Those that fear, love, follow and obey the Mother and Father shall reap the rewards in this world and the next: : "Happy is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commands. His posterity will be might upon the earth; the upright generation will be blessed."
May our American grandchildren and great-grandchildren grow up to populate this country with the upright generation, blessed by God, as the children of light are so endowed.
In my "The New American Bible" the Roman Catholic scholars (Page 679) noted that the Hebrew term for the fear of the Lord was reverence for God.
Here is Line 10: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; prudent are all who live by it. His praise endures forever."
I agree and do not agree with the Catholic scholars that fear of the Lord means reverence for God. It is that of course, but it is also literally to be interpreted that it is wise for the reverent believer to fear God. De is our boss, and very powerful, and prone to express displeasure, and angry action against us (just punishment) for our transgressions. We need to remember whom we are dealing with.
I interpret the last part of this quote as God praises those that fear God a little.
All that we were taught, are told and read, or see on the evening news--all these sources of input should not be simply absorbed and accepted without analysis, even skepticism. Stephen Hicks instructs his students that there are no unassailable ideas. He is correct in that all ideas should be questioned, but they may well survive all scrutiny as proving too be correct, unassailable in that regard.
From your experience, generalize generously and extravagantly. Then test your hypotheses against reality, peer review and public push-back. This is how you get smarter, and the world gains an individuator, an original thinker, and all society benefits as the power of ideas grow and expand, the source of much of it being personal experience.
Trump, on the campaign trail today, pilloried Biden for being against oil, guns and God. That about sums it up.
Peterson describes existence as suffering tainted with malevolence. I partially agree. We do suffer, and how we react to what life hits us with can reduce our suffering, or transform it into experience that feeds the creativity of our self-actualizing response to what we have learned, lived or been born into. A wise, loving, activist response to our suffering can lead to victories, partial and temporary to be sure, but victories nonetheless. Victories felt, and victories earned can lead to happiness and happy feelings about our lives and situation, even if such joy is not lasting.
We are in a world where malevolence is innate in nature, in society, in our in natures, and as powerful, primal spirits of hate and destruction, dark forces within us and all around us.
We are limited and mortal. The power given to our soul, at birth, by the Divine Couple, is of limited capacity. We cannot rework the world to eliminate suffering and malevolence. Creatures and animate and inanimate forces at work in the universe bring suffering and malevolence to us, and we have nothing to say about it, nor the muscle to prevent it.
Perhaps a negative definition of love could be to encounter honestly occurrences of suffering and malevolence, by not succumbing to them, and by so choosing and acting that one does not affirm or extend their influence.
The positive definition of loving could be to communicate benevolence towards oneself, others and all of nature in such a way as to introduce happiness, enjoyment and order into the world.
Jordan Peterson is a bit too depressing but, overall, he is a solid truth-teller. I think one can lead a meaningful existence, a holy life as a high-end ethical person, taking responsibility for one's affairs without sacrificing one's pursuit of life, liberty, property and happiness. I would resolve the dilemma by suggesting that leading that leading a meaningful, truth-based, God-based, love-based, responsible, meaningful life is to be happy, and that no other definition for happiness is a rich and on target, and I think Peterson likely would agree with my modified definition.
People lie when they proclaim that happiness is what they seek. Some of of them actually do seek after happiness, which can only be meted out, attained and emotionally enjoyed a through the juggling of such competing psychic elements like piety, the insistence upon maintaining a positive attitude, love, intellectual seeking , truth identification and conducting the inner struggle to gain some self-control, a sense of calmness and peace.
Most people do not like themselves, and their awareness of their frailty and mortality, their natural depravity, their self-loathing not be surmounted by a built-up, resilient personal ego, their dour set of values, their following Satan and their insistence upon the social primacy of group-living, are all properties in their consciousness that tend to drag them down. People are addicted to these poor life choices that guarantee more suffering and unhappiness than are necessary, desirable or at all beneficial.
People seek unhappiness by means of favoring power accretion over strong, limited wielding of personal power, wielded by the individuator in a mode of existential liberation.
People seek group-power to abuse and be abused as part of a collective, hierarchical existence along the group-lived chain of being rankings that operate interconnectedly in society in social, political, civil, economic and governmental structures.
