Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Pageau- Their Conversation on Christianity and Secularism

cwic show faith higher & lower laws jonathon pageau jordan peterson Mar 11, 2021

Jordan Peterson is Stuck on Faith
My thoughts on their conversation and Jordan Peterson's position between Secularism and Christianity. Peterson wants to believe, but there are obstacles. Pageau offers good advice, but it's not enough. Peterson needs to learn what faith really is. Peterson adopts Carl Jung's mythological approach of truths in the story of Christ but has difficulty bringing them together with the actual event of Christ's sacrifice.

Raw Transcript

i don't understand why i should believe

that

and i don't i tend not to believe things

without a why

there's always a why and yeah and i

there's there's a hurdle there that i

that that

well that i waver on constantly recently

jordan peterson and jonathan pageau had

a conversation on christianity which

intrigued me now if you don't know who

jordan peterson is

he is a professor of psychology at the

university of toronto

uh previously at harvard university he's

a best-selling author

he's got two books on the new york times

bestsellers list

just in the last three years a very big

uh youtube personality as well

jonathan pageau not quite as well known

uh i followed him for a few years as

well

he talks a lot about symbolism he is an

eastern

orthodox christian and and loves the

symbolism in

his faith so these two get together

every so often and

talk about this symbolism and about

these truths

and patterns within christianity

jordan peterson after his

physical demise here in the last couple

of years and it looks like he's

he's doing much better seems to be

fitting

right now in his spiritual life

somewhere between christianity

and secularism he kind of has a toe

in each each pool if you will and so you

can see in this interview

as as jordan peterson kind of uh

looks for reasoning right as he says

he's looking for the why

of being a part of christianity

now these are both men that i really

respect and so it was a lot of fun for

me to watch this

interview and what i've done here is

i've broken down a few clips

and i'm going to offer a little bit of

commentary on this and cover a little

bit about my

interpreters and principles on scripture

they kind of intertwines with what both

jordan peterson and jonathan pedro have

to say here

now starting off here in this interview

we get kind of a

basis for the rest of the interview

and that is jordan peterson taking as he

would

being a professor of psychology

a psychological view of

of of christ and i love those points of

view

i i don't i think there's obviously a

lot more to that

but he brings a lot to the table when he

takes a psychological perspective

on the story of jesus christ

so for him he looks at this in a very

jungian perspective

right uh carl young and that is he's

looking at this as

a myth now that's not necessarily bad

right when we talk about myth we don't

mean falsehood as if we were talking

about

just myths of the greeks for example the

greek gods

or the egyptian gods what we're talking

about when we're talking about myth here

is we're talking about a story a story

can be true

it can have truths in it but it does

give him a little bit of separation

right

when he talks in a mythological sense of

the story of christ

he doesn't have to accept a hundred

percent that

christ is god but this basis that he

offers here

of christ being the ideal man

is very important in the way he's

approaching this

he's putting it up at the very top of

the values hierarchy and he accepts this

we'll see that as we go through the

interview i understand and appreciate

the symbolic significance of the ideal

human being

and that finds its embodiment and i took

these ideas in large part from

jung and eric neumann that that

christ is a represent christ is at least

a representation of

the ideal man whatever that is and and

we all interestingly enough we all seem

to have an ideal

now from here peterson starts to talk

his way through this right you can tell

i think there's some sincerity here

on trying to bring this secular mind

in with this uh uh this spiritual mind

he's he's dealing with the higher and

the lower laws here but he's so

steeped in the lower law of of

science right we love science that

doesn't mean it's bad

it means it's great right but he's so

steeped in this

secular point of view that he has to

reason his way through that

that that's that's okay he has to reason

his way through the idea of accepting

christianity

and a big part of what he's doing here

is he's trying to show something

that is outside of yourself

right that would be the idea of the

spirit something that

you know it's just like god right god is

outside of ourselves it's outside of

what we have

in a physical realm so this is a big

part of what he's going to be going over

he's trying to bring together

the the secular world and the spiritual

world in his mind it's like the two

sides of the brain

and he's trying to bring together the uh

the material with the spiritual

in his mind a lot of that is a physical

manifestation

coming out of myth of story

and the truths that are found in those

stories

to him our conscience is an evidence

of something outside of ourselves like

the holy ghost like the holy spirit like

the light of christ and that's where

it's very interesting to consider the

role of conscience

because your conscience will call you

out on your behavior and so it seems to

function as something that's somewhat

independent

or at least is something that you can't

fully voluntarily control because if you

could voluntarily control it

then you just tell the pesky little

bastard to go away

or to pat you on the back continually

to some degree the conscience can be

viewed as the voice of

reciprocal society within and that's a

perfectly reasonable biological

explanation

but but the thing is is the deeper you

go into biology the more it shades into

something that appears to be religious

because you start

analyzing the fundamental structure of

the psyche itself

and and it becomes something

well it becomes something with a pow

with

with a with a with with a power that

transcends your ability to resist it

i love how peterson goes into the idea

that

the further we go down into psychology

into

psyche or really as far as i'm concerned

after you pull back the first couple of

layers in science

and keep going you get further and

further

into meaning you get further and further

into

why you get further and further toward

god science does a great job of

explaining

how it does a horrible job of explaining

why a much more important

question but peterson seems to feel

that as you peel those layers of the

onion back further and further and keep

going

you don't get away from god you actually

get closer and closer to

something religious something divine

said well that that doesn't

differentiate christ much from a whole

sequence of dying and resurrecting

mythological gods and of course people

have made that

claim in comparative religion joseph

campbell did that

and jung to a lesser degree i would say

but campbell did that

but the difference and c.s lewis pointed

this out as well the difference between

those mythological gods and christ was

that

there's a there's a representation of

there's a historical representation of

his of of his existence as well

now you can debate whether or not that's

genuine

so here we have the beginning of of

peterson's idea of bringing this

physical manifestation

of a myth together right you can have

the myths of

zeus and of osiris in egypt

or any other of the gods that never

existed

or maybe they're built off of some king

or pharaoh

but the actual myth

actually occurring right

is something that is very unique within

christianity the myth the story

is not only the highest level of

love and ideal that you can get

of any myth but it seems to have

a need to have a physical manifestation

because without that true reality of

of having actually happened to a

person to a being then that ideal

it's not really real it's just an idea

and this is what peterson grapples with

throughout this interview

you can debate about whether or not he

actually lived and whether there's

credible objective evidence for that but

it doesn't matter in some sense because

this well it does but

there's a sense in which it doesn't

matter because there's still a

historical story and so what you have in

the figure of christ is

an actual person who actually lived plus

a myth and in some sense christ is the

union of those two things

the problem is is i probably believe

that but i don't know

i don't i'm amazed at my own belief and

i don't understand it

like because i've seen

sometimes the objective

world and the narrative world

touch

you know that's union synchronicity

and i've seen that many times in my own

life

and so in some sense i believe it's

undeniable you know

we have a narrative sense of the world

for me that's been the world of morality

that's the world that tells us how to

act

it's real like we treat it like it's

real it's not the objective world

but the narrative and the objective

world touch and the ultimate example of

that in principle is supposed to be

christ

but i don't know what to and that seems

to me oddly plausible

yeah but i still don't know what to make

of it it's too

it partly because it's too terrifying a

reality to

fully believe i don't even know what

would happen to you if you fully

believed it

okay well this is a natural reaction

for someone who starts to bring those

together

that objective world and that

mythological world

right the the objective world and the

narrative world i love how he

pulls these out because he's using very

psychological terms

the narrative world right myth

the mythological world not meaning the

fake world it means the story the

narrative

stories are very important think about

how jesus taught

he taught with stories were those

individuals real

was there really one sheep that was lost

in 99 that were found

what is he teaching he's teaching in

narratives he's teaching in

myths he's teaching in stories

and this is something in in uh you know

not i wouldn't say

most academics have this

understanding of of because you're so

steeped in the in the scientific world

that the mythological world

the narrative world the spiritual world

right is reduced to to a much lower

level

i think that jordan peterson sees that

world

and understands that world he's just

trying to

to bring the two together he's trying to

see how they

are connected for me this is all about

the higher and the lower laws

right his narrative world his myth the

mythological world

his world of story is a world of

symbolism it's a world of spirituality

and he's trying to reconcile that

with the objective world with the

scientific world

the physical world that's genesis 1 1

right from the beginning right god

created the heavens

and the earth it's the things from

heaven and the things of earth

it's the spiritual things and the

temporal things that's all he's doing

he's

trying to bring these two things

together that's the objective

of existence by the way right that's

what

covenant means comes from kovaneri it

means to come together

what coming together the spiritual

things

and the objective things the

things of heaven and the things of earth

that's the higher and the lower laws

you often say and i understand it when

you say something like

you know i act as if god exists or you

know i'm afraid to say that god exists

uh and i think it's because you you

think

or you tend to think that the moral

weight

like of that is so strong that you would

we would crumble under it that you would

just be crushed under it

and and i think that and i think that

that's

i think that i i understand that

but the first thing that to act as if

god exists

let's say it this way to act as as if

god exists the first thing that it asks

of you is not

a moral action the first thing that it

asks

asks of you is attention

so i really like what jonathan pageau is

saying here about attention that the

first thing it requires you is not

morality

it's actually attention another way of

thinking about this

is remembering and we see this all

throughout for example the bible the

idea of remembering

it's the first thing it requires is

attention you have to have

a little bit of knowledge before you can

have faith

a lot of people think it's the other way

around faith is not a lack of knowledge

that's not what it is it's not a belief

without a base of knowledge that's

ridiculous

you have to have a knowledge of god

first before you can have faith in him

you have to have a knowledge of his

goodness of his perfection

faith is trust it is fideri that's what

it comes from it means

trust you can't have trust in something

you can't

fake trust you can't have trust in

something

that you don't have a knowledge of and

then eventually you gain experience with

that relationship

and then your faith grows based on

knowledge and experience

so i really like what he says there but

he discussed the idea of

the yoke of christ being light and that

there is joy in it

and um and there's a paradox there

obviously because

it's it's also a take up your cross and

follow me sort of thing

but um the fact that i've been living in

constant pain

makes the idea of joy seem

um cruel i would say

and so and i have no idea how to

reconcile myself to that

all right before i go into my comments

on what peterson has to say here about

suffering

i want to go just a little bit further

here down this rabbit hole

that isn't really as deep i don't think

as they're making it out to be but let's

listen to jonathan pajot on this first

and then i'll come back and talk about

it's very difficult to answer that i

think that the answer

like the answer has been the cross like

that's been the answer it's an ease

maybe it may be easy for me to

just say it that way uh but that's

always been the

answer of of christianity which is that

that god went to to the cross and that

god went

down into death and and plunged down

into death and there

that there are mysteries hidden and

there maybe they're very well hidden but

there are mysteries hidden in that than

that depth

okay there are mysteries hidden in that

depth

as as pejo says but

a lot of those mysteries are things that

we actually go through ourselves

we all go through suffering we all go

through a level of death to the ancients

death was not just a mortal death right

it was it was sickness

it was there's a spiritual death right

death

mortal death is a separation of

body and spirit spiritual death is a

separation of

man and god right it's the separation

it's pulling away from

and and christ overcomes both of those

it's not just a physical death

that he overcomes when lucifer

is in the garden of eden and is talking

to eve

and says you you know you're not gonna

die don't worry about it

he's lying right and not just in the

sense that you're going to die

physically he's lying saying you're not

going to die

spiritually that's important to see

and and it's christ that comes in and

through the garden of gethsemane

and on the cross and then his

resurrection uh

going down into hades here as as pedro

was talking about

he overcomes both of those deaths that's

i think that's really important to

understand again

higher and lower lie you have to have

two you have to have

the physical objective world and you

have to have the spiritual world

but the most important point here i

think is that

there has to be suffering there has to

because if there's not suffering then we

don't know joy

right you you have to have an opposition

in those things

and beyond that we all participate

in becoming something greater as

peterson keeps talking about christ as

the ideal man

well how do we become like him

and the answer is is that we learn to

suffer

in a degree the way he suffered

that's really his example his example is

obviously important from his

life and from his teachings but the

greatest example

is the love he offered in taking on all

of the sins of the world and the pain

and the suffering that he went through

you know what to what degree are we

willing to do the same for others for

those outside of ourselves

and think about how much love you would

need if no one suffered

for any reason if there was no spiritual

death if there was no physical death

right if there's no opposition in all

things which

also means context and hierarchy you

have to have context in hierarchy

and you may be up higher on the

hierarchy of wealth

which means what do you need to do with

that you need to reach down

to those below you and pull them up out

of poverty

or they might be spiritually in poverty

and you might be spiritually wealthy and

you're higher up in the hierarchy on

that end you need to pull those

up while you're reaching up also to

those that are more

spiritual than yourself it's

it's it's a as i say often it's it's

it's like it's relational covenant

it's charity and if we don't have

suffering and degrees of suffering and

degrees of everything else

wealth and everything else disparity

period

if we don't have disparity we have no

objective to move against that disparity

we have no objective to offer love and

effort remember when i say love i'm not

talking about a feeling

i'm talking about effort i'm talking

about action i'm talking about

suffering for someone else bearing their

burdens

as christ bore our burdens

one of the things that that you talk

about like looking up to the star and

looking up to the highest thing you can

look at and then aiming

towards that you know once again one of

the things that that does for

is that the first thing you do is

actually where

it's a form it's a tension that people

don't like the word worship it's a form

of reverence a

form of veneration you submit yourself

to that aim

so it's not just that you see the aim

and that you aim for it

you actually have to submit yourself to

that which is

to what you're aiming and so that

sacrifice to it

exactly and you have to sacrifice to it

so that's why

let's say the religious version of this

has to move towards the

highest possible aim and also one that

we can do together

again love what jonathan goes through

here again about this hierarchy

what i talk about often is a fluid

hierarchy

right it is it is that his it goes right

along the lines of what he's saying here

which is you have to be able to submit

to it

you have to submit in order to get into

the fluid hierarchy it's similar to

moses

who can't speak well right there's

always a weakness with these prophets

and it's always brought out

uh in the scriptures because it's

showing

their weakness and it's not that they're

weak individuals

it's that they're not god and it's not

about them

right they're always spokespeople for

god they're it's not

moses church right it's not moses's

religion he doesn't he's not the founder

of all that

he is simply a spokesperson and someone

who works in the fluid hierarchy

in order to enter into the fluid

hierarchy

you have to be able to submit and if you

look above you and you see the ideal

in christ above you then you've got to

learn okay i'm going to submit myself in

here i don't have to be him now

i don't need all that glory what i need

to do is

learn and and make myself meek and and

humble myself so that i can enter into

this fluid hierarchy

what do i mean by fluid i mean that you

can move up and down in it

depending on your agency your choices

what you do

and that's very important if you have a

rigid

hierarchy spiritual hierarchy then

you're always consigned

to the same position that doesn't work

it also means that everybody can be

fluid

so as you lift others up you are lifted

right as you help someone else you

become a better person

which raises you up in a spiritual

hierarchy it's not about

it's not about you know power as we

think about power

it's about growth it's about progressing

it's about

becoming all right now what jordan

peterson goes over here i think is very

important to understand as part of that

ability to move through that fluid

hierarchy

of part of that ability to grow and

progress

you must have community listen to what

he says

whatever our fundamental moral load is

immense though it is um crushing

though it is even um

requires the participation of others so

even if you

were the perfect you you would need

other

people to to be along with you it's a

collective enterprise even though it's

an individualistic

even though it requires the perfection

it requires

as much perfection as is possible at the

individual level

that's not enough there has to be that

communal element as well you need help

we all need help to aim as high the

highest aim requires communal endeavor

okay i love this because he goes over

two different things here

first of all he's talking about the need

for both

individuality and community you can't

give up individuality

and go straight up to community this is

what the dystopian ideologies political

ideologies try to do

right there are to me four phases of

what we might call

the four phases of the priesthood right

the there are four phases in priesthood

that is with that which administers will

call it zion

right and they are at the very

individual level it's choice first it's

agency you can't give that up that's

that always

is there and it always everything always

has to start there

and then secondly it is speech and

behavior

we can think a lot about the first

amendment in that case

right those are lower law things when i

think of the lord law i'm talking about

as individuals not god right

so we have choice and speech or or

behavior

this is all scriptural and then if we go

up to the higher law

right the third phase of the priesthood

would be family

we're going outside of ourselves

individually into something that

ties us together to something more

important than just us

then that's obviously key to growing

and to becoming more like jesus christ

you've got to move toward family so we

start to get into what peterson

describes as community

and then the fourth phase of the

priesthood would be what i would call

something like zion

right and and so think about those four

phases

choice and agency or freedom of choice

we might call it

uh speech and behavior

family and then community or zion

think about dystopian ideologies

political ideologies let's go to

marxism and communism what it tried to

what does it do it says no we're going

straight to the top of those four and

we're going to drop the first three

we're going to get rid of your own

agency where necessary

we're going to get rid of your speech

where necessary we're going to get rid

of family ties being as important

as you think they are and we're going to

bring you up to the level of

zion straight there knocking out the

other three

making them much less important and

leaving them behind really

right the state is more important than

your family

in that case so those four phases are

all crucial they're all very scriptural

all very important

that's where it starts the lower law

with us individually

and moving to the higher law which is

moving outside of ourselves

moving outside of the individual you've

got to keep both though you can't ever

give one up you can't say i'm moving

straight to community in zion and

leave behind the individual you have to

hold on to both

there seems to be something too

convenient about c.s lewis's insistence

that that also had to manifest itself

concretely in reality at one point in

history

and i'm not like i

i don't understand why i should believe

that

and i don't i tend not to believe things

without a why

so at this point in the conversation

peterson

comes back to his why right

that that he doesn't understand why

and where these two worlds are are going

to come together

he's got to have the why in order to

believe

let's see how this conversation unveils

this

there's always a why and yeah and i

there's there's a hurdle there that i

that that

well that i waver on constantly you're

when you think these things through

at least my experience has been if you

think them through sufficiently you end

up with

the choice between impossible

alternatives and so yeah

one of the ways to see it maybe is is it

has to do

with the recognizing of the goodness of

the world or the goodness of creation

that

that the world is capable

of manifesting these patterns

so pezzo's answer is having a belief in

the goodness of the world

that there is goodness and of course if

you follow the conversation so far and

you see

peterson's idea of christ being the

ideal

then of course why would you not reach

for that right because anything else is

as he said earlier

is lesser than that so if there's

goodness in the world and christ

embodies the

the greatest good there is the highest

good that there is

then why would you not believe in that

right

but i i don't think there's enough meat

there i really don't i don't think

there's enough there to say

this is why you believe in christianity

it's a good reason

but it's it's not a great reason to me

let's keep going not only does have to

come down into the person of christ

who's incarnated but that person

has to go down down into death to the

very bottom of the world

you know to the belly of the leviathan

and then

come back up and so the whole world is

declared as once again declared as

being capable of participating in this

good the

the this this story of of a man who

embodied them

absolutely and is bringing us in him

to also embody them in a way that will

transform us

you know like the the ultimate goal of

of orthodox

vision of christianity is is theosis

it's to become

god to become god through through

transformation and participation in god

okay i happen to believe what jonathan

pedro is saying here

in that we are the reason for our

existence the why behind

us is to become like god

right i agree with him i i think that

look you've got an ideal in christ

so what you're trying to do is become

like him

why would you shoot for something less

what happens when you get two stages

below that you stop

i don't want any more progress no you

keep going

you want to sit at his right hand you

want to

inherit all that he has and you want

uh eternal progression so to speak

so i i under i so i believe what

jonathan pedro is saying there i think

that's the right idea

that to me is a part of pure

christianity

that to me is good reasoning that's good

logic

now here peterson moves on to the idea

of responsibility

as meaning it also seems to me that

you can sell the story that meaning is

to be found in responsibility

when i've tried to sell that story to

myself i seem to buy it and

when i've tried to communicate it with

other people it renders them silent

large crowds of people silent and that's

strange because

i'm not sure why that is it's perhaps

because the connection between

responsibility and meaning had never

been made

for in in that explicitly somehow

i i this is something he's written about

before and spoken about before

in understanding where where meaning

comes from

right what is the meaning of our lives

what is the meaning of the existence of

the universe etc

a lot of it is planted in individual

responsibility

and and again if we look to the ideal

what responsibility did christ have for

everybody else

well he had all of the responsibility

right that's what

love is it's that attention

to that duty it's actually doing

something it's not just saying oh i care

about this in my heart

it's the action that took place in

gethsemane and on the cross

so to reach that ideal means

to take on responsibility

that creates meaning

and i think that as he goes through

these little points here he's not going

to come up with a full answer on this

in this conversation but but it adds

just another

building block of intellectual power

in in in getting to the point of putting

together

what is christianity and and and why

it's true

he wants to come to it from a lower law

perspective

you can get there that way it's harder

right it's harder to do that

but you can get there eventually but

eventually you're going to have to open

up the floodgates

to the higher law

so now jonathan pageau goes into the

idea of

bearing each other's burden and so

there's there's

a value in being in a community and a

and a hierarchy where you like i go to

confession

right i go to confession i go to my

priest and i confess my sins and

and i give that to him he

actually takes responsibility for

for an aspect of listening to my sins

and and kind of participating in my

salvation and he

and so the weight ends up being

distributed across the community

this to me is a great argument against

those who say we don't need organized

religion

i i you know i i can have a direct

relationship with god which is

extremely important it's the most

important thing but but i don't need any

organized religion

that to me is false i i to me you've got

to have a structure in place that

fulfills both the idea of hierarchy

and fulfills the idea of of well an

authority

and that is going to fulfill the idea of

bearing each other's burdens a structure

that

helps you do that that's what it's for

it's not that you are submitted just to

a church it's actually that a church

should be submitted to you

and your family in helping support you

becoming so in this sense

the church a church acts as

a way for us to be like christ it

creates a way for us to

share the burdens of others and for us

to have our burdens shared there's some

truth to that there's there's a truth of

goodness

in in that idea of sharing burdens

again bringing it all back to the

sacrifice of christ

that's what everything hinges on

him bearing everyone's burdens

and then we get into what i think is the

most important part of this conversation

and that is this idea of of faith

i think that they get toward what they

should be talking about

and as far as an answer to jordan

peterson we're going to get closer to

what i think

answer should be for

because i've been struggling towards it

this whole

it's an act of faith and so let's say

that your faith is

that you decide to make the notion that

reality is good the cornerstone of your

faith

it's something that you that you what

that you believe or is it something that

you courageously assume

and is there a difference between that

and belief and if you courageously

assume

that the world is good that reality is

good then

the touching of the narrative and the

objective in this

manner that's demonstrated by christ

that becomes necessary

is that the idea

this is my favorite part of the

conversation

here jordan peterson like he wants an

answer

right this is he's struggling with this

he wants an answer

and jonathan pageau is about to bring

him down i think the right road he

doesn't bring him all the way down the

road

but he starts him off on the right road

jordan peterson here talks about having

a courageous

assumption that is only a beginning

that's not

faith it's it's a it's a

uh it's a belief it's not a full faith

that's not what

faith is again we have to understand

that faith

is trust how do you have trust

trust is not just an assumption think

about a relationship that you have with

a spouse

with a child may be good maybe bad

think about how the role of trust plays

a role

in those uh or or the idea of trust

plays a role in those relationships it's

everything

it's intangible it's spiritual it's part

of the narrative world part of the

spiritual world

but you can't fake it you can say

something different but you cannot fake

trust

right you have to build it you have to

grow into it

as jordan peterson here says is that

what it is

the the answer to that for me is

no but that's a really good place to

start

the answer is learning how to build

trust how do you trust in these things

it's like any scientific experiment just

like jordan peterson has done a thousand

times in psychology

you have to test it out and find out

what the results are

that's how it works

trust is built it's not just a

courageous assumption or a belief

it's funny i don't see it as an act of

faith in the way that we think of an act

of faith like this jump of faith or

whatever i

i see it as an act of trust faith as

trust you would say

that's fine that would be a courageous

assumption if it's trust

okay notice how peterson comes back

in his response to to pajeo here and

says okay

faith that is a courageous assumption no

it's not

no it's not he's off on this i think

right

it's not the same thing what has been

built up

to have that trust what that that

faith comes from the latin word federi

federi is trust or integrity right it's

what holds things together

that's what piste says in in in greek

sometimes you'll see it translated as

belief but

when you see that it's it's it's trust

trust takes time trust takes effort

trusts trust takes experience

you can't just assume i i've heard a

number of

of individuals talk about faith in a way

that is

almost like they're making it more noble

saying that you don't have to have

any kind of experience or or or even

any type of evidence for it that's not

true that's just not true

you're you have that's santa claus

sorry that is santa claus god is real

santa claus is not and and you can't go

forward with your life not not the way

you really need to to find reality

and truth thinking that faith

is nothing more than a belief

right a child believing in santa claus

does not mean santa claus is real

but a faith in god based on the

principles of the gospel

and you trying those out over and over

and

over again and building a relationship

with him

that's completely different now you've

built something very strong

and very real that cannot be faked

you can just see peterson's struggle

with really understanding i think that

that idea of what faith really is

and that to me is where his shortcoming

is in

trying to battle this you know bringing

these two worlds together here's

something he he said

in his last book 12 rules of life

it says i knew that i could find nothing

in the way of rational knowledge

except a denial of life right that's the

objective world

and in faith i could find nothing except

a denial of

reason no and this was even more

impossible than a denial of life

again he you know bringing these two

worlds together here is is what his

crisis is and

yeah i think to me the better answer i

don't know if it's the answer

but the better answer to this is

understanding what

faith is faith is based on

evidence the evidence of your experience

implementing the principles of the

gospel

in building a relationship

and then here they go over the ever

important topic of hierarchy

and and i think this is crucial to

understand for

religion for christianity there is

hierarchy you want

hierarchy you want order you want

context

the smashing together of a hierarchy

flattening a hierarchy

is not the plan of god

right that is the opposite plan

so if you worship if you worship those

things that you're aiming towards

the lower things if you worship the the

making a safer society

if you worship the making of freer

society if you worship making

a stronger society all of these things

are going to go off the rails because

they they have unintended

consequences that you don't understand

because they're they're a fragment of

reality

that's the danger of ideology it's the

part takes the place of the whole

so the the the the idea is that if you

actu

if you worship god then those other

things

will will kind of lay themselves out

slowly and you won't be able to force

them

and they give the example of uh judas

at bethany and the woman with the with

the expensive oil

here's what they say when a woman comes

and wants to anoint and wash christ's

feet with a very expensive perfume

and then judah says what what are you

doing like why are you doing this you

need to why don't we give this to the

poor

right and christ says you know the poor

will always be with you

but the bridegroom christ the messiah is

there for

a short time well i suppose the truth of

the matter is is that

the genuineness of your desire to help

the poor

is precisely proportional to the degree

that you embody christ

so i i i this to me is the idea again of

the higher and the lower laws you can't

get rid of the lower law you can't get

rid of the individual first

that doesn't mean that you focus on the

individual it just means you can't get

rid of it so

in this example i think they're exactly

right it's kind of like when you're on a

plane

and they teach you before you take off

every time

right if you're with a child and

oxygen is lost in the cabin then the

face masks fall the oxygen falls

and what are you going to do with the

child you're going to try and put

the one on them first maybe they're

moving around who knows how long that

takes

you pass out in the meantime right no

what it means is you've got to get your

own house right first or as jordan

peterson says

you know get your own room in order

first before you go beyond that

and and you've got to put on the mask

first now you know

because you're the one that can help you

can help that

your child you can help the person next

to you you can help everybody

if you've got the mask on first you've

got to clean the inner vessel so to

speak first

so i think that's exactly right and a

very important principle to understand

if you've got christ at the top then

everything else

can fall into order even the poor as

important as that

is there are a lot of ideologies out

there

that talk about helping the poor and

that's

fabulous but if they are above the ideal

good

then that's a problem right things can

get out of whack if you've got christ at

the very top

then you take care of the poor then you

take care of the things that are right

you do the greatest good and then lastly

here

peterson goes in and talks about the

idea of goals and hierarchy

here's what he says i did some work on a

committee at one point that was

advising the u.n

in relationship to the establishment of

its millennial goals and there was

hundreds of goals

never not rank ordered and so it was a

tower of babel

because you can't have hundreds of goals

that aren't rank ordered and have any

goals at all

because the goal to have a goal means a

hierarchy something has to be more

important than something else

and there isn't anything more important

than getting your act together

so to speak you know

if we think about this this is

our why or a big part of it anyway

why we exist why are we here in

in mortality where there is opposition

in everything

where there is adversity why would we be

in a place where they're suffering what

is the point of all this

right the point is growth and as you

have different goals and you create a

values hierarchy what are you doing

you are becoming you're learning and

you're growing through experience

you're making decisions that's why

agency is so crucial

and those decisions hopefully are moving

you closer and closer to

getting your values hierarchy in the

right place

putting christ at the very top putting

sacrifice at the top putting

love at the top that requires

adversity that requires the ability to

have choices between

not just good and evil but

good and better right it's context

it's levels it's it's a hierarchical

value structure

that helps us as we get it into the

right places like putting together a

rubik's cube

right that that we can become

who i believe we are supposed to come

now in the end on this conversation and

i've followed both of these men quite a

bit

i think the thing that is lacking the

most here

is the idea of what faith is if peterson

can just

grab on a little bit more to what faith

and how to build it i see that he can

move

beyond this this barrier

that stands between the objective world

and the narrative world the the physical

world and the spiritual world

the scientific world and the mythical

world

you don't have to subject yourself to an

unintellectual argument

that says just believe that is silly

right i don't know what other word to

use

you have to build it on principle you

build it on

reason and then you grow you grow it

through

applying principles and building a

relationship

if that wasn't the case then why do you

have all of the scripture

what is the point of being told over and

over again

how to behave and how to get the holy

ghost the holy spirit

what is the point of being told come

follow me

right and to actually walk in his

footsteps and become like him and

bear others burdens as well what is the

point of sacrifice what is the point of

you know what are you doing you're

giving something up for a greater good

you're you're

acting out a values hierarchy

and that is something that is changing

you

into something better i really respect

both of these men and

and i i think that there's a lot of

sincerity here i think that's important

it's not just intellectual firepower it

it is there's sincerity and there's i

think a true desire

to find truth and that's probably more

important than anything else

uh if you don't follow them if you

haven't followed them before

then i will put their uh their

information in the description

below thanks and i'll talk to you next

time

well i'm going to have to think about

all this a lot

Jordan Peterson Jonathan Pageau

Christianity

Attribution-
The Jordan Peterson Podcast with Jonathan Pageau- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rAqVmZwqZM&t=9s

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