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Wrestling With Jordan Peterson

Bill Berg
@BillBerg
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Introduction to an attempt to make "We Who Wrestle with God" more reachable.



I seem to be driven to tilt at the windmill of making works about Western civilization and Christianity more accessible to the “common man, meaning the High School/Community College graduate and those of any educational level captured by our shallow post-modern “culture” of greed, pride, selfishness, consumerism, hedonism, decadence and especially nihilism. (Which at too great a level is “all of us.”)

I’m reading Jordan Peterson’s “We Who Wrestle with God” and have read and thought about many similar works that point to the decline and fall of Western civilization and those of us fiddling with various explanations, solutions and mostly laments while we watch the conflagration.

I could pull out a lot of quotes, however I’m on a path of extracting the basic points in the sort of order and vocabulary suited for “everyman.”

A foundational point he makes is that humans always have an “aim” toward some target. Today that target for most is some shallow target, like sexual pleasure, wealth, “identity” or mere obliviousness via drugs or other forms of distraction to be absent from ourselves and reality. Those goals are aiming very low, and as Jordan would say, they call out the “dragons” that will and are devouring ourselves and our civilization.

Western civilization clearly worked in the material sense in that we have more resources to apply to any sort of goal that we may choose. Or we can accept the choice of a timeless spirit beyond the material at any point in history. To paraphrase Luke 17:33 and Matthew 16:25, a culture that prioritizes the temporal over the eternal will lose all that is meaningful.

For most of our history, the template (form, model, blueprint) behind our civilization was Christianity. Transcendent concepts like loving your enemy, the universal value of ALL human life, the morality of the Ten Commandments and Christ’s teachings were the foundational “rock” on which the “house” of Western civilization was built.

Mark 8:36 asks us, what does it profit a culture if it occupies Mars, extends material “life” to eternity, but loses the “why?”

Matthew 12 and Lincoln tell us that a house divided cannot stand. Western civilization is more than “divided,” it is atomized. Intellectuals tell us truth does not exist, men and women are not discernable, institutions like marriage and family are no longer useful, and “morality” is essentially hate speech unless it happens to be YOUR “morality.”

I imagine the book will be widely criticized as being a product of whiteness, patriarchy, etc., which nearly all of Jordan’s works are.

Figures like Jordan and Elon Musk are introducing new ways to understand culture, technology, freedom of speech, intelligence (human and artificial), reality, meaning, and a nearly infinite set of other similar ideas.

Since my tendency is to “go to ground” and just keep working the challenge of a book like this, I’m going to attempt to intersperse this journey with posts like this.

I enjoy reading more than writing, so we shall see how successful that is!

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Discussion (8)

  • Orange Gerald@Jose
    Bill Berg (View Post):
    A foundational point he makes is that humans always have an “aim” toward some target. Today that target for most is some shallow, target like sexual pleasure, wealth, “identity” or mere obliviousness via drugs or other forms of distraction to be absent from ourselves and reality. Those goals are aiming very low, and as Jordan would say, they call out the “dragons” that will and are devouring ourselves and our civilization.

    I haven't read his books, but he makes this point in his videos over and over. If you don't know what your objective, or target, is, you won't accomplish much. Great Stuff!

  • Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot)@ArizonaPatriot
    Bill Berg (View Post):
    Transcendent concepts like loving your enemy, the universal value of ALL human life, the morality of the Ten Commandments and Christ’s teachings were the foundational “rock” on which the “house” of Western civilization was built.

    It's not clear to me that the Christian Scripture teaches the "universal value of ALL human life."

    Where do you get this from Scripture? I agree that many who claim to be Christian teach this, but most Christians don't seem to know much about what Scripture actually says.

    Christianity teaches that few are saved. Matthew 7:13-14:“You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it."

    Christianity teaches that God casts the sinners into hell. Matthew 10:28: "Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell."

    You can quote John 3:16 about how "God so loved the world," but if you interpret this to mean the God has great love for every single person, then you need to understand that this type of love is consistent with condemning the loved one to eternity in hell. It's not what most people consider to be "love," in my experience.

    Finally, there is the doctrine of election or predestination, from Romans 9:

    17For the Scriptures say that God told Pharaoh, “I have appointed you for the very purpose of displaying my power in you and to spread my fame throughout the earth.”j 18So you see, God chooses to show mercy to some, and he chooses to harden the hearts of others so they refuse to listen.

    19Well then, you might say, “Why does God blame people for not responding? Haven’t they simply done what he makes them do?”

    20No, don’t say that. Who are you, a mere human being, to argue with God? Should the thing that was created say to the one who created it, “Why have you made me like this?” 21When a potter makes jars out of clay, doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for decoration and another to throw garbage into? 22In the same way, even though God has the right to show his anger and his power, he is very patient with those on whom his anger falls, who are destined for destruction. 23He does this to make the riches of his glory shine even brighter on those to whom he shows mercy, who were prepared in advance for glory. 24And we are among those whom he selected, both from the Jews and from the Gentiles.

    What is the "universal value" of the lives of those who are "destined for destruction"? It is so that God's mercy will be evident to those that He chooses to save.

    It seems, to me, that this idea about the "universal value of ALL human life" is not a Christian idea, but is an idea of the so-called Enlightenment, which has undermined Christian teaching and led to the abandonment of most of those Ten Commandments.

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