Jordan Peterson:
“I was once asked how I would define God. My God is the Spirit who tries to lift up being. My God is the spirit that makes everything come together. My God is the Spirit who makes order out of chaos and then transforms order when it becomes too limited. My God is the Spirit of the incarnated truth. None of it is supernatural. Instead, it is what is most real.”
The word spirit refers to the principle of conscious living, the principle of human life, the animation of the body or the mediation between body and soul. I believe it is also this spirit that is meant in the Bible, although there is a difference if someone is to be filled with this spirit, insofar as such people are inspiring and invigorating. Otherwise, we all have the spirit that grows within us as we grow physically. It is the spirit that is metaphorically blown into the nostrils of the first humans.
When Peterson says that his God is the Spirit, as described above, he indicates that the meaning of life is realized in a way that we cannot comprehend or change. The only way to prevent this spirit is to stand in the way, which is what the Pharisees were accused of, and that is what many scholars, preachers, and priests still unwittingly do today. By wanting only one description of reality and excluding all others, we stand in the way of the spirit. It is described by Jesus as the most severe single sin.
The spirit that tries to lift up being.
If there is a documented attempt to elevate being, then it must be the Sermon on the Mount. In the framework presented, it could easily be understood as an explanation of what the Ten Commandments were trying to achieve. Whether it is a historical record of what Christ said in a session, or a collection of sayings put together, is irrelevant. The fact is that Christianity has had this sermon for nearly two thousand years. It must therefore be at the centre of the Church’s message, but I do not believe my assumption is right.
It was very moving to see Jordan Peterson struggling with the question of whether he was a believer. In the end, he explained himself by saying that the only one who really believed is Christ, who was crucified for it. All other witnesses, if they have not put everything on the line, are questionable. In this sense, he questions his own faith. In the end we can only try, he says, but if the truth is known, if someone believes like Christ did, he would create waves in the flow of existence and inspire people as is written in the Gospels.
It should be really disturbing that Christianity is boring except where a hullabaloo is done, which is often only superficial. It does not elevate the existence of those involved. Christianity, in full form, would deal with healing through understanding the message of the Sermon on the Mount.
The Spirit who makes everything come together.
My experience is that when people see how others are elevated by an experience, be it real or superficial, people come together. Things come together that were not the case before. People become responsible and trustworthy, they take care of their neighbours, they see the poor and lowly, the sick and depressed, and they take them in. In the past this task was attempted by people who were not themselves elevated, and as much as they meant well, it was obvious that they were overwhelmed and that things could not come together as they had imagined.
Often it was the way the Bible was imposed on people who hadn’t read a book since school, sometimes as a condition for further support (even if it wasn’t said). Very often, when they had people, they wanted too much of them, too fast. Sometimes they made their own ideas the yardstick for others and did not realize that everyone has his own story or his own way to go. Sometimes it was the exclusivity of the message and the condemnation of other traditions that people rejected. The spirit that brings everything together is real and does not force anyone do anything, but inspires and motivates, no matter where people come from.
The mind that makes order out of chaos and then reshapes order when it becomes too narrow.
Many people live a chaotic life and some don’t know that they are. Only when they experience what order can be achieved for them do they see how they have lived. The order I am talking about is the alignment of the different aspects of life so that people are able to find stability without being fixed. Jordan Peterson says it is the path between chaos and order, or the path between the new and the old, creativity and the unimaginative. We cannot stay on one side for long without questioning its meaning. We need both sides, but also the ability to walk the path between them.
This means that life cannot be just the observation of tradition. Nor should it constantly change the structure of our lives. We need continuity, but we need new ideas to stay fresh. We need confrontation with other ideas and exchange, otherwise our lives will become musty and boring. At the same time we need to know in which direction we are travelling. It is this ability to adapt to the needs of life that makes life interesting and exciting. As soon as what we do begins to fence us in and restrict us, something needs to be changed.
We live in a world where everything we have produced degenerates when we leave it to itself. There seems to be entropy in everything we do, and our struggle is to fight the natural decay that doesn’t have to be caused by malicious people, but exactly as it is. For this we need resources from both sides of the line, order and chaos/creativity. The religious word used for decay is “sin,” which means you miss the target. This means that every time we contribute to deterioration, even slightly, we miss the target. Therefore, the inspired way into the future is to fight against decay in all its forms.
The Spirit of Truth in person.
An important value to maintain the fight against decay is fidelity to the truth. This is what God in Christ should be for us. Faced with the truth, we must surrender to it and serve it. If we push against the truth, we once again miss the target. Here, too, it is not a question of extreme, but of trustworthiness. People must be able to assume that I am telling the truth as far as I know and that I stand by what I am saying and do it. Thus the truth will be present in people in the neighbourhood.
People lie regularly, sometimes because they have brought themselves into a predicament from which they can only free themselves with a lie, if they do not want to disappoint or annoy people. The problem is that the lie is rated worse than the lack of reliability. There’s disappointment either way and another turn towards decay is done. The more a society lies, the worse it generally proceeds.
What do you think?
Edited