovah had not simply been testing Abraham, but had communicated in the only language of loyalty, obedience, sacrifice, and command that humankind could understand at that point in the relationship. Weintraub had dealt with the New Testament’s message as a presage of a new stage in that relationship—a stage wherein mankind would no longer sacrifice its children to any god, for any reason, but where parents … entire races of parents … would offer themselves up instead. Thus the Twentieth Century Holocausts, the Brief Exchange, the tripartite wars, the reckless centuries, and perhaps even the Big Mistake of ’38.

The Fall of Hyperion, Chapter 18 - Dan Simmons