It seems like my intellectual interests keep multiplying, to the point that I could lose focus and get nothing done. To prevent that, I have had to scale back my ambitions and tendency to digress. I am doing a translation/interpretation of Eric Hoffer’s written and published views on my blog site, a page at a time, and that is my primary interest this summer. Right now, I am deeply into my interpretation of what he thinks and writes in his book, The Passionate State of Mind.
Still, below, I will digress, because I think this needs immediate addressing. What is this pressing question? It is the podcast world which is whirling about with speculation about Jordan Peterson’s religious beliefs. He is angering Christian with his nearly coy, cagey, sophisticated evasions as to whether he believes in God, whether he believes that Jesus Christ is God, whether or not, he, Peterson is a Christian, and has and will he surrender his life to Jesus, and declare openly, forever, his belief that Christ is God and Christ is his Savior.
Christians, bluntly speaking, are demanding answers to these questions from Peterson: does he believe in God? Does he worship Christ as his Savior, and will he surrender his life to Jesus? I criticize Peterson for not answering Christians directly. They have asked and he should answer simply, clearly, and affirm what does he believe.
Peterson, like me, is a moderate and he believes the universe is complex, dualistic, both-and, and he thinks this principle of moderation applies metaphysically, naturally, spiritually, and ethically. This suggests that his direct answer to Christians, to their relevant questions, might not be straightforward or without qualification or context, but he should be honest about his complex relationship with Christ.
He is somewhat a Buddhist, seeing life as well-lived only when the individual straddles that line cutting right down the middle of Being, and this demarcation, a symbol of infinity, and of Yin, the Feminine, the Collective and Chaos are on one side of the demarcation, and of Yang, the Masculine, the Individual, and Order are on the other side of the line, is the line that Jordan walks along in life..
Peterson is a strong individualist, though he seems to be espousing altruist ethics and self-sacrifice these days.
He is a respected, published scientist and psychologist from the world of fact and experience, and, yet, he is a metaphysician, that believes that spiritual good and evil exist, that the human can only believe and worship Christ if they fight evil directly and personally.
Peterson is also a Jungian theologian and Jungian interpreter of what the divinity is, and how one should interact with that deity, and how one should characterize that deity, one’s relationship with that deity or what one believes about that deity.
Peterson is a scientist, ethicist, metaphysician, and psychologist with very complex ideas about who God is and what, he, Peterson, thinks about God. Peterson might be a cultural Christian, or a sympathizer and admirer of Christ as a mortal teacher, while denying that Jesus was God. He needs to let Christians know if he, Peterson, believes Jesus exists, is divine, and if Peterson can relate to Jesus—assuming he thinks Jesus exists, as divine, and to be surrendered too—as his Lord.
Peterson must communicate to Christians what he believes and should state so as clearly and concisely as he can. It would be better to tell Christians that he is not a Christian, or that he does not believe Jesus is God, than to play cute verbal games. That angers Christians and risks offending Christ; Jesus is a good, powerful deity and capable of divine wrath, so it is ill-advised for Peterson or anyone else to be playing evasion games with Christ .
Peterson’s Christian supporters would forgive his being but an agnostic cultural Christian, if that is who Peterson is, but he needs to be clear and clean up this mess right away.
Yesterday (5/21/24), Brandon Estrada, a Christian podcaster on Instagram, put out an 11-minute video on Peterson entitled: Unexpected: Jordan Peterson Gives His Official Stance on Jesus.
I think Peterson is a good man and a brilliant thinker, as well an individualist, so Christians need to cut him some slack, and he needs to be forthright with them.
I take some quick, incomplete, paraphrased notes on what Peterson, his interviewer Sean Ryan, and what Estrada commented about Peterson’s religious take as state by him to Ryan in the Ryan-Peterson interview.
Estrada (E after this): Estrada comments on Peterson’s recent interview with Sean Ryan that they discuss God, the Bible and faith.
Ryan (R after this): “You talk a lot about the Bible. You do not like to answer the question about your beliefs about God. What do you believe? Do you believe in God?”
Peterson (P after this): “The thing about God is not something you believe in.”
My response: No, the thing about God is that you believe in God or not, and you should make your beliefs known before humans, and that is a moral duty.
P: “Our views on religious belief are shallow. To believe in God is not what you state but is how you live your life, not mere statement that I believe in God”
My response: Religious belief is not shallow, nor is the statement of that belief inherently shallow; one needs to take a stand, declare belief in God or not, or what deity one is serving or not.
Peterson is correct that religious belief is not just a linguistic declaration of belief, but that linguistic declaration is critical and vital to believing, and one must make it openly and clearly, which Peterson refuses to commit to.
Peterson is an existentialist: he beliefs that one must radically commit to living a good life, even when it is dangerous. Spiritual and moral evil exists, as does spiritual and moral goodness, and each person serves an evil deity or a good deity. Which one one serves is how one acts, and that is religious belief implicitly stated, not what one declares and announces about belief on the surface.
I think Peterson thinks Jesus is divine, but that Peterson the moderate, the Deist, the quirky undeclared kind of Unitarian-Universalist that he is, does not want to declare his belief in Jesus because that is surrendering his life, soul, and independence to Jesus, and he is unwilling to worship Jesus exclusively.
This likely being the case, the usually articulate Peterson, so clumsy and inarticulate in sharing his views about his belief in Christ with his Christian followers—and also being coy because he does not want to be yelled at by his Christian followers and fans—must bluntly state that he could worship Christ as he does right now, but not worship Christ exclusively. Peterson, for the sake of his soul being saved, and his reputation no longer be trashed for being playful and evasive because he does not want to lose his secular, scientific, atheistic followers or his Christian fans, should just come out and say he is a modest dedicated believing Christian, or a most sympathetic cultural Christian that worships many good deities including Christ, but also other than Christ—Peterson owes everyone this explanation, or he is going to lose respect from all quarters.
He is a secular scientist and potential atheist or part deist theologically, and he is a sacred believer and follower of Jesus and Buddha in the other part of his complex orientation to divinities, but, he is genuinely and moderately both, and he should tell the world this explicitly. He can be a theological moderate, and Jesus and all good deities are okay with that.
I think Jordan is saved and in good grace with God and Jesus as he is, but he could be angering the good deities by not making clear his moderate orientation. Say what you are, be what you are, live as you are, and let the world deal with it—that is their problem, not Jordan’s and he must tell them the truth, always or near always.
Peterson and no one else out there knows that I exist and write, but, if he did, my Mavellonialism thought could help him formulate his response to Christians in a more clear, coherent manner. Jordan the scientist and the religious believer is a moderate and a conservative Unitarian-Universalist. He is also an intellectual, an original thinker, a great soul, individualist and individuators who believes and practices rational religion.
A rational religionist, who is an individualist and critical thinker, would have some problems with the fundamentalist, emotional, complete surrender of the self to Jesus the divinity, stating and accepting that Christ is Lord, and that one’s entire self and life is wholly given up to Christ, and that Christ runs it all: one faithfully, emotionally and fatalistically submits and thinks independently no more and does not try to solve problems on one’s own, if one is to live as a believer in a good deity, not to fight evil on one’s own.
Peterson and I might believe that the ethical agent can only be ethical as an individualist and egoist, and that this is how one should do religion too. I think Jordan believes these above-presented objections as I do, but is not conscious of them, or is not entering them fully into his religious arguments.
Jordan admires Christian altruist self-sacrifice and taking on ethical duty, while disliking evangelical insistence that the individual surrender his independence, his consciousness, his selfhood, and his life as a grand statement or gesture of emotional complete surrender to and dependence on Christ, allowing this divinity to run every aspect of one’s life. Peterson the Moderate wants to hold back because he believes he should hold back as an ego, an individual, to not surrender completely any good deity, and I think this is an consideration in his unwillingness to declare that he is Christian, for he does not want to lose his individuality as a Christian believer, as was required in the old days. To believe is to lose the self is what seems suggested by and insisted upon by the current fundamentalists and evangelicals. One must admit they have much scriptural evidence to support their interpretation of what Christ requires from a follower.
As an ethical moderate and theological moderate, and as an ethical egoist, I think God exists, and that the Mother, the Father, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Good Spirits and other specifically named good deities are all individualists and individuators that create and self-realize and that is what they expect of all human children, including Christians.
Rational religion or scientific religion is the way of the future, but the pietistic, faith only, evangelical, fundamentalist, emotional, subjective strands of believing still should be there as minority religious orientations and approaches to the divinities, while as religions individuators, believers should rationally worship the good deities.
There is no one true faith but there are many fine faiths, of which Christianity is one of the finest.
P: “So you say you believe that Christ is God. You have made that commitment. Really? That is a most difficult commitment: you must hoist up the cross as Christ did, taking on painful, unjust death accompanied by betrayal, the perfidy of the mob and the dominion of the tyrant. You are going to welcome that. And that is not all because Christ harrows hell. That is not all. That is just where it starts: it encompasses full confrontation with malevolence.”
My response: Jordan better than anyone understands that one is not ethically chasing after virtue, serious about finding truth and living truth, or worshiping and believing in the good deity that one openly states that one is allied with and works for—we are only virtuous and holy if we live being good and confronting spiritual evil directly; our virtuous action is our statement of faith and is our faith.
He has convinced me that we know God and get to heaven through faith and works together; we cannot be or do one without the other, and we should worship many good deities at the same time as rational religionists and we all coexist peacefully and tolerate really tolerate each other though we disagree and agree to disagree and Jesus and the other good deities expect us to conduct ourselves in this harmonious manner.
E: “Jordan needs to surrender himself to Christ not just lead a good life.”
My response: As a partial believer in Christ as a rational religionist, Jordan should surrender himself to Christ in part, and being as Jordan and Christs are individualists and individuators, that partial surrender is fine. If one chooses emotional full surrender as do fundamentalists that worship only Jesus, Jesus is fine with that too as long as the ardent remain tolerant and not for attacking practitioners of other good holy faiths.
Generally, Jesus the Son of God, the rational religionists and individuators, just now revealed as such under Mavellonialist thinking, would favor that people surrender themselves genuinely but quietly and temperately while maverizing and running their own lives and affairs most of the time.
E: “Christ has saved people though we are not perfect, cannot being perfect even after we surrender ourselves to Christ, and we will never be perfect. God’s grace is a process of sanctification. Sadly, we will still sin and fall short of God’s glory. Peterson urges that the full embrace of goodness is to confront evil directly and joyfully, to bring it on.”
My response: Peterson is correct in noting that few have the courage to radically embrace goodness by confronting evil directly and joyfully, inviting demons to attack. I counter that only as individuators and believers will humans have the courage to live so radically ethical and holy lives. Traditional Christian nonindividuators, groupists and joiners, victims of the morality of selflessness, group rights, group identity and self-sacrifice are likely to remain gullible, fatalistic, conformist, cowed timid sheep.
E: “Jordan is not ready to surrender himself to Christ, but we are saved by the grace of God, not by our works. Peterson is trying to do it on his own, but it can only be done by the Lord.”
My response: Peterson is right and lauded by Jesus by trying to do it on his own, but we also we are saved by God’s grace, plus our own efforts, but God has to do it for us too.
E: Let God fill you with His spirit so you can enjoy a full surrender to Christ.”
My response: I think Peterson is a good man ethically and spiritually and is saved as he is, but he still owes Christians strong, clear explanations right now.
In some other website interview, Peterson claims that sacrifice is the basis of the community, where is no longer all about you. Voluntary self-sacrifice is the basis of stable psychean state.
As an egoist-individualist I disagree with Peterson the altruist, but his idea of self-sacrifice as a secondary moral emphasis is acceptable, even laudable.
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