Well, hello and welcome back to the Speak Life Podcast, episode 487. My name is Thomas Thoroughgood, media producer at Speak Life, and it's the first day of Advent. Exciting times. Have you caught our Christmas video for this year? It's called The Christmas Countdown. It's on YouTube and all the other socials, so do go and check it out if you haven't done so. Beautiful animation that was made for us with words written and performed by Glenn. In this episode, you will hear Glenn's reflections on Jordan Peterson, the Jordan Peterson phenomenon, and in particular the speech that Jordan Peterson gave at the end of the ARC conference. We mentioned ARK in our Iron Hursey R. Lee episode. Jordan Peterson is an internet phenomenon, and his message is especially resonating with young men. And so in this episode, Glenn will be diving into Jordan Peterson's message. Is it Christian? Is it not? Well, enjoy the episode. I will hand over to Glenn.
SPEAKER_07Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life. We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus. Last month, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, ARK, held a conference in London attended by 1,500 people, including me. I was contacted out of the blue and was offered an 80% discount on the ticket. They wanted people there who are involved with the new media, so I thought, why not? I went to what might be described as a cross between anti-woke Davos and the intellectual dark web. That's what ARK essentially is. There were politicians, business people, and academics there, and there were a lot of YouTubers and podcasters. Those in a constellation of media channels that orbit around or at least significantly overlap with Jordan Peterson. I've been following Jordan Peterson since 2016, and you can find about a dozen videos on this channel where I discuss him and his movements. And in all of those videos, you will find me discussing three things about him. One, an appreciation for his talents and some of his teachings. Two, an interest in the movements that surrounds him and what it says about our cultural moment. And three, a concern and a caution regarding the thick lenses through which he views the Bible. Thick Darwinian and Jungian and Stoic and moralistic lenses that might yield fine psychological and self-help insights, but which, when applied to the Bible, distort the biblical message significantly. You'll find me approaching Peterson from all three of those angles in all of my videos, and this one will be no different. Peterson is absolutely central to ARC. He has co-founded it together with Philippus Stroud, who is a British conservative politician now in the House of Lords and an evangelical Christian. It's fascinating. I've been following Peterson since about 2016, and uh at the conference also Paul Vanderclay was there. He's known as the pastor to the intellectual dark web. And I remember back in about 2016-2017, Paul Van der Clay said that Jordan Peterson was a little bit like Billy Graham. Not so much in terms of the message that he brings to bear, but in terms of the impact that he had. The ability of a man to rent out a theater in Toronto and simply walk people through biblical passages. That is a Billy Graham kind of gift. And perhaps it represented a Billy Graham kind of moment that Jordan Peterson was essentially holding crusades. But what Paul Vandercle said back in 2016-2017 was that Jordan Peterson was a kind of Billy Graham without a Billy Graham association. And where is he going to get the institutional heft to wrap around him and hold together his crusade, his moral and spiritual crusade? Well, step forward, Baroness Philippa Stroud. And with her and with her contacts comes institutional heft. She is great friends with Paul Marshall, who has provided so much of the resource behind things like Unheard and GB News. And together they are able to wrap around Jordan Peterson and provide some kind of institutional structure behind the movement that is represented by Jordan Peterson. But what is the nature of that institutional heft, that structure? It's Christian. It's profoundly Christian. Philip Estraud, Christian. Paul Marshall, Christian. And as far as the speakers on the platform of ARC, I would say a solid majority of them were Christians. As regards those in the audience, oh my goodness, Jonathan Peugeot, uh, who is a great friend of Jordan Peterson, spoke on the final day of the ARC conference, and he wanted to name the elephant that was in the room. The elephant that was in the room was Christianity.
SPEAKER_05So just out of curiosity, how many people in the room here explicitly identify as belonging to a religious faith or a religious tradition? All right. And how many people here see themselves as secular or atheist or the like? Wow, okay.
SPEAKER_07I was late that day. I didn't see how many hands went up when Jonathan Peugeot asks, are there religious people in the room? But Paul Vandaclair reckoned about 85% of the room put its hand up. And that strikes me as a low number, given the number of people that I met. It was a seriously Christian event. The platform held a great majority of Christians. We had what were essentially morning devotionals by Joshua Luke Smith, a Christian poet and pastor.
SPEAKER_00I submit that we must return to a vision that we forgot. A vision that we lost in our infancy. You know when fairy tales were true? What was it that C.S. Lewis mused? May you believe in those old stories again.
SPEAKER_07Where dragons are slain and goodness prevails, and heaven and earth are separated by no more than a veil, he was flanked by the artwork of Christian artist Makoto Fujimura, who explained why he creates in profoundly spiritual and Christian terms.
SPEAKER_01The one on the right, as we go from lament to glory, is my lament painting.
SPEAKER_07Some of the platform were Christian and kept that relatively muted, like Philippa Stroud herself or Oz Guinness or John Addison or Miriam Cates or Danny Kruger. Some were Christian and were there to speak openly about that, like Amy or Ewing or Pastor Agu Irukwu or Bishop Barron, who diagnosed our modern Malays as basically the result of a medieval theological dispute between realism and nominalism. He got a standing ovation.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna be up front. It's the Aquinas solution that's the right one. The alchemist is the problematic one. It's no longer I who live, it's Christ who lives in me. That's when Paul became free. And I think that's the coming together of freedom and responsibility we ought to be teaching our kids. God bless you all. Thanks.
SPEAKER_07Some of those speaking, like Ayan Hersey Ali, were on their way to identifying as Christian. Check out our other videos on that story. Some were not themselves Christian, but in the best received talk of the conference, Konstantin Kissen, who's also been on this channel, spoke for many when he framed the need of the hour as restoring our spiritual vision.
SPEAKER_01Alexander Tolzhenitsyn once said that the strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. If a nation's spiritual energies have been exhausted, he said, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand.
SPEAKER_07The Christian, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, was among the most quoted figures of the conference, alongside Dostoevsky, Martin Luther King, and Bob Dylan in his Born Again Bob phase. So Jordan Peterson is like Billy Graham in terms of the movement that is happening and the ripple effect that's going out, not in terms of his message, but he's like Billy Graham without the Billy Graham Association. Philippa Stroud comes in and provides a kind of an association. That association turns out to be remarkably Christian. I I met a very famous person at this conference. I won't name him, but you know who he is. And I had this conversation with him where I sort of said, What do you make of this conference? It's incredibly Christian, isn't it? And he started to sort of tell me, oh yeah, tell me about it. And then I had to say, oh no, I am one of them, by the way. And we had this conversation, and he has taken the Jordan Peterson pill, as it were. And for him, he says, I'm an atheist, but Jordan Peterson has taught me that we all have a highest ideal at the top of our hierarchy of our hierarchy of being, and we all sacrifice towards that God. For me, said this very famous person, for me, the future is who God is. And so I make sacrifices for the future. And that was fascinating to me because I said to him, Well, look, um, the Communist Party did not have God, it only had the future, and it had a whole bunch of sacrifices that it intends for you to make in order to get to God, i.e., the future. Uh, but it's much more like Lord Farquad in Shrek, you know, where he says, Some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make, right? That's what Stalin and Mao said to the people. There is a future, there is a transcendent ideal, it's out there. Let's call it God. You have to make the sacrifices for it. And I said to this guy, how do we make sure that there is a profoundly human ideal that will not cast off the least and the last and the lost? How do you enshrine that at the highest place of your hierarchy of being? And at that point I started to see that, you know, just having a highest ideal and you need to make sacrifices does not make a Christian of you. And so this is right at the heart of the tension that I feel about Ark. Because there are some profoundly Christian movements going on, and there's Jordan Peterson, and how do those two things relate? Well, let's think about Jordan Peterson himself. At the conference, Jordan Peterson wore incredibly tailored suits and unkempt hair. Many have noticed that he bore a striking resemblance at times to a Batman villain. A kind of Riddler meets the Joker, meets Willie Wonka for some reason, but that's only one Jordan Peterson mode, right? On the same day that he appears on stage like this, he later rides a unicorn with friends and looks like this. Like, I'd love to see more of Unicorn riding Peterson. But maybe that's just me. Anyway, Jordan speaks at a number of points during the conference, in which we hear from a whole bunch of Christians, some of them out and out Christians, some of them Christians on mute, some of them just Christian-friendly and Christian adjacent. And then here is the final talk. And he rounds off the whole conference with this speech, which was immediately released on YouTube as Watch, the most important speech Jordan Peterson has ever given. It was certainly a greatest hits compilation and an excellent opportunity to get to the heart of his message. So let's take a look at it.
SPEAKER_03We're at odds with one another about identity. And in order to reduce the tension and bring about a new psychological integration and a proper social peace, we can't merely criticize the suggestions about what identity constitutes that have been brought forward. We have to offer an alternative. We're analyzing one another. In order to reduce the bring about psychological integration, proper social criticized suggestions about what identity competition we have to offer.
SPEAKER_07Love this. We're in the midst of an identity crisis. We need to find our identity, and we need to not just oppose that which has, you know, captured the modern imagination. We need to provide a better story. The whole title for the art conference was a better story. Where does the phrase a better story come from? Philip Astraud, as I said, evangelical Christian, gets it from a book by Glenn Harrison, another evangelical Christian, who spoke about the sexual revolution and how it told its story of liberation and how Christians bringing their sexual ethic to the table need to tell a better story in order to capture hearts and minds. So an evangelical writes that book, Philippa Straud, as an evangelical, holds this conference under the title A Better Story. The art conference did not really press into what that better story was. When people were asked to articulate the better story, they tended to collapse back into classical liberalism and just, you know, rights-based international law. Like they tended to kind of collapse back into Enlightenment values or, you know, civilizational Christianity at times. They didn't really name the better story because none of those things are a story, right? To simply, even if you name the image of God, right, as as something that is foundational to Western civilization.
SPEAKER_03And so I would like to delve deeply for half an hour into what identity must and should be, and to relate that to what social structure must and should be.
SPEAKER_07It's only going to be social, though. So we need to find our identity and we need to relate it to the social. So it's going to be a profoundly horizontal view. And the lack of the vertical is going to be a lot of the problem here.
SPEAKER_03Faith is the kind of courage that allows you to welcome the possibilities of the future with open arms. And I say possibility because the future is the manifestation of possibility into actuality. And the possibility of the future is what we contend with.
SPEAKER_07Faith and responsibility is, you know, I I would agree that there is faith, how you receive from God, and there is responsibility, how you act towards the world. Martin Luther used to talk about the passive righteousness we have before God, where we receive our status as children of God simply by faith, and then the active righteousness that we live out before our neighbor. So we are passively righteous before heaven in the eyes of God. We are actively righteous in the ways that we pass on heaven's gift to the world. So faith and responsibility is great. My problem here is he's starting to describe faith as responsibility too. And you're like, well, at what stage are you going to actually have faith, Jordan? At what stage are you actually going to receive the gift of heaven? Or are you going to define faith as having the courage to step forthrightly into the future and stand up straight with your shoulders back and tidy your room, right? Is he going to allow faith to be the thing where you receive from God and are at rest and receive your identity before you've done anything, and then play that out in the world? Unfortunately, no, I don't think. But let's see.
SPEAKER_03The unknown treasure house of what could be is what we contend with. And given that that's what we eternally contend with, we might ask ourselves, how best to contend with that? And one answer to that is with the faith that is simultaneously courageous. We put ourselves on the line to act out the proposition that existence itself, being itself, and becoming itself are intrinsically good, and that it's incumbent upon us to act in accordance with that dictum, come hell or high water.
SPEAKER_07What is faith? Um at this point, yes, it it is to you know receive the gift of life as something that is intrinsically good in itself, but then to put ourselves on the line in courage. Um I absolutely agree that faith leads to courage. I absolutely agree that faith leads to responsibility, but we need to be able to distinguish these things, or we're gonna fall into a moralistic abyss. And well, we'll see what happens.
SPEAKER_03And we look into the future and we cast upon the unknown landscape of the future a vision, a vision that provides us with hope and security.
SPEAKER_07We we cast a vision for the future, and and again, this this departs massively from the Christian vision. The Christian vision is that we are lost down here, not knowing the future, and God surprises us with a vision of the kingdom that we had not produced ourselves and that we cannot produce for ourselves. Um, faith is pulled out of us by a vision that God presents to us. And God presents that to us apart from ourselves and apart from all our doings and our earnings and our performings. And having seen that vision, faith is pulled out of it. Faith is not something you push out of yourself by willpower, faith is pulled out of you in the biblical sense by a greater glory, a vision that captures you, a vision of something outside of yourself that is greater than yourself, and you love that vision, and you find yourself drawn towards it, and you can't help but believe. And faith is drawn out of you, not pushed out of you. But I I don't get that sense from Jordan here.
SPEAKER_03Because that's what a vision does, and then we bear the responsibility of attending and acting in a manner that makes that hopeful and security-providing vision possible. And so then I would say that identity is the proper union of faith and responsibility.
SPEAKER_07I would actually agree. Like, I think faith and responsibility in the proper union is what life is all about. Okay, Galatians chapter 5, verse 6, you know, circumcision or uncircumcision means anything, forget that part of the verse, but then he says, What counts is faith working itself out in love. Okay? What faith expressing itself in love. If somebody asks me what's the meaning of life, I say, Well, it's easy. Receive God's love and pass it on in the world. So I would I would absolutely agree that faith and responsibility are where we find our identity. But you gotta, you, you gotta get the faith bit first. You've gotta get the loved by God thing first, and then all Jordan Peterson's 12 rules for life really kick in once you try and live out that active righteousness before the world. But first you gotta get the faith thing.
SPEAKER_03And then you might say, how does a proper identity unite faith and responsibility? And I would say that it does that in a subsidiary manner, in a hierarchical subsidiary manner.
SPEAKER_07Now, much of the rest of the talk he's going to unpack what it means, this this subsidiarity. And it and it basically just means like if you want to change the world, tidy your room, for goodness sakes. You know, it's it's it's basically that that whole thing. Like, everyone wants to save the world, no one wants to do the washing up, okay? And Jordan Peterson is saying, look, in a subsidiary, in a subsidiary way, you are saving the world, you know, one coffee cup at a time, okay? And just attend to what you have been given. And if I'm attending to tidying my room and then doing the washing up, and then maybe, you know, doing a spring clean of the house, and then doing a litter pick on our street, and then like applying to be a counselor in the town council, and then maybe I can start to talk about, you know, national politics, and then maybe I can start thinking about saving the world. It's this subsidiary matter where you take responsibility for what is nearest and dearest to you. And the example Jordan Peterson gives for this responsibility enacted in your sphere of focus is to talk about child rearing. And this was both the most captivating part of his talk whenever Jordan Peterson speaks of child rearing, like listen, because he's fascinated by it and he's always fascinating about it. Um he gives this analogy for child rearing, which exposes, I think, everything that's right and everything that's wrong with his whole project of responsibility.
SPEAKER_03Now I'm gonna tell you a little story. It's a very simple story, but simple stories scale upward. And that's Jacob's ladder. Jacob's ladder, that's the eternal Liana, the vine that unites the material and proximal realm of the earth with the eternal realm of heaven.
SPEAKER_07Jacob's ladder is in Genesis chapter 28, and Jacob is asleep on this ladder. Like he is not climbing towards heaven. Okay. It says that the Lord was standing there, and it appears that the Lord himself is the ladder. John chapter 1, Jesus says, By the way, I was that Lord. I'm Jacob's Lord, I'm the one who was there, who is the stairway to heaven. Jesus Christ is the stairway, and the angels ascend and descend. Humanity is not. One climbing itself up to heaven by its own effort. As soon as you talk in those terms, you start to sound like Genesis chapter 11. What's Genesis chapter 11? Tower of Babel. God doesn't like the Tower of Babel. God does not like us thinking that we can ascend and climb and scratch and grab and get on top and make a name for ourselves. God scatters the way of Babel. So whatever's going on with Jacob's ladder in Genesis 28, it is not a redoubling of our efforts to do the Tower of Babel. Unfortunately, with Jordan Peterson, um, so much of the scriptures are kind of like inverted at this point. We don't climb our way to heaven. The whole point of Genesis 28, and it's confirmed by Jesus in John chapter 1, is he is the one who comes down. The union of heaven and earth is not brought about by earth, it's brought about by the Prince of Heaven, Jesus, who descends, not Jacob or any of us who ascend.
SPEAKER_03How do we construct and climb Jacob's ladder? How do we comprehend it? When my son was one and a half years old, I taught him to set the table. But that's not right, because when you're one and a half, you can't set the table. If you take a two-year-old and you say, clean your room, to a two-year-old who's in the midst of a room that he's distributed a terrible mess in, and you come back in 15 minutes, the room will be equally messy, and you'll ask your two-year-old, why didn't you clean the room? And he will just look at you. And the reason he will just look at you is because he doesn't know what clean your room means. So you can take the two-year-old, my son in this case, and you can say, Hey kid, you see that teddy bear? Now he's happy about that request, hey, because at two, he knows how to see a teddy bear. And so he'll point his eyes at the teddy bear, and then he'll look at you, and then you can pat him on the head and say, Good, and then you can say, Go over there and pick up that teddy bear. So then he does that, and he looks at you, and then you can say, You see that space on the shelf there? He goes, Yes. He said, You take that teddy bear and you put it in that space in the shelf.
SPEAKER_07Look at him smile. He loves it. He had us eating out of the palm of his hands. He loves talking about child rearing. He he he worked in daycare for a while. And as a clinical psychologist, um he loves talking about raising up the next generation, and he and he loves seeing his children grow and develop. My one question about this whole paradigm is Did he start the clock a little bit too late? It sounds like the story begins when Jordan Peterson is 30 odd and his son is 18 months old. Surely the story begins earlier than that. He's telling a story about responsibility, where in a subsidiary fashion you put your life together, like you set the table, one fork, one knife at a time. Um but actually you don't start life as an 18-year-old, and you certainly don't start life as a 30-year-old parent. You start life utterly empty, utterly helpless, completely dependent in every single way, from a love that comes from beyond you, that raises you up to the point where, yes, you can now act responsibly in the world. Jordan Peterson is great about talking about responsibility, but that faith is to recognize that we love because he first loved us, as 1 John chapter 4 says. So just notice that about the starting point for this analysis.
SPEAKER_03In that space in the shelf. And he'll go over and put it in the space in the shelf, and then he'll look at you, and you can pat him on the head. And then if you teach him a hundred micro routines like that, very carefully, you can tell him to clean his room and he knows how to do it.
SPEAKER_07A hundred micro-routines um is not the good news. A hundred micro-routines is um great parenting advice, perhaps. It's not the message of faith that actually allows you to get to the point of having responsibility. Only because Jordan Peterson has well loved his 18-month-old is he in the position where his 18-month-old will now listen to him. And if you're not in a good relationship with your toddler, then they're not going to listen. Love must come first. Grace must come first, the faith must come first.
SPEAKER_03And that's how we build ourselves, and that's a little vision. It's a little vision. It's a microvision. That the first vision is what the room would look like if the teddy bear was put in its proper space, right? And it's not a glorious macro vision of how to unite heaven and earth itself, but it's the proximal beginnings of exactly that process.
SPEAKER_07So I do like that though. I I do like that we should take our eyes off saving the world. You know, it the like the Bible doesn't tell you to love the world. God loves the world. Let God love the world. The Bible tells you love your neighbor, right? Love the person who is proximal to you. Love the person who comes across your path. And maybe they're a Samaritan, maybe they're from a totally different race. Maybe it would involve you in some extraordinary self-sacrifice in order to help this person, or it might be really prosaic help that you're offering. Nevertheless, don't let your gaze go to the very fringes of the world. I'm reminded of that peanuts cartoon where Linus says, Um, I love mankind. It's people I can't stand. And and that's what Jordan Peterson is reacting against, this idea that you know you can love the world and you can have this, like, this stretched thin compassion for humanity, and you can be a horrible person to your neighbor. And the Bible would flip that on its head and say, like, forget loving the world. Let God do that. You love your neighbor. And I I I do like, if you're going to take responsibility, look to your own sphere first before trying to have some utopian vision for the world. I I really appreciate that.
SPEAKER_03We scaffold ourselves upwards.
SPEAKER_07I really don't like that though.
SPEAKER_06We scaffold ourselves upwards.
SPEAKER_07Like I is that the best way of describing 18-month-old Peterson Jr. Is is Peterson Jr. there scaffolding himself upwards, or is he not being loved by a father? And and what what is what is more constitutive of the identity of Peterson Jr. at that point? Is it the responsibility that he is exercising by setting the table, or is it he is a child of a father, right? That that's his identity, isn't it? And and shouldn't that be where the majority of our the the weight that we put our identity on comes from? That like, shouldn't we put the majority of our weight onto the faith component, the love from beyond component, rather than our performance? Thank you so much for downloading the Speak Life podcast. We love to have your company. Can I just make you aware of our exciting Christmas appeal? Between the 1st of December and the 15th of December, we have an opportunity for you to join us as a regular donor. We have all sorts of financial needs here at Speak Life. For instance, did you know that our average Christmas outreach video costs around £6,000 per video? Or that our learning platform, which hosts 321, costs £6.83 per day to run. We are a staff team of nine and we're supported by only 160 regular donors. We would love to get that figure to 260 by the 15th of December. Can you help us? Will you be one of the hundred? Go to speaklife.org.uk slash appeal. If you give between the 1st of December and the 15th of December, you will receive a free copy of my Christmas book, The Gift. You'll also get behind the paywall to our membership lounge where there's a lively chat community and there's plenty of bonus content that you can have access to. But best of all, any gift that you give to us between the 1st of December and the 15th of December, if it's a regular gift, it will be matched for the next 12 months by some generous match funders. That means you will double the effectiveness of your giving towards the kingdom. What an opportunity to come on board at Speak Life. Go to speaklife.org.uk slash appeal. In fact, why don't you pause the podcast and go there now? We'll wait for you. Okay, good. Thank you. And now on with the podcast.
SPEAKER_03Finite to the infinite. And it's the entire scaffold that constitutes our identity. So my son, he's 18 months old. I'm having him help set the table.
SPEAKER_07I say, kid. You gotta love kid. And and is this not the very reason why he has discipled a whole generation of men? There's a whole generation of men that that want want to be called kid by a father who loves them like that. You know? And cause because kid, you know, it's not, oh my beloved son. Like he's not saying, oh my beloved son. He's like, he's he's speaking to his child at a level that's above an 18-month-old and expecting that child to kind of grow into that, and there's something really cool about that. And there's something there's something that helps us to flower as we are encouraged out of ourselves, and and in and encouraged to strive, and yes, encouraged to take responsibility in all sorts of ways. But it all begins with wanting to hear a voice from a father who loves you that says, kid, right? Isn't it interesting that Jesus like ministry begins when he's age 30? You can read about it in Matthew chapter 3. Before he does anything, he's getting baptized, and the heavens part, and the Holy Spirit descends as a dove, and there's a voice from heaven, the Father Almighty says, You are my child who I love, you are my son who I love, with you I'm well pleased, right? You are my son who I love, with you I'm well pleased. Kid. And then Jesus does all the other great stuff. Even for the eternal Son of God, right? Even for perfect Jesus, grace comes first. Faith comes first. Love from beyond comes before acting responsibly in the world. And we we need that because it's not about scaffolding ourselves up towards heaven. That's the way of Babel. The way of the Spirit is down and out. Down in faith and out in responsibility.
SPEAKER_03Where the drawer is with the knives and the forks, and he says, Yes. I said, Go to that drawer and open it up and pick out a fork. And so he goes and does that, and he can feel the fork, because he has drawers above him, and he can feel the fork, and then he can come and say, Bring it into the kitchen and put it on the table by the plate, and he can do that, and then he can do that with a knife.
SPEAKER_07You're there in the kitchen, aren't you? As he as he's describing this. And this is why he this is why I think Paul Vanderclay calls Jordan Peterson like the Billy Graham of his age. Um not because he has the same message necessarily, but because he is a man who can hold thousands and tens of thousands of people in the palm of his hand. As he notices the minutiae of life and connects the everyday with the eternal, right? He and he is able to do that. And and he is listened to not only by the great and the good of the ARC conference, but later that night Jordan Peterson would be at the O2 Arena, and there were 12,000 plus people at the O2 Arena. And you know, you had to be able to afford at least 50 quid to get in at that point, so it's it's not as as though he was just, you know, uh speaking to the unwashed masses then either, but he is listened to by a very broad range of people, and because he is able to bring it down to that relational, granular, everyday level, he is listened to by a far greater s cross-section of society than most Christian preachers. Probably any Christian preacher around. Um we have lust to learn from Jordan Peterson, is what I'm saying there.
SPEAKER_03And then he can do that with a plate if you dare to let him carry a plate. And then he's learning what? He's learning to set the table, right? And then he sits at the table with the people that are there, and he's learning to share food, and he's learning to take turns, and he's learning to be hospitable, right? And so you can see that that starts to scale upward, right? And then he's hospitable and he can take turns, so he's starting to be a good boy, a good kid. And that's part of being taking his proper role in the family, which is a broader form of sharing, and the beginnings of his ability to play properly with others, and then to take his position as a potential friend in the community, and then to mature. And as he matures, the scale of his vision expands step by step until it encompasses not merely what he wants in the short term, but what would be good for him in the medium to long term, so the temporal scale of his vision expands, and not only so that he accomplishes or attains what's good for him, but so that he does that in a way that incorporates more and more other people into the expanse of his vision. And so by the time you start to operate as an adult, you can take responsibility for yourself, you know how to be hospitable, you know how to play with others if you're fortunate, or maybe you still have to learn that within the confines of your marriage, and then you take responsibility for your partner, and they do that with you, and the two of you take responsibility for your children, and that gives you the satisfaction and the adventure and the responsibility and the burden and the meaning of your family, and you embed that in your community, and you take responsibility for that, and you take responsibility beyond that for your town and for your city and for your state, and you do that all in as balanced and harmonious a manner as you can, and the spirit that subs the spirit that infuses that entire hierarchy and that stands at the top is something like the spirit of goodness itself, and that's classically associated with what is highest, and that's traditionally associated with God. And the identity that you have is all of that stretching from lowest to highest at once.
SPEAKER_07Okay, this is a cosmic vision that begins with setting the table and ends with God. And I love the all-encompassing from the everyday to the eternal. What I don't love is the direction of travel. Because we're scaffolding ourselves up from the everyday to the eternal. What Jordan Peterson is not wrong about, and what I love, is that he's saying, in setting the table, you are in touch with the spirit that is also at the top of the hierarchy. Because did not Jesus say, Whatever you do for the least of these, you have done for me. Okay, Matthew chapter 25, Jesus Jesus says, in acts of practical service, if you clothe the poor, if you feed the hungry, if you visit the imprisoned, you are visiting, you are feeding, you are clothing Christ Himself, because Christ puts himself into the least and the last and the lost. And, you know, you could call it the Spirit who is at the top of the hierarchy is also served when we practically serve in these outgoing ways. Didn't Jesus say in Luke chapter 9, he put a a boy, a little boy, in the midst of the disciples, and he said, Whoever receives this child receives me, and whoever receives me receives the Father who sent me. That in practical service of the little and the least and the last and the lost and the lowly and the excluded, and as you serve those, as you extend yourselves out in love, you are encountering Christ, right? And you are serving Christ. And the spirit at the top of the hierarchy is infused in all of that. I love that, but it's a down and out thing, it's not an up and in thing. Okay? It's it's the way of Abraham, it's not the way of Babel. Okay. And at some point you think, is Jordan Peterson so near and yet so far? Or is he a hundred and eighty degrees wrong? And I and I flip-flop on that question all the time. I see Jordan Peterson being a stepping stone for so many people. So many people are leapfrogging Jordan Peterson into the kingdom. So many people. And in so many ways, he is so close to the kingdom. In so many other ways, he's facing the opposite direction, right? Because he's trying to scaffold himself up to heaven. He's trying to climb Jacob's ladder rather than receive the Christ who descends Jacob's ladder for him. I'm torn. I don't know what you think. Um let me know in the comments. I'm sure you will. Whenever we mention Jordan Peterson, there's there's a lot of opinions around. He's helped a lot of people, and so people can find it quite threatening when words of caution are uttered like these. Um but like I say, I I hope you've seen enough from me to think I have um great admiration for lots of uh Jordan Peterson, I have fascination for the for the moment that we're in and the movement that um surrounds him. But I also have these cautions. Um I at times I think he's a stepping stone to the kingdom, at times I think he's 180 degrees wrong.
SPEAKER_03And having understood that, you now understand something else. You understand what actually constitutes genuine human flourishing at the psychological level. So one of the disservices that clinicians have offered the general Western world and the world at large as a consequence of that is the notion that mental health is somehow something subjective. And that's not true, and we know it's not true even though we don't know that we know it. And you know that because there's no way you're going to be mentally healthy if your wife is miserable. First of all, she won't let you be.
SPEAKER_07And then notice, like, he really has his audience when he talks about children, when he talks about marriage. And and he knows his stuff. He knows people. He's a clinical psychologist, right? He he knows how to interact with people and he has them in the palm of his hand. And what he's saying here is so important that actually your mental health is is not best served by descending into the mental sphere. And if you try to take the journey within, it just ends up being a hall of mirrors. And that is not the path towards mental health. The pathway towards mental health is he's absolutely right, part of it is to extend yourself outwards in responsible love. I would say first, though, you need to receive that free love from Jesus and then extend yourself, passing it on to others. But he's absolutely right that when you're curved in on yourself, uh that is a recipe for for disaster when it comes to mental health. No, we have so many people in the world who are lost in ways that are almost unimaginable with their absolutely fragmented identities, and they have no meaning in their life, and they have no meaning in their life because He's getting emotional because he's starting to think about the sinking sand of the world, and he's starting to see the problems he's seen in his clinical practice and the lostness of the world. Um, maybe this is another aspect in which he's like Billy Graham. Um, again, not that the message is the same, but there is a heart to save people. And just just notice how engaged he is in this.
SPEAKER_03Strangely enough, the meaning in your life doesn't emerge as a consequence of your pursuit of your proximal, hedonic, subjective, narrow, purely self-serving goals and drives. There's nothing in that that's nourishing. And there's nothing in that that's nourishing in part because unless you can integrate yourself across a large time span, taking care of who you will be in the future, and simultaneously fulfilling your social obligations in a responsible manner. So much more animated. Nothing within the subsidiary structure can operate properly, much less you claim the right to the gratification of your hedonic desires. That's a non-starter. And even if you could do that, you wouldn't find in that the meaning that would sustain you in times of trouble. You find the meaning that would, and everyone knows this, you find the meaning that sustains you in trouble when you need, for example, to regard yourself with some positive attitude in the midst of your stupidity and your suffering, and you can see in yourself the fact that, well, at least you were in service to your wife, at least you had been useful to your children, at least you helped take care of your parents, at least you were of some service to your friends or to your customers, to your business associates, to your nation. You find that meaning in service, and that service is in service of that harmony that makes up the entire Jacob's ladder that stretches from earth to heaven.
SPEAKER_07From earth to heaven. But that's the that's the problem. Like he is such a committed moralist. He's very animated, he's very agitated. And this this talk was like classic Jordan Peterson. It sort of starts slow and the engine gets going and it gets, and it's really the the motor is running here, and it will run even hotter as we go. But it is a motor that is running uphill, not downhill.
SPEAKER_03And it's always been that way. And we offer our children thin gruel as a replacement for that magnificent version of multidimensional harmony, responsibility, and beauty. And there's more to it than that, too, you know. I read the book, the uh biblical book that details out the life of Abraham, and I mentioned this when the conference opened. Abraham begins his life with all his proximal hedonic needs satiated, and the voice of God comes to him and says, Go out into the world, get away from what's merely infantile and satiating, and have the adventure of your life. And that's a good bargain because we're built not for mere proximal infantile satiation of our base desires, but to move out into the world like the adventurers that we are, and to face the complexities of the catastrophic future with a certain degree of nobility and courage, and to hoist the world on our shoulders and to struggle uphill.
SPEAKER_07To hoist the world on our shoulders and struggle uphill. Abraham is the anti-Babel. Abraham's story begins in Genesis chapter 12, having just scattered Genesis 11 and the Tower of Babel. It's meant to be the opposite of hoisting the world on your shoulders and struggling uphill. Struggling uphill is the last thing the story of Abraham is actually.
SPEAKER_03And it's in that struggle that the meaning of life emerges. If you lived your life completely, maybe it would justify itself, right?
SPEAKER_07Justify itself. You know, he can't he can't help but reach for. These these biblical terms, these biblical stories, and this biblical language. Um, but he's on the wrong side of so many of these debates. I remember Paul Vanderclay once once saying that Jordan Peterson has an Augustinian anthropology and a Pelagian soteriology. I'll unpack that. Um anthropology means, yes, um Augustine you know talked about original sin. We're born into this world and we err, and it is our nature to err. And Jordan Peterson absolutely grabs hold of that and and understands the fallenness of humanity. But then he has a a Pelagian soteriology. How do you get saved? Is soteriology? And Pelagius just said, copy Christ. Okay. Use Jesus as your archetype and try to approximate the the responsibility of Jesus, who you know, who really is the one who kind of stretches between heaven and earth and gives himself for the life of the world. And he's very Pelagian in this sense. He's all about justifying ourselves.
SPEAKER_03And where would you find the meaning that justifies the suffering in life? And the answer to that is, well, you find it in the burden of responsibility. Because the burden of responsibility isn't a burden, it's the greatest opportunity you can possibly have.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, it that's that's true. But first, there is someone who took that burden for you. There is someone who joined you in your suffering and suffered for you, to give you his blessing, to give you his paradise forever, and receiving his comfort in that moment is fortifying and enables you to embrace the meaningfulness of your own suffering. Philippians chapter 3, verse 10. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection of the dead. There is meaning in suffering, and the crucified God shows you there is the greatest meaning in the greatest suffering. But first you need to know the one who suffered for you. And then you can pass it on.
SPEAKER_03And you know perfectly well when you're trying to decide if your own life is worth having, that if someone comes up to you even once and says, You know, what you did for me, it really mattered. And that might get you through like a week of rough times. Just the mere fact that it was obvious that the sacrifices that you made in relationship to others actually made a difference.
SPEAKER_07And you can And that's faith receiving that verdict that you don't deserve and that that sustains you.
SPEAKER_03Sacrificial attitude that makes the hierarchy of identity possible because what you do with the proper sacrifice is continually sacrifice the lower to the higher. You continually you sacrifice your own meat, self-serving, proximal hedonic whims to a pattern of being that sustains you across the long run and that unites more and more people. And it's a worthwhile sacrifice.
SPEAKER_07Oh man, it's like it is finished. Jordan Peterson, Professor Jordan Peterson, it is finished. Christ made a full, perfect, sufficient sacrifice, satisfaction and oblation for the sins of the whole world, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it. A full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, satisfaction, and oblation for the sins of the whole world has already been made, and it's been made for you, Jordan Peterson. It is finished. That does not mean that we wash our hands of responsibility, and it does not mean that we simply go for hedonic pleasure in the rest of life. We find our meaning in the Christ who continues to meet us in our suffering, and we find Christ as we continue to extend ourselves, offering his love to the world. But it's gotta start, it's gotta start with it is finished.
SPEAKER_03The payback for the sacrifice overwhelmingly, what would you say is overwhelmingly disproportionate to the cost, and everyone who's had a child who has any sense, who's escaped from their primordial narcissism, understands this because bringing a child into the world and watching that person develop is a bittersweet adventure because children are fragile and things go wrong, but it's a very rare person whose head is set on their shoulders in anything approximating the proper manner who isn't thrilled to death to see the person they brought into the world thrive as a consequence of their sacrifices.
SPEAKER_07And it's great, that's great, but start the story where the story starts. And the story starts with you were once kicking around in your blood and of no utility to anybody, and you were loved with a life-giving love. And you were matured through that love, and you were set on your own feet, and eventually you matured into becoming the parent who can love the next generation. Love comes first. It's faith and then responsibility, okay? Don't constantly cast yourself as the one who must exercise responsibility. First of all, you are the recipient of an extraordinary life-giving love. Receive that love first. We love because he first loved us.
SPEAKER_03To see, in that driving, the justification for all the pain that was associated with their production. And so, and that's what life is like. And we don't let young people know this anymore. You know, here's something psychologists discovered in the last 20 years. There is no technical difference between thinking about yourself and being miserable. Wow. Those are the same thing. And you know that too, you know.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. The highlight of the talk, right? There is no difference between thinking about yourself and being miserable. And and Augustine and Luther both made a massive part of this, that our big problem is that we are human beings, are curved in on ourselves. Obviously, the righteous life is Christ's, who was, you know, curved out of himself so much that he died on the cross, you know. But we are constantly introspective. And I completely agree. I I love this message, and I love that we find meaning in our suffering, and so much of modern life is just Epicurean hedonism. Okay. The old Greek hedonists were called the Epicureans, and they just thought the meaning of life was pleasure. And all of Jordan Peterson's like entire like professional body of work is to say that is wrong. And he is the Stoic, right? The Epicureans were against the Stoics. The Stoics said virtue is the meaning of life, not pleasure, okay? And he is he is an utter stoic, okay? He has a tragic shape to life, just as the Stoics had a tragic shape to life. It's all about duty, it's all about responsibility, it's an incredibly moral activity. There's so much wisdom in the Stoics. We're still learning from the Stoics, and people that there's a reason why Stoic books are still best sellers, okay? There is so much wisdom in it, and it is definitely preferable to Epicureanism, definitely pre- preferable to that hedonic maximization, right? But it's not the gospel, it's got nothing to do with the gospel, right? Paul goes to the Areopagus in Acts chapter 17, and it says in Acts chapter 17 that there are a bunch of um Stoic and Epicurean philosophers having a debate, and Paul walks in, and then they both turn on him because, like, what what is this idiot saying? Because what Paul is saying is totally different from the Epicureans and totally different from the Stoics. And it's not it's not simply about taking responsibility to find meaning. Jesus Paul Paul preaches Jesus and the resurrection. So he preaches Jesus to them, which means he he's preaching the person of Christ who comes and embodies like heaven's life on earth. He's the one who descends Jacob's ladder for us, and then the resurrection, he's the one who rises up again on our behalf and offers us hope, which the Stoics don't have, and hope, I don't know what hope I'm getting from Jordan here. We climb up to the hill, and what's there? What's at the top of the hill? Is it just an eternal striving? That that that doesn't sound like hope to me.
SPEAKER_03If I'm on stage and I'm talking to you, and all of a sudden I become self-conscious, I drown in anxiety and I lose my place. Right? And that's what's happening to the young people that we see who are adrift. They're taught to be nothing but self-conscious, to do nothing but think about their immediate needs, to refer to themselves as the locus of all things, and there's nothing you could do that would make them more miserable.
SPEAKER_07He's absolutely right, and it's a beautiful stoic point to answer the Epicurean points. And and Christians can agree with it, but it's it's still not the gospel.
SPEAKER_03It's identical with the instruction in misery, and you want to be outside yourself, serving a higher purpose, and maybe you're cynical about that, but you can think about it technically. Well, why do you bring a fork to the table? Well, so that you can put a plate beside it, and why do you put a plate at the table so that you can set the table to serve your family, to share food, to bring together the people you love in something approximating harmony as a microcosm of the entire cosmic order, and you can replicate that at every level of complexity all the way up to what's at the pinnacle.
SPEAKER_07All the way up. All the way up.
SPEAKER_03And we've forgotten all of that, and as a consequence of forgetting that, we've forgotten the responsibility that we need to bear in our life to make our lives bearable. And we've forgotten the meaning and the adventure and the purpose and the significance and this and the earned self-regard that goes along with that sacrificial attitude. And we've forgotten to tell our children the same thing. And we could remember, we could remember who we are. We can remember who we are. He really believes it. And that's what this conference was for. To remind people, everyone who attends, who you are, right?
SPEAKER_07You're the uh that gives him a chance to kind of collect himself. He really believes this. Like he's in his message, and this is what so many people are responding to.
SPEAKER_03You're you're the men and women, individuals made in the image of God who stumble eternally uphill towards the the Jerusalem on the hill, the sun, the shining city on the hill. No, and we're so foolish. We regard those propositions as something approximating what primitive superstitions when in fact they're the most brilliant intuitions into the fundamental structure of reality that have ever been offered.
SPEAKER_06It's Babel, it's Babel, it's Babel, it's Babel. It dressed up in lots of Christian language, but it's Babel, it's Babel, it's Babel, it's Babel. Oh man.
SPEAKER_03Predicated our civilization on those presuppositions, and look at it. It's not so bad. We've brought wealth and plenty to billions of people around the world. We've been struggling uphill properly, and if we were wise and faithful and courageous and responsible, we could continue to spread that to everyone. We could eradicate absolute poverty, we could bring about a time of abundance and opportunity for everyone, and we'll do that. We can do that if we hoist the world on our individual shoulders and operate collectively in this harmonious manner and continue the struggle uphill toward the city of God. And that's the truth. That's the truth. It's not some superstition, it's not some primitive defense against death anxiety, it's not the opiate of the people, right? It's the call to divine responsibility.
SPEAKER_07I mean he's absolutely right that like the new atheism like does not cast a vision for for anything, and and none of talking about heaven and earth and responsibility and giving yourself and and and talking about God, none none of that is silly. And all of it can be related to things as granular and as everyday as setting the table. And uh and and he is bringing he is bringing religious language and religious categories to bear on every aspect of life and making sure we realize we don't live in a double-decker universe in which maybe there's a god on level two, but we will just you know deal down here in level one. He's absolutely abolished um that sort of double-decker universe and saying the spirit that animates whatever is at the top is alive and active and well when you serve others in love. And that's absolutely true. But it's a it's a it's an up and in kind of casting of all that stuff, not down-in.
SPEAKER_03And to the degree that each of us acted out in the confines of our own life, we do what I suggested at the beginning of this conference, which is tilt the world towards heaven and away from hell.
SPEAKER_07We tilt the world towards heaven and away from hell. And like it's great to be talking in terms of heaven and hell. Um but we don't do it. It's not it's not heaven comes to earth. Jesus Jesus' prayer that he wants us to pray every day, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. And we pray down here that heaven's domain comes down to earth. We we don't tilt earth up towards heaven. We receive the Christ who has descended Jacob's ladder for us, and we pray that we could receive his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, not from earth striving towards heaven.
SPEAKER_03And we're put this conference together to encourage people to do exactly that in the belief that it is in fact the people who can do exactly that. Not only can, but must. Any attempt to circumvent that responsibility merely brings about something.
SPEAKER_07You'll see there are there are heads at the bottom of the video. That is because people are going up onto stage to get their instruments ready because there's gonna be a song. And it's just like at a at a kind of charismatic Christian conference where the band comes up and they they've they've heard um you know the the trigger for the last stanza of the preacher, and the band is gonna strike up and somebody's gonna be on the keys, and maybe the guitar's gonna strum G, or maybe G sus, which would be a a particularly Christian chord to strike. But the band is getting ready, and you'll see why in a second.
SPEAKER_03What would you say? Oscillating tension between ambitious. Right? As a responsible citizen, bearing the weight of the world on your shoulders, you oblivate the necessity for the tyrant and the slave.
SPEAKER_07Bearing the weight of the world on your shoulders. I mean, Sisyphus had to like push a boulder up a hill, right? And even if he got it to the hill, it would all start over again, and we'd have to keep on bearing the shoulder, the the stone up a hill. For Peterson, that's his that's his vision of like God. In the mythology, that's hell. Continually to bear the burden. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I'm gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. That's the message of Jesus. It's not the message of Jordan Peterson. It's quite different.
SPEAKER_03And so that's what we want to do, and that's what we encourage all of you to do, and to leave this concert conference thinking deeply about what it is that you could offer to the world if you threw everything that you had into it, because life is a very difficult proposition, and you're not going to be the glorious success that you could be unless you throw yourself into it utterly wholeheartedly.
SPEAKER_07Your life is not going to be a success unless you throw yourself into it utterly wholeheartedly. And so what happens for the the 99% of people who are not as successful as Jordan Peterson? Jordan Jordan Peterson can tell a story in which he really is tilting a whole bunch of people away from hell and towards heaven, and he's been very successful at that. Most people are not as successful as Jordan Peterson. But he's told you that you can do it if only you throw yourself at this more and more. And so when you fail at being as successful as Jordan Peterson, when you fail, not if when you fail, what must you conclude? Well, you mustn't be throwing yourself into this sufficiently. You must have failed. And now what are you starting to do? You're starting to be introspective, aren't you? There's a danger here that you're going to be more introspective because of Jordan Peterson's message, not less introspective. And that would be something Peterson would not want you to be. He doesn't want you to be so introspective because self-regard is is almost coterminous with misery. Um but if you're the one who's got to do it all the time, and when you fail, you are going to bring that burden upon yourself and you're going to start examining yourself for the reasons why the world has gone wrong. And that introspection is going to bring about the misery, the thing that Jordan Peterson doesn't want. And the whole problem is we're hoisting the burdens of the world on our shoulders. And our shoulders are far too narrow for that.
SPEAKER_03Accepting it in all its terrible expanse of catastrophe and possibility, and realizing in yourself the person who has that divine responsibility, along with all the rights that are attended upon that, to set the world straight. My sense is that if enough of us, enough of us realized that sufficiently, there's nothing we couldn't accomplish. There's no desert we couldn't make bloom. There's no reason for zero-sum Malthusian pessimism, right? We could have what we wanted if we truly wanted it, if we truly sought for it, if we truly asked for it, it would make itself manifest as a consequence of our faith and our responsibility, the adoption of our proper identity. And so you're invited to do that as the individuals, the worthy individual.
SPEAKER_07Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly. They used bricks instead of stone and tar mortar. Then they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heaven, so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise, we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, If as one people speaking the same language they've begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so they will not understand each other. So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. And then, from that Babylonian area, God draws Abraham, and he brings him from the east to the west. And finally, we have an answer to Babel, and it's the people of God, and by a very different spirit, and under a very different motivation, and growing in a very different direction, the people of God will take an anti-Babel stance.
SPEAKER_03And so you're invited to do that as the individuals, the worthy individuals that you are, who were called to this place because you had let enough of the light inside of you out to shine enough on other people so that your value was clearly made manifest. And we tried to gather 1,500 people together who had done that, however imperfectly, as we do such things imperfectly, to encourage them, to introduce them to other people with the same abiding spirit, and to see what we can do with all the opportunity that we have in front of us. And so that's the hope of ARK. On that note, I would like to call on someone to remind us in the most appropriate manner of what it is that we all have to do when we leave here.
SPEAKER_07And what what is it? And on YouTube, you don't know what that thing is. I'm going to call on somebody to, you know, to embody um the final message of ARC. And I swear, this is what happens. They do a flash mob of um can you hear the people sing from Le Miz? And literally they get some West End singers. And literally someone just stands up and says, Can you hear the people sing? And then like a spotlight goes down, and then like an answering voice on the other side of the auditorium comes up. I I captured some of this. You can see on my mobile phone footage. I didn't remember when the book. It was the most unarked choice of music. And this is how it finished, and you'll see Jordan Peterson is still at the podium, um, just like hand in pocket as as the West End stars sing this final number. Finger on the wind, sorry. And then what are we doing? Okay, standing invasion. There we go, because that's the end of the muck, right? So, like what do you make of that? I don't know what you make of that. Um, I think we are in a very fascinating cultural moment. I see a lot of people catching the Jordan Peterson train. And some of them, like the very famous friend that I spoke of earlier, um, it leads them not in the best direction. Um, and they need to maybe change at the junction and perhaps catch the Tom Holland train and see that like whatever you think is at the top of the pinnacle, the the hierarchy of values. It's actually about love for the weak and the the inviolable worth and dignity of the of the weak and the lowly and the poor and the lost, and that it comes uniquely through the Jesus Revolution. And maybe at the end of that train, you can take the Ayan Hirsey Ali train, who happily uh was on the Tom Holland train and now finds herself in church and learning a little bit more each Sunday. Um because I think we we need to meet Jesus. And uh at Thanksgiving this year, Ion Hersey Ali wrote beautiful words for the free press about what she's thankful for. She's thankful that God has met her in the midst of her misery, and that she has found joy in God and joy in submission to God, and that this is the first Thanksgiving where she's been able to say thank you, God, and to really, really mean it. Maybe after the Jordan Peterson train, we jump to the Tom Holland train, we jump to the Ion Hersley Ali train, and we find ourselves in church, and we find ourselves in that moment meeting with a God who descended from the top and joined us in the gutter, because that's the true Christian message. The message that liberates us, that saves us, that gives us joy in our misery, that sets us on our feet, and yes, that then enables us to live responsibly out in the world. And then we can effect all those great 12 rules for life and more 12 rules for life. And I don't know what Jordan Peterson's third book will be 13 more rules for life, but that is that is how it will happen. It will not happen by us hoisting the world on our shoulders and trudging up the hill. That's hell. Christ took that burden on himself. He trudged up a different hill, died on that cross, rose again for you to meet you in your darkness and in your weakness, to save you apart from any effort and apart from any responsibility taking that you might have taken upon yourself. And instead, Jesus saves you and then sets you on your feet and says, run along, live responsibly in the in the world, love your neighbor, love the least and the last and the lost and the little and the lonely and the excluded. Love those people, and in that way you will encounter the spirit that is at the top of the hierarchy. But you'll be you'll be experiencing the spirit of Jesus, who is the down and out God. Don't live the Babel life of up and in living. It's the down and out God who is proclaimed in the scriptures. Jordan Peterson is on a journey. Um he still needs um to really reorient in order to come into the kingdom. And in and in order for anyone to fruitfully listen to Jordan Peterson, I think you need to have your spidey senses alert to all these aspects. Otherwise, I think he could lead you uh into some really unhelpful ways, into a burden that he wouldn't want to put on you, and into an introspection that he certainly wouldn't want to put on you. So let's turn to Jesus, the down and out God. Well, that's all I got time for. I don't know what you think. You can let me know in the comments. We always get some good comments when uh when we mention Jordan Peterson. Uh but we are speak life and we like to see all things through the lens of Jesus. If you want to find out more about this good news of Jesus, we have a great course that you can do. It's called 321. You can go to 321course.com. It's absolutely free. You can go there now. You can binge it in an hour and a half, or you can take eight weeks to do it as you as you go through the different sessions. But it'll tell you about life according to Jesus. I don't think there's anything more important than finding out life according to Jesus. Go to 321course.com, subscribe to the channel, and we'll see you on the next one.
SPEAKER_04Well, that's it for today. Thanks so much for listening. And do head over to speaklife.org.uk forward slash appeal if you would like to make the most of this amazing opportunity during the first 15 days of December to start a regular donation with us. We really do appreciate all your support. Simply downloading and listening to this podcast is a great support to us, and we really appreciate your prayers as well. And all who give financially in any way, big or small, one off or regular. Thank you so much, and we will see you soon.