Dr. Jordan Peterson
“We wrestle with God” is full of thoughtful analysis of the Bible, which he perceives to be “the framework within which the world of facts reveals itself” and “the foundation of the West, pure and simple.” This is a persuasive book.
What does the story of Cain and Abel tell us about the possibility of essential conflict? Or is the flaming sword of the East of Eden about purification, a prerequisite for heaven? What does Auschwitz and Japan's Unit 731 have to do with the Tower of Babel? Or is it the abyss below that tells us about the infinite expanses above? Peterson's answers are rich and insightful.
There is no doubt that Peterson respects the Bible and appreciates the civilizational achievements of this ultimate map of meaning. However, there is something disturbing in the text.
He seems to think of the Bible as the most complex, comprehensive, consistent, and positive didactic morality tale ever assembled, but the God with whom Peterson struggles is , it doesn't seem to be meant literally
who and even more figurative what.
Peterson has been asked many times whether he believes in God.
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shown In the lecture, answering in the affirmative carries a “heavy moral burden,'' especially since''[he] I don't see how you can make a higher moral claim than that,” he said when asked by Piers Morgan in October 2023. answered“I don't think that's anyone's business,'' an interesting response from someone responsible for a 500-plus page book on the knowledge of God.
Despite being uncomfortable with the question, Peterson admitted his beliefs on at least one occasion, but in the end it only raised further doubts about whether he was a theist in the traditional sense.
peterson
said Atheist Sam Harris says, “Part of the underlying concept of God in the Western mind is the idea that God, whatever he is, is expressed in truthful speech that corrects pathological hierarchies.'' …It also confronts the chaos of existence itself and creates habitable order. In other words, it is a metaphysical proposition.”
“I think of it as a transcendent reality that can only be observed over the longest time frame,” Peterson continued. “God is the way we imaginatively and collectively express the existence and workings of consciousness through the ages.”
Peterson went on to say that “God is the highest value in a hierarchy of values,'' “God is the voice of conscience,'' and “God is the future for which we make sacrifices.''
It is not entirely clear whether the God Peterson is referring to is the triune being that Christians believe to be the literal “one true and living God.”
In his new book, Peterson says that God is represented in Genesis as “a spiritual process guided by a purpose for the existence and flourishing of all things, a spirit guided by love.” Later he says that God is “the one around whom all other things are arranged.” Elsewhere in the book, God becomes a metaphor for “the encounter between what continues to exist and what is at the same time violently changing.” “The ultimate ascent to the top.” “Unity that exists at the base or stands at the top.” And, “Personally, it is the source of my growth.”
It is not entirely clear whether the God Peterson refers to is the Trinity that Christians say leave it alone Literally: “One true and living God, Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, omnipotent, eternal, immeasurable, incomprehensible, infinite in will, understanding, and every perfection.”[;] …In fact, it is distinct from the world, supremely happy in itself and from itself, and ineffably more sublime than anything that exists or can be imagined apart from itself. ” In whose image we are created, whose face is human, and on which all contingent reality rests.
Either we are made in the image of God, or we have created yet another god in our image.
Hope you find me off-base, but Peterson seems to be referring instead to an imaginative but workable moral goal. The symbolic center of a network of ideas that is named and called into reality. A “necessary fiction” that is “true” by necessity. The idealized imago human race has been refined through years of trial and error to become “better and better and at the same time deeper and deeper,” becoming a product that “is, as it were, the workings of Jung's collective unconscious.”
But God is not a vision board of moral to-dos and social possibilities. They are the idealized idols of the North, to which we have become sensitive due to evolution. Similarly, the Bible is not a useful collection of utopian myths for soulless creatures living in a contingent universe.
It is true that we navigate the world with stories, but the proposition of Christianity depends on whether these stories are real and literal.
Either Christ actually died and rose from the dead, or he didn't.
If not, here's what the missionary has to say. “What we have here is a cult of Jewish lifestyle built around a crazy Nazarene who was executed after claiming kingship and communion with God the Father – the Nazarene, by the way, is a malleable human fabrication. is”.
There may be a heaven or a living hell in the world, but either there is an afterlife or there is no life after death. If not, even though the tomb was empty, the promise of Easter was stolen along with it.
The God we wrestle with is either the creator or the creature. Either we are made in the image of God, or we have created yet another god in our image.
As Peterson writes, the Bible is the foundation of the West. But God, the literal Creator, is the root of this text. Without God, we are left with so-called Christian atheism, a non-committal materialistic fandom that enjoys the fruits of Christianity and appreciates its roots, but despises the gardener.
In We Wrestle with God, Peterson shares many interesting explanations of its fruits and roots, arguing against those who dismiss the Bible as naive, and those who “assume that what is scientific is correct. It makes a strong case for both people. Religious people are somehow the exact opposite in that trees give life.
In addition to the enjoyment that such readers derive from reading Peterson's book, their appreciation for the Bible is due to the fact that not only did it create the tree, but it literally lived on that tree to save us from sin and death. It may be replaced by a hug for the gardener who dropped it.
