Jordan Peterson: Do I Believe in God? - Episode 113

[00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of Biblical Theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and welcome to another episode about Jordan Peterson.

Sometimes, I take detours into interesting things and things that I think genuinely do intersect with biblical theology on some level, because I'm not a fan of just taking biblical theology and keeping it at that, but really, I want to bring biblical theology over into the more practical spheres of our lives.

And so today we're going to talk about Jordan Peterson, and I've talked about him before. Last time I went to go see Jordan Peterson live, I did do a whole episode on that experience, and that is [00:01:00] episode number 27. I also answered a question about Jordan Peterson in a Q& A, and that is at the end of episode 40. So if you're interested in those, you can go check those out. But today I'm going to be talking about his new book, and his new tour, and my experience in going to see him on that tour.

Now, those of you who know that this is a biblical theology podcast and wonder, why am I talking about Jordan Peterson, who is a psychiatrist and not a biblical theologian? Well, I think it's important to try and apply the things of biblical theology to the things that we're actually exposed to and thinking about today.

For those who aren't aware, biblical theology is not just theology that's biblical, but it's rather an actual methodology of studying the Bible, where we look into the context of the Bible and its time, [00:02:00] and we try to understand it in that context, rather than through the lens of systematic theology or later church history. Not that those are bad things to do, but I do think we should be first studying the Bible in context, and then bringing that forward.

And my concern is that sometimes biblical theology is kind of that musty, dusty, nerdy kind of study that isn't brought forward. So I try not to shy away from expanding the view on that here in this podcast, even though that is our focus. So today I want to give you a few thoughts on my opinions of listening to Jordan Peterson and reading his new book. I did kind of touch last time on the question of Jordan Peterson and his belief or faith or whatever you want to call it. Spoiler alert [00:03:00] my opinion hasn't really changed from my last episode where I went into this, but I feel like it's kind of deepened into that. And that's nice to see because my opinion was fairly positive.

All right, so he's got this book called We Who Wrestle With God, and I'm not gonna bring out a whole lot of detail about the book here in this episode. But it's a really interesting book where he goes into biblical stories, mostly Old Testament stories, and he talks about those from his own perspective, from his own study, and from psychological perspectives.

Which, I know that's not everybody's jam, it's not everybody's cup of tea, but I really find it helpful, because I find that really good psychology intersects with the truth that we see in the Bible. And that is as it should be. Like if we're finding [00:04:00] psychology and it's massively disconnected from the , . We got some problems. But because the Bible is truth and psychology is based on the pursuit of finding truth in humanity, we might say, then we have all the reasons there to expect that there will be very strong correlations between the Bible and psychology.

Now, a lot of that is not going to sound very Christian, and that's going to make people uncomfortable, and fair enough . But if you enjoy that kind of thing, his book goes pretty deeply into these stories and brings out some really interesting perspectives and some of that is probably going to have some really good things to say in some upcoming episodes as well.

I personally don't think there's really a whole lot that's in his book that is against the idea of [00:05:00] Christianity and God entering creation and Christian discipleship. It's just not going to have anything that sounds like Christian ese, but you can take a lot of what he says about community and values and our goals and our very mode of existence and our perspective in life and apply those things to Christian circles and I think there's some really helpful stuff there, personally.

But at any rate, talking about his tour a little bit, he really approaches his public lectures in a very interesting way. and it might be a little bit unexpected, because he's not preparing lectures with the desire to go and teach people something that he has previously prepared. Everything he says in these lectures is very steeped in everything he's said [00:06:00] previously and all of his other writing. So, you're not coming from any Jordan Peterson lecture with anything that doesn't sound just like Jordan Peterson. But, now that I've been to two of these lectures live, I know that they're not all the same. So I can say that when you go to one of these lectures, you have no idea what you're getting.

For instance, the last published tour lecture that I saw on his podcast, which was fairly recent, man, that one had a good topic on the image of God, but it was very, very high level, and very meta, and not something that everyone is going to enjoy sitting through. So I was a little bit nervous to see what his topic was going to be when we went to see him, but let me tell you, I think we lucked out, you guys. It was so good.

I was pleased to see that he had the [00:07:00] same opening act that he had the last time I saw him. He had David Cotter open for him, and David Cotter is a musician. He was playing guitar, and he must have had some sort of track that he was playing with, but it is just beautiful stuff. He doesn't have any of his music published that I could find, but you can find some of his clips playing on Instagram. And I really enjoyed it. It seemed a really good opening for Jordan Peterson.

Then there was Tammy Peterson, Jordan's wife, who talked before Jordan did. When she opened for this particular lecture that I went to see, she talked in preparation for a lecture that she was doing in the future, and that's probably already done now, and her focus was on gratitude and resentment.

And for those who don't know, Tammy Peterson has her own podcast, and she talks a lot [00:08:00] about Christianity and the importance of faith. So, I'm sure she is a massive impact on Jordan himself.

Now, back in episode 27, when I talked about Jordan Peterson, I talked about archetypes and I talked about lying. And, I had asked the question about his relationship to God. In every one of his lectures, he tackles a question, and the question that he wrestled with in this particular lecture was, Do I believe in God? And when he dropped that question, I was like, yes! This is what I want to hear you talk about.

And not for the reason that a lot of people want to hear him talk about it, because I think a lot of people ask him that question because they're trying to draw out some specific answer that they want to hear, either yes or no, in their own framework. And I think that's partly [00:09:00] why he is resistant to the question itself. Because, as he says, he takes this question very seriously. And I know people don't like that kind of an answer.

It's funny because he actually acknowledged in the question that people ask him complicated questions and they want him to give simple answers. And he said, if that question was as simple as it seemed, there wouldn't be such a wide variation in people of faith. You have fundamentalists, you have atheists, you have nihilistic hedonists, and you have everyone in between.

But I want to say that last time, I said that he is a public figure, and that to some degree, it's kind of a lot of gossip when we're talking about these kinds of things. We don't know where everyone's faith is, and is it really fair to poke at things [00:10:00] if he doesn't want to answer it in a particular way that we want to hear it.

My perspective in my last episode was that, you know, maybe we get a little bit too particular and pedantic about these kinds of questions. Maybe we should kind of mind our own business a little bit more rather than trying to fit other people into the boxes that we make ourselves and sort them into, this person belongs in this box, and this person belongs in that box.

I mean, to some degree, we have to do that, right? Because we have to sort our world out in these ways that make sense to us. So I'm not really criticizing people necessarily for that. But we should maybe think about what our personal business is about other people and their fitting into our boxes.

It still seems to me that Jordan Peterson works to align himself as [00:11:00] best he can with God, and not just a vague concept of God, but he really uses the God of the Bible as the premier example of that.

Now, he did have a recent interview on the podcast, Diary of a CEO, where he said straight out that Jesus is God.

And listen, there are some real hesitations we can have when someone doesn't just come out and say I am a Christian, right? Like, can you really be a Christian without directly proclaiming that? Because Christianity is about Christ as King, and the Gospel is the proclamation of Christ as King. But, on the other hand, most of us today are outside the context of understanding what it means to have a king.

[00:12:00] And while this is true, is it the only way you can express this information? Do you have to use these particular words in order to describe it? Now, to give some space to the side that might say that they don't want to proclaim brothership with Peterson until and unless he makes an actual public profession of faith that they can clamp on to. And that he says he's baptized and all of that kind of thing. I mean, I'll say fair enough to that. Because baptism and participation in the body of Christ has always been a public profession and declaration.

But how much are we trying to entitle ourselves to know details about a public figure? I mean, if you want to present an argument that we are in fact entitled to know this information about someone, you could probably compile [00:13:00] that. But I personally will stand by my statements that no one's faith journey will look the same. What if professions of faith don't have to look or sound the same? What if people don't need to use the exact words you want to hear? When we insist that they do, doesn't that say more about us than them?

Again, people can still make solid claims of basic standards that need to be met, but what if there is a public proclamation and a public proclamation? Like, for me, I try to tell myself that it's not my job or place to decide how public somebody's faith has to be. The burden of proof, presuming there even needs to be a burden of proof, leans in positive ways to me for this. And really even though I am addressing this publicly myself and saying things about [00:14:00] it, I really think we need to caution ourselves to not try to fit anyone into our boxes.

I am in no way saying, however, that it's unimportant to declare Jesus as king, and I'm not saying there are multiple ways to God or anything like that.

But it is interesting to me how often Christians want to insist that we only call a Christian someone who accepts Jesus as God, and we do have Jordan Peterson affirming that fact. So that's interesting to me. We need mentors to disciple us, and we need a community to fit inside. Neither you or I, or even some pastor somewhere, is ultimately the judge of salvation, or even our stance within or without the visible or invisible body of Christ. As I said last time, someone can presumably and [00:15:00] visibly be in the body of Christ, but actually their heart is far from God. I don't intend any of this to be about judging people, but it's not going to stop us from having personal opinions, and that's fine.

Before continuing on, I do want to encourage you, if you have not, Swear allegiance to Jesus. Get baptized if you're not. Find a community of Jesus followers to participate with and grow in. Be a disciple of Jesus and proclaim that proudly. Our God- Man- King, who reconciles the world, deserves all of our worship and all of our praise.

Okay, so into some of the meat here. Many of you are going to be familiar with Jordan Peterson, and some of you are going to be less so. Some of you might not know him at all. And so hopefully something of what I say will appeal to you wherever you are in that mix.

[00:16:00] The way he speaks and the things he brings out is complex, and it's not for everyone. So I'll try to kind of simplify it and bring it into a position of how I am thinking about it. The really interesting thing, to me, is that there are repeated themes that he talks about. And maybe that's kind of where I will sit for the most part here. Because it's the repeated themes that we might gain some clarification and be able to see the wood for the trees. Just like in the Bible, I think it's in the repeated themes that we can really see the whole picture here.

Two themes that pop out at me in many of his lectures and that I think he really hits hard in his new book, are the twin concepts of tyranny and slavery. These are really important concepts to him because he grew up in the church, and he stepped away as a teen. And during that time period, [00:17:00] he started learning about things like the communist gulags, and real palpable evil in the world. I think that was kind of his key into thinking about good and evil and how all of that actually kind of plays out in a real way. Tyranny and slavery are two things that appear time and time again when we are looking at the concept of evil and its actual embodiment in the world.

One of the phrases he uses in his new book, is the individual as sovereign, and he talks about this quite a bit early on, and that might sound a bit scary to us, and we might clutch our pearls and say, oh no, the individual is not sovereign. But I actually think this is one of the really interesting points that really kind of cinch his [00:18:00] whole theology, I might say, in this book.

Because it is really important to catch the meaning behind what people say instead of inputting what we think they mean. When he's talking about the individual as sovereign, he's also talking about things like the image of God and the individual being sovereign is also kind of like a political reality and a social reality. And it is not anything like what we see as Identity politics today.

This is why he also talks about things like nihilistic hedonism and how those are so vastly against the truth of reality and maturing as an image of God that things like that actually lend themselves to tyranny and slavery and not sovereign individuality.

All of that is really complex and hard to [00:19:00] unpack. But as I said, I think what he's talking about here is a very Christian, but also a very psychological way to view things. And he brings forward the fact that you cannot have the individual as sovereign as the Western world tries to proclaim today without also having a core of shared moral values.

We've basically lost that structure today. So if we're thinking of the individual as sovereign, meaning that they can do whatever they want, that is the exact opposite of what Jordan Peterson is talking about regarding the individual as sovereign. And as such, we need to be able to make real choices and have real impact.

So in this lecture that I watched where he was addressing the question, Do you believe in God? he worked to answer that question with two [00:20:00] topics. He talked about calling, and he talked about conscience, and these are very relevant to tyranny, slavery, and sovereignty.

Tyranny and slavery, of course, are massive themes from Scripture. I've talked before about Paul talking about sin and death being personified and enslaving us. I've talked many times about us being under the dominion of death. Of course, we have in the Old Testament, Egypt and Babylon and other powers that are brought out, and they are always presented in the twin concepts of tyranny and slavery.

We have Israelite leaders, kings and judges, and others, and they are either leading the people out of tyranny and slavery, or they're leading them into it. But what does that have to do with individuals, though? Tyranny and slavery are societal [00:21:00] things. But there are things that we tie ourselves to.

Can it really be said that there can be neutral ground?

And is God a tyrant? Some people think so. Some people look at the conquest narrative, for instance. Or they pull out the passages that say that God is a jealous God. And they say, look, he is a tyrant. He just wants to force people into loving him. Which, that sounds a little bit weird if you say it that way, right?

But God was leading his people out of slavery, and anyone in Egypt could have joined the people of God and left with them. It was a matter of, are you gonna choose to stay here and remain under tyranny and slavery? Or are you going to follow the God of freedom?

Then of course we see Jesus, and he comes to serve. Is Jesus the opposite of what we have [00:22:00] with God in the Old Testament?

Well, a lot of times we're judging that in relation to how we're thinking now, and how we're thinking now is in direct line of argument from the New Testament itself. Like, how do we know that tyranny and slavery are bad things? Christian history itself has created the space in which we see that the individual can have rights and dignity so that they are not to be dominated by others.

Sovereignty and dignity of the individual is key to the dismantling of tyranny and slavery. But for most of us, if we're directly looking at this concept, it seems very self evident to at least proclaim that tyranny and slavery are bad, even if we aren't always acting like that's the case. If you've listened to my episodes on sexuality, and particularly the one on [00:23:00] gender, some of this might ring a bell on what I'm saying here.

Postmodern Marxism, with its insistence on tolerance, critical race theory, and things like that, really go directly down the path of tyranny. And arguably, slavery. Like, how do we know that freedom is good, and what is freedom anyway? That's a really big philosophical question, right? The easiest answer is that freedom is the ability to do whatever you want. But the ability to do whatever you want is, at the very least, not the opposite of tyranny and slavery, because our desires are going to conflict with allowing other people to do whatever they want. So freedom of that type is not going to work.

And I think this is what Jordan Peterson is talking about when he talks about things [00:24:00] like hedonism. If you really think that everyone should be able to do whatever they want and it doesn't matter, well, you're gonna suddenly have a whole lot of people whose rights are infringing upon other people.

That's not freedom. That ends up in the zone of tyranny. So freedom is good, but there's some boundaries and there's limitations there. Freedom as simply being free action does not and cannot line up with the goals of eliminating tyranny and slavery. Now, of course, if we see sin and death as tyrants, who enslave and destroy as the church always has seen them, then freedom, as free action leads us straight into this territory that is defined as, well, optimally not good, we might say.

So what about the individual as sovereign? Well, what does sovereign even [00:25:00] mean, first of all? Sovereign can be defined as having supreme authority or rule. It can be a royal rank or have to do with authority and power. It can be about independence and self government. So which part of that are we actually talking about when we're referring to the individual as sovereign?

Well, I think there's a layered meaning here, because having supreme authority as well as self governance means a particular way of being that I think aligns with our identity as the image of God. Like, I talk about God as sovereign all the time, and He is. God is the supreme authority and the one worthy of worship in whom we place our trust.

No one else is sovereign in this way. I mean, you can talk about God and the gods of the nations in the same kind of [00:26:00] way. But who are we? We are the image of God, which means that we are the image of the Sovereign, we are vice regents, made to rule. So we have to have authority. We have to. Otherwise we can't be the image of God.

We can't represent God without His authority. It's not our authority, because our authority would be hedonistic authority. That would be tyrannical authority. You see the difference here? We have to have authority in light of who we are. What happens when we don't act in light of who we are is that we lose that authority.

So the only way to retain authority as individuals is to rule and reign as the image of God, otherwise we lose it entirely. And I think that is essential to the point here. If we are to [00:27:00] rule, and we are the image of God, then the only way to do that is from a position of sovereignty.

But as we've already shown, sovereignty cannot mean to do whatever you want, because that leads to hedonistic chaos. And if that's your goal, then you no longer have a sovereign individual because individuals then become yoked under tyranny, and our desire itself is tyrannical. In effect, there's only one way to avoid tyranny, and the individual only remains sovereign if they are acting in the role of the image of God, the sovereign of order. It seems counterintuitive and a little perplexing and backwards and paradoxical, perhaps. But this is the only thing that fits into reality with all of the pieces in place.

It happens to fit perfectly into the biblical narrative, we see [00:28:00] it acting out in history all the time, and it fits within our purpose and the intent of mankind and our relationship to God. I'm not explicitly referring to libertarian free will, but you can see this dynamic of tyranny and sovereignty, I hope. I think it's brilliant, personally. Now, some people might say that this unfairly raises humanity above God. Well, it can't. It literally cannot, because we're the image of God, and not God himself.

This concept of the sovereign individual also breaks down false ideas of humanity. Like, oh, we're only worms and dirt. Really? You're calling the image of God worms and dirt? You can't have a high view of God with a low view of man. You just can't. You can choose [00:29:00] to go away from God and not image him and then suddenly you are moving from that realm of sovereignty with God into tyranny and slavery.

What the opposition of tyranny and slavery really tells us is that our morals are oriented to the sovereign individual. I think Jordan Peterson is right in that. When we have hedonism or self centered sovereignty, we might say, that puts the individual at the center truly, that leads to tyranny and slavery, and Jordan Peterson explains it well in his book, but it's a little bit mind bending.

Another thing that Jordan Peterson talks about a lot is being and becoming, which is also the image of God. We are the image of God, and we become the image of Christ. Hedonism is centered only on [00:30:00] being, but not becoming. Whatever you desire at the moment is what matters. And that desire is changeable, but it doesn't have to change in any particular direction. And so it resists becoming, or maturing, or seeing yourself in the light of anything but that internal desire. Hedonism is the statement that I am this right now, and whatever you are right now, in that desire, is something other than the image of God.

Well, why can't hedonism be centered on the image of God? It seems like a stupid question to us, but really, we can't define ourselves as the center, while also defining ourselves as the creator, because the creator is entirely other than us. This is also why we do not fully become God himself, or exactly like God, because if that's what's going on, we'd at heart be hedonists who could [00:31:00] define good and bad for ourselves.

I think being and becoming, this idea of maturation and development and, we might say, discipleship, is really key. True becoming is something that has to align with truth and reality. Because if you're becoming something other than God, right? Like the idol makers that we have in the book of Isaiah, they are becoming like their idols, not like God. So we can surely become something else, but when you become an idol, you become ineffective. You become unable to do anything.

Now we can't just have our own particular individualistic goals in order to mature to, because the idea of a sovereign individual being a person who can make themselves, so to speak, is by definition not [00:32:00] aiming at the highest good or God himself, but rather is holding an aim that is changeable and that they can adjust whenever they want, and that leads to slavery because we are becoming something less than we could be. Whereas if you're aiming at the highest good, well, you might not meet that highest good, but at least you're going in a direction that has a target. And that target is not moving. Because that target is in alignment to the reality of everything.

It's fascinating to me that Jordan Peterson has thought through all of this to the point that he has brought these things into the narrative of Scripture itself. And he says that only in the self sacrificing divine, and I'm using that term sacrifice in a very modern way of giving of something, I guess, an offering, right? Jesus [00:33:00] giving himself as a free will offering, so to speak, shows the path forward and upward for humanity itself. And it's that relationship of God and humanity that forms the very ability for us to even be psychologically coherent and navigate the world in all of its complexities.

I say it's fascinating that Jordan Peterson can do all of this with the psychology that he does, but it also makes perfect sense that you could do that, because all truth is God's truth.

As I said, he tackled the question of belief in God from the twin points of conscience and calling. And these are really big themes in his book, We Who Wrestle With God. Do I believe in God? has three parts to it. You have belief, and what is belief? What does that look like, and how does it show up? You have the question of [00:34:00] God. What or who is God? And then you have the question of yourself. And those things might seem really obvious to us.

But really, if you kind of take it apart, there's a lot of mystery there. Even for the concept of who you are. He says it's not actually self evident who you are, because it's not obvious where you begin and end. Are you your whims? Are you your desires? Are you your thoughts, your convictions, simply your physical form?

Or what about your relationships? In truth, you manifest in many different ways, and you connect to the world in so many ways that you can't really sort that out. And you could say the same thing about God and belief.

Jordan Peterson talks about narrative a lot, and so I think it's actually really very in [00:35:00] line with biblical theology to do that. The Bible's narrative is so key to its meaning that I cannot stress that enough. You could think, oh, it's just a story. But nothing is just a story, because a story has aim, and a framework, and a direction, and a purpose, and characters, and it's all a journey.

Some people will contrast narrative as opposed to history, and we see them as distinct things. And I think the last time I talked about Jordan Peterson, I brought up the idea of fiction in relation to scripture. Fiction isn't lying. A story is not an untruth.

It is a way to frame reality. It is reality itself, and the way that you navigate it. The big question is, is your narrative lining up with something that approximates [00:36:00] truth? Because we do lie in stories, and we lie to ourselves. And we have purposes that are untrue, but those do eventually come out in some real ways.

In his lecture, one of the points that really struck me was that he mentioned the dominion of the lie, and that this is where tyranny sits. You have that terrible phrase, work sets you free, but it's really truth that sets us free.

The concept of tyranny and lies lining up and really being the same thing effectively is a hard, hard message because Jordan Peterson has many examples of how people can be living in tyranny and be oppressed, but yet they are active participants because they do nothing to stop it. They do not speak out. [00:37:00] We accept what's going on around us just in order to get by. Jordan Peterson asks, What lies are you living that make you an active participant in your own fate? That's a deep, deep question. But it's a question for all of us.

Of course, there are extreme cases of true victimization, where there is little to no part of the individual in that. But in some form, even if you're in that situation, if that is the situation you cannot get out of, there's still a participation that is going on. And it can happen on a number of levels. What happens to us helps build our narrative in our own minds and hearts. But, it's also the case that where we are and our situation, our current narrative, forms our map for the future.

And so, every time you go along [00:38:00] with something, that becomes a self fulfilling type of a thing. You are forming your own map to the future.

It's almost always the case you can change that if you choose. Our narratives form our aim and direction. And so what is it? What is our aim and direction? So this is where Jordan Peterson starts talking about the idea of calling. Jordan Peterson's definition of calling is that it is good makes itself manifest to you in tangible form in what calls to you.

Now, he doesn't make a big distinction in the lecture between this calling and our personal desire. But that's where we bring in those other things about tyranny and individual sovereignty and the higher aim. And I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the calling cannot be our hedonistic desires, [00:39:00] because it is a call to adventure.

And adventure anticipates risk, and damage, and something outside yourself, and not something within yourself. And this call to adventure contains potential failure, and really our hedonistic desires are what lead us to comfort and staying put and being silent.

Maybe we're narcissistically heroic, maybe degrading ourselves can be just as narcissistic as the usual narcissist.

But calling brings us out of ourselves and out of our self centered interests to engage in something that is other. And really calling is in the realm of God, rather than like the rebellious gods of the nations. They're not calling their people to do great things, right? They're calling their people to serve them

People [00:40:00] would respond to the gods of the nations not as calls outside themselves, but really because of self preservation. We want the gods to give us the rain, so we're going to do what we can to appease them, is kind of the idea we have there. Even the fruit of the garden was a temptation of desire and taking for oneself, rather than a call that is sent by God, right?

Well, can you be called to something that is not good? Can you be called to evil instead? That's a good question, and it's probably what we would call a psychopath, or somebody who is truly self centered.

I mean, really, is there evil that is not actually just centered in self adoration of the person? If evil is calling, it's calling to the whims of your hedonistic [00:41:00] self. On the other hand, true self sacrifice is oriented to the other, not to yourself.

Okay, so you have Moses, for instance, and Jordan Peterson describes him as a shepherd, really quite an ordinary hero. He serves the vulnerable, he keeps the lions at bay. And he has to take care of himself, otherwise he can't do those jobs. He has to treat the others that he cares about in ways that he would like to be treated, otherwise this whole thing doesn't work out very well.

Jordan Peterson brings out the divine mountain, where you're going up, and this beautiful imagery of meeting the divine and being able to see everywhere. It's the idea of the expanded vision. We talked about this in the donkey episode, for instance.

The calling is something that we are gripped by and that we kind of can't help [00:42:00] but be called by it. Peterson says that you have to go off your current path to pursue the calling.

Now the question of God, who and what is God? Yes, God is Jesus, but Jesus came in history and God is also outside of history, right? We characterize God throughout history and within the realm of Salvation history because he manifests himself to us, right? This is the revelation we are given.

And God is manifest in the calling to adventure because the calling is that higher good that we're aiming for and that is who God is. As the image of God, we have to pursue God. And we become like him as we do that.

Okay, so you have yourself, right? Who am I? I am this person who is responding to the [00:43:00] call. And I am also embedded into the society that is in relation to other people. And that necessitates a type of self sacrifice that is also caring for yourself. It's kind of this really strange mix of things that seem paradoxical, like most truth does. So you have yourself and you have God and those are Opposite things right? They are not the same. You have to have two different Centers the center of yourself and the center of God who is calling you.

Okay, so we have ourselves and we have God and we have the relationship of calling. So what is belief? Jordan Peterson says when you follow a calling you become more of who you are away from enslaved tyranny to a place of higher being. So we have the core [00:44:00] of ourselves. We have God and it is that calling that connects us because we were created to have that. We are created as God's imager.

I think he's fundamentally talking about the image of God and being conformed to the image of Christ when we are both being as well as becoming. We are the image of God. We are being conformed to the image of Christ. And that's not just a Genesis 3 thing either, because it begins in Genesis 1.

There's no way we could succeed in our vocation of having dominion if we don't have the aim of following God and pursuing our calling. And that is transformative as we're doing it. It is a necessary maturing that has to happen.

Do you think you're a tyrant or a slave if you aren't interacting with God by pursuing your calling? Probably. I mean, [00:45:00] there's a lot to think about there. If you are instead following your own desire, like Jonah, for instance, how does that turn out? But it seems to be the case that Jordan Peterson has also had kind of a recent revelation, we might say, because in his first book, Maps of Meaning, he did talk about things like calling. And he was starting to really work through a lot of that.

But he realized it's not just calling. It's a good message to have that calling and a lot of people have picked up on that. Kind of made me laugh. He mentioned Joseph Campbell and he wasn't super kind about him, which made me laugh because I'm not a real big fan of Joseph Campbell either. He has some good ideas, but he really misses the mark too. I found him a bit annoying and dull and I have never put a finger on why that is until this [00:46:00] lecture. This is a bit of a paraphrase, but Jordan Peterson quoting Joseph Campbell, he says, follow your bliss? No! That's too positive! That doesn't work! Why? Why doesn't it work? How do we know it doesn't work?

Because people don't do it! If it was as simple and straightforward as that, it would be a cakewalk. But it isn't. Why? Why isn't it that easy? Why isn't it the case that just following our bliss is going to end us where we want to be? Here's another big theme that Jordan Peterson talks about a lot. He says, because you first need to descend into hell before you can climb uphill.

So we can't just leave it at following a calling. There's something missing there. You can't just say, well, here's a good thing that I'm going to pursue, and I'm going to pursue it, and it's going to be all sunshine and roses. It's not how anything works. At least not very often. And [00:47:00] part of that is because you need to lead yourself out of your own self tyranny, which is your desire, and you don't know where the path leads and what exactly you're gonna have to learn in order to grow and mature.

Jonah and God are kind of contrasted in the story here. God is calling Jonah, and Jonah's like, Nope, I'm gonna go the other way, and that is a really good image of what we tend to do.

So, we have God calling us from outside, but He's also in us. He is our conscience. And this is a necessary thing, too. And it's a big question. What is our conscience? It's not us, because it tells us things we don't want to hear. And it goes against what we otherwise desire. You might put it as calling versus warning that you're not listening to the calling. [00:48:00] So we have the calling, and the warning, or the conscience, and we have to have both of these because following the calling is not enough, because it gets hard. It gets challenging. That's why it's a call to adventure.

And so you could go and pursue it. It gets hard and you go, well, we're gonna just not, or turn a different direction. And it's our conscience that is trying to keep us on the path of the calling. But we also have God being kind of a hedge around us as our conscience to keep us on the path when things get really hard. You have to have all of these pieces, and if you're missing some of it, it's just not really going to be playing out.

So then we come to the concept of living truth and silence. If you are silent when you have something to say, you are rejecting the divine because you're not following your calling [00:49:00] or your conscience.

Jordan Peterson said, quote, One man who stops lying can stop tyranny, end quote. Tyranny cannot stand truth. And when you're facing evil, you can remember the divine. because both these polar opposites exist.

Who are you going to swear allegiance to? Are you going to swear allegiance to the good, even in the worst possible experience? And it's terrifying to do that, but it works. This is how we pursue God. And this is how we mature, and become like him.

Okay, so I'm going to read from my notes and I have a few quotes in here, but most of them are paraphrases. I wrote down that the Divine comes as calling and conscience, two manifestations that will lead you into hard suffering, but will also have you climbing heights you didn't know existed. [00:50:00] It's a dynamic path forward that leads to the good, but the path is one of suffering, and by necessity, because we are surrounded by tyranny and slavery, and we have to move past it.

At the end of his lecture, he said, Is that the God you believe in? Do you listen to the call? Does conscience speak? And do you attend? The divine is not you, but it promotes the proper development of who you are, as well as the world, because as you're going about all of that, you are also changing the world.

Belief is not a statement, but an action. Noah didn't just believe in the Ark, he built it.

In the end, he defined you, or the individual, as the soul that is invited and chastised by what is transcendent. Do I believe in God? It's a trick [00:51:00] question. Trick because there's preconceptions and and the person who's asking wants you to agree with their preconceptions.

Why does he believe in it? Because of brute necessity and the call to adventure. Make of that what you will, he said.

You don't ask a question without a whole bunch of information that comes behind it. Right? So, alright, so what do we make of all of that? As Christians, we want him to outright declare allegiance to Jesus. One thing I've been thinking about is that as much as you cannot stress enough that Jesus is King, I worry sometimes that when we phrase it like that, we're really kind of trying to bring God down to our level.

We're trying to put him into a box and say this is what he is. And like we [00:52:00] forget or we're not acknowledging the insane amount of transcendence that God also is.

And I wonder if that is part of his thinking here, like, yes, I declare my allegiance to God by declaring Jesus as king. And I think that's the right way to go about it. I think that's what we should be doing.

But let's not forget that God came to earth as man, but he's still God, right? Like, putting it as the king of the universe is trying to get to that transcendent quality, but how much of God don't we know? Because what we do know is what he's revealed to us, which is his fullness in Christ, yes, but Jesus here on Earth didn't do a whole lot of stuff that God does, right? I don't think we can encapsulate it all in just [00:53:00] that. It's a fair thing to think about, I think. It's a hard thing, and honestly, it makes me a little bit uncomfortable, just because I really, really deeply want to go to the answer of Christ as King.

And that is the answer, but after listening to all of this also, I feel like we need to acknowledge that that's something we can't understand.

I find it really interesting that Jordan Peterson talks about allegiance. He talks in ways that sound exactly, to me, like following God in discipleship. Again, we want declarations of baptism, maybe even church membership registered somewhere. And, fair enough, I suppose, right? Without those things, maybe you can't be properly classified as a Christian.

Do we know that he doesn't have those, though? What if he does, and he just hasn't told [00:54:00] everyone in the world? Maybe he's not ready for that, and maybe he still has that. I don't know. Just a question. I think he's right in that we're stating the boundaries and building our narratives with preconceptions, and we have to.

But there's also more to the world than our preconceptions and our personal narrative. The biggest question that seems apparent in my mind is what's wrong with defining God specifically in Christ?

I think Jordan Peterson does do that in his own way. He talks about Christ as the highest manifestation, as the highest good. He says Jesus is the embodiment of the Law and the Prophets. And while it's important to acknowledge that Jesus is a person, and that he is a man, he is God embodied in a human. And that's only going to be part of his manifestation or one instance of it. It's not everything.

To many of [00:55:00] us, and rightly so, we have a personal relationship to the real person of God. And we need that. We should have that. But the fact that God came down in human form doesn't limit him, though. He is still that transcendent one who manifests himself in the ways that allow us and call us into that relationship, not just for conversation and fellowship and good feelings and whatever else like that, but also for vocation and duty and action and responsibility. I just think it is possible that sometimes we want to boil God down into something we understand rather than acknowledging He is far more than any of that. And maybe that's what Jordan Peterson is trying to say here.

One of my favorite books is Leviticus. And the reason it's one of my favorites is [00:56:00] because I have had experiences in studying it that have opened up a world of understanding to me of who God is and how he wants to relate with us. Not in the form of death and terror and shame and guilt, but in the form of dwelling with us, God with us, the transcendent manifesting on earth in relational ways.

And that's what we have in Christ, right? These are all manifestations of this, God coming to dwell with us, but also calling us to adventure.

What could be more relational than God not just coming as a man in history, but also coming to speak to each of us individually in both calling and conscience. How much more of a personal god can you really get than that?

As I kind of said earlier, one of the things that I really love about Jordan Peterson [00:57:00] and listening to him is that he really thinks in terms of themes and interconnections. And that's what draws me to the biblical mindset that we have in the original biblical context.

That's why the Bible is as beautiful as it is. Not because it is like this documented record of, here's what happened in this period of time and here and here. Like, yes, it has all of that. It has God actually interacting with the world in real places, real times, with real people. But it's so much more than that.

Is it important that Noah built the ark? Well, yeah, because otherwise he wouldn't have been saved through the flood. But when we read that story, and we realize that it's about us, and our relationship with God, then that is when it actually impacts us in this realm of [00:58:00] discipleship. Like it might have that impact in faith in saying, hey, look, this actually happened in history and we can say this and that. And that might be part of your trust in God, but it's got to be more than this series of propositional facts that have happened. And so when you pull out these stories as stories, then they speak to us on those levels of who we are, and what we're doing, and why, and how, and all of that.

I won't really go deep into the questions and his answers, although the first question was, and apparently this was asked two nights in a row, was his favorite way to prepare steak, because for those of you who know, he has a particular diet where he basically eats steak.

He actually gets his steak from Snake River Farms, which, that's funny, because that's actually kind of local to me. A little bit local, anyway. He says [00:59:00] they get one and a half inch steaks from Snake River Farms that are frozen. They stick them in the air fryer at 450 for eight or nine minutes. Then they flip it and do the same thing on the other side. And that is the best way to make a steak. So, there you go, if you're wondering.

The second question was interesting. It centered on parents of young men and the concern of helping them navigate such a lost world and society as we have. And really, the answer to that was his whole lecture. Right? You are called to things, and it's not going to be easy. And you are going to have to face dragons. And that's not a bad thing, but it's gonna be a painful thing. You can choose to continue to participate with the tyrant, or you can participate with your calling and the path of maturity and [01:00:00] basically discipleship, really.

Oh, actually, looking at my notes, the steak question was the second question and the first question, which he spent the most time on, was, I have a girlfriend. But I'm nostalgic, and I think about my previous girlfriend, and how do I move past that? It's kind of a paraphrase of the question.

And he really liked that question, I I think the question appealed to his psychological side, and because he worked so long as a clinician and working with people with problems just like that. And again, he went back to calling and looking at the fantasies that you have and what those can say about what you're missing in your life and what you're called to do. And just because you have a fantasy doesn't mean you need to act on it or doesn't mean you're going to get it or that you deserve it or that it's good, but that it's saying something about yourself. Either in the calling of who you are, or [01:01:00] it's just maybe centered in your hedonistic desires, and that's something you gotta let go of.

I thought that was good advice to pay attention to your fantasies and to use those to cut away in an honest way into yourself and your own psyche. It's not easy to do that, but if you're doing that in alignment with truth, and you're speaking truth, then it can tell you where you are oriented in relation to your calling exterior to yourself, and your hedonistic desires.

I just thought that was pretty cool, because, again, finding all of the ways that God is speaking to us in these narratives and how our positions in life and our actual day to day lives line up with the Bible and these stories, but also in our calling and our personal conscience.

Very cool stuff. I [01:02:00] hope you guys have enjoyed this little conversation. I know I'm going to be going through my notes and thinking more about all of these kinds of topics. Probably thinking about calling, and conscience, and tyranny, and sovereignty, and the image of God as I'm reading my Bible like the image of God is just a concept that is captivating to me because it is so complex. And it's not just this quality of, okay, yeah, we're like that, but it's deeply rooted in what we're supposed to be doing here on earth and who we are supposed to be becoming. So I hope you all reflect on that with me.

If you guys have any questions, I would love to hear them, and do whatever research I can to see how I might answer them or just give you my opinion on them.

Thank you guys for listening. Thank you guys for supporting me. Thank you guys for [01:03:00] praying for me. Really deeply appreciate it. Thank you to all of you who financially support me. I deeply appreciate you guys, and you guys do more than you know.

If you guys want to sign up for my newsletter, b or find out where you can help support me financially, including buying things from my store, you can do so at GenesisMarksTheSpot. com where you can find all kinds of really fun stuff on my website.

Coming up in the next couple of weeks, I will be addressing a couple of questions from different people that I think some of this conversation will speak very directly into. So, very excited about those topics. And looking forward to seeing whatever God has in store for this ministry. Thank you guys for your love and support. I wish you all a blessed week, and [01:04:00] we will see you later.