John Anderson & Jordan Peterson
It was with delight that I that began listening to the online lectures of Jordan Peterson, and reading his book on rules for life to myself and my boys. He is smarter than I am, which (all modesty aside) is sadly a rare thing for me, and his insights are as sharp and shocking as a plunge in a clear and icy mountain stream.
For your edification and enjoyment, here is his recent interview with John Anderson.
A word of caution:
Jordan Peterson is no Christian, but he is a virtuous pagan.
He is one of those rare atheists intellectually honest enough to see the overwhelming beauty and goodness of the Christian worldview.
He accurately portrays the Christian worldview is both tragic and heroic, in the Fall and in the Redemption.
He lacks the spirit to see it as literal truth; but even the truth wearing a veil, pretending to be metaphor or to be psychological reality, is too beautiful for him to resist.
He correctly points out that identity politics always ends in bloodshed, usually of appalling volume. He correctly points out that sole alternative to identity politics and its filthy madness is Christianity.
Even those who are too weak in faith to take Christianity literally, so Dr. Peterson’s words suggest, should live lives of heroic stature, which means (to say it more clearly than he) be saints and martyrs.
He speaks of those who wish to live as Christians but who somehow wish to do without the metaphysical underpinnings. Dr. Peterson smiles and says that maybe one can do without the metaphysics an maybe one cannot. I am less cautious than he: as a matter of logic, one cannot. You cannot build a tower without the tower’s foundation beneath it.
But nonetheless, the heroism even of this non-literal and rootless image of Christianity startles the victims of modern nihilism from their arid mesmeric emptiness. The crowd wakes, and realizes each throat is parched with thirst.
They thirst for truth. They recognize, as if they knew it all along, the fallen and wicked corruption each hides in his own heart. Being told since childhood that they are flawless, that they are problem-free, merely plants a seed of deep contempt for humility, which is a contempt for truth, deep in them.
A whole generation was raised on a diet of lies, stupid lies a child could see through, and raised to think reasoning is some sort of trick. Unable to reason, they can smell the stench of the lies, but cannot see and smash them.
Their diet starves them, while the flattering jailers of their thought prisons tell them that they are well fed.
Dr. Peterson asks them to be heroes.
For this reason, the Social Justice Left and their twin brothers on the Alt-Right hate and abominate Dr. Peterson. Even a lukewarm shadow of Christian truth, such as Dr. Peterson adumbrates, is still hot enough to boil all the vainglory of the world to rags.
The partisan of identity politics, be he Left or Alt-Right, requires you to fear your fellow men for sake of their race, and hate them. He inspires you to cynicism and cruelty. Be rude. Rewrite history. Say hateful things. Scorn peacemakers. Wickedness is in institutions, in genetics, in Jews, in others. Destroy them to do good.
Be weak.
Jordan Peterson, by way of contrast, asks you to pick up your damned room before you fix the evils of the world, and to tell the truth — or at least stop lying. Wickedness is in you. All men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Crucify yourself, the wickedness in you, to do good.
The strength in Christ opens the grave.
The first message makes cowards and slaves of otherwise promising young men. It consumes men with hate.
The second makes honest men and free.
Jordan Peterson’s message is, by no means, the whole message of Christ, but it is a solid first step. The whole message of Christ consumes men with love.
The Pharisees and false prophets still hate Christ infinitely, and so rage against even a man like Dr. Jordan, whose eyes are held, and who does no more than touch the hem of His seamless robe (a robe Dr, Jordan as yet cannot see contains a living son of man).
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
