Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer;
from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint.
Lead me to the rock that is higher than I,
for you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy.
Matthew 13:10-17
With all due respect to Eugene Peterson, he pretty much butchers this passage. His Armenian, "free-will" thinking inserts itself into a passage that is anything but Armenian. One part of his translation says, "That's why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge people toward receptive insight." In the ESV translation, that verse says, "This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand." Peterson has inserted his own ideas into this translation, which, frankly, are anything but Biblical.
He says to notice what Jesus says about the human heart. What he really says about the human heart is that God has engineered the "readiness." Peterson would put it in human hands, whereas Jesus puts it in God's hands. "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given." Jesus doesn't speak in parables to "nudge" anybody. He speaks in parables to keep the "secrets of the kingdom" from being understood by those to whom it has not been given.
"How does he deal with our resistance?" Peterson asks. He deals with it by making it even more confusing. Ultimately, those who resist, resist because their hearts have been hardened. They cannot understand. There is no "nudge." There is only truth proclaimed. If it has been given for us to understand it, we will understand it. Otherwise, we will not. It is not up to us. If it were, none of us would ever understand.
Also, his translation of verse 14 falls far short, "I don't want Isaiah's forecast repeated all over again:" What??? Here is the ESV translation: "Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says:" I'm not quoting the actual prophecy, because that isn't the issue at this point. The issue is making the words of Jesus fit the translator's own bad theology. It is reprehensible when a translator messes with truth just to feel better about his own theology. Jesus did not express any desire or lack thereof in this verse. He merely stated a fact.
As I read the real words of Jesus, (NOT expressed in The Message, I am in awe that God has chosen to open my heart and my eyes to the message of Christ. There is nothing I did to make that possible. It is all because of God's good pleasure. Now, I can have a part in keeping my heart open, once God has opened it. I do this by being responsive to the word that Christ has shared with me. I don't ever want to be one whose heart is hardened. I don't desire to be identified with those those "ears are open but...don't hear a thing," and whose "eyes are awake but...don't see a thing." But I really don't have to worry a whole lot about this because God has opened my ears and eyes to hear and see the truth.
Don't read this wrong, friends. This is not a boast about me. God has done it all! I have done nothing. There is nothing that I have that God did not give me. There is nothing that I understand that God did not give me understanding about. It is all God. It is all from God, and it is all about God. Make no mistake about that.
Grace and peace, friends!