Whether things work out and AI becomes ubiquitous and is just there to help us, or whether it leads to the wasteland, I think there's still only one solution become fully human. The only solution, the only real solution I can think of is the personal solution. It's a solution similar to how Jordan Peterson told us to make your bed. I have a slightly different version of the statement. I say go to church. And so I mean, obviously, what I mean by go to church is yeah, you should go to church, definitely go to church. But the larger question is that if we cannot get an answer of who these technologies serve, please know who and what you serve. Do you serve Mammon? Do I serve Moloch? Who do we serve? If we cannot stop the machine from devouring everything, then you, then I must become truly human.
SPEAKER_00Very well said by Jonathan Peugeot at The Latest Arc, which finished just yesterday in London arc number three. Jonathan Peugeot has given the talk of the conference. And it's about the AI apocalypse. Apocalypse means really an unveiling, most literally in Greek. It means an uncovering of what has already been there. And really the question that AI has unveiled is not are the robots human? They're not. The apocalyptic question we must all face is: are we human? Are we truly human? The machines are not becoming humans, but have we become machines through the power that is made available through the machines? That's the big question that Jonathan Peugeot has for us. And his proposed pathway towards that solution of becoming truly human is to go to church. And this was the video of ARC. This was the sentence that defines ARC now and that will define ARC in the future. Because it represents a transition from the way of Jordan Peterson to the way of Jonathan Peugeot. It represents a transition from make your bed, tidy your room, to go to church. And what do you notice about those two different pathways of life? Jonathan makes the comparison because he does see a similarity between the two. Jonathan and Jordan are great friends, and there is something similar about this proposed solution. What's similar is that it is a personal solution rather than an organizational, structural, societal solution. It is a solution that puts the personal back front and center in our understanding. We are not slaves to ideologies and we are not slaves to technology. We are persons, and we can, to some degree, put the person back at the center of our understanding of reality rather than oppressive visions of the human and oppressive visions of society. Jonathan Peugeot and Jordan Peterson can find agreement that there is a personal solution to what it is that ails us in modern life. But these two answers are very different, and therefore the trajectories that are offered by Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Peugeot are quite different because tidy a room, make your bed, is an individualistic solution. It is a self-generated solution. And ultimately it is a tragic solution because however many times you make your bed, it gets messy again. However often you tidy your room, well, the law of entropy means that it will become disordered again. It is a tragic, long defeat that is fought against the powers of chaos, in Jordan Peterson's view. The Christian view is that we actually live in a comedy, not a tragedy, a divine comedy, in fact, in which God enters into our chaos to redeem it and to bring us into his heaven. It is a comedy with a happily ever after. There is a real struggle in the middle of it. That is what defines a comedy. Comedy does not mean laugh a minute. Comedy actually means that you go down into the valley of deep shadow before the happy ending. But Jordan Peterson's solution is a tragedy. It is a heroic struggle against an enemy that will necessarily win. And you can stave off chaos for a little bit if you make your bed today, if you tidy your room this week. But eventually the chaos wins. Jonathan Peugeot says, go to church, and there you are hearing the story that is the great divine comedy. It is the story in which the hero is not you, the hero is Jesus Christ who enters into the ordeal, who fights for you to give you his victory. And on the basis of his victory, you can stand on your own two feet, and yes, indeed, you can tidy your room and make your bed and be more lobster and put into practice 12 rules for life and 12 more rules for life and all those things. But Jonathan Peugeot has a more hopeful solution to the maladies of modern life than Jordan Peterson does. And that's a very good thing because the advice of Jordan Peterson is helpful in the short run, but only in the short run. Here is Jordan Peterson talking about the importance of cleaning your room.
SPEAKER_02This thing that I've said to people has become this crazy internet meme, but that's to clean up your room. And I think what you have to do, and this is part of humility, is you have to look around you within your sphere of influence, like the direct sphere of influence, and fix the things that announce themselves as in need of repair. Clean up your room. That's a good start. Organize your local landscape. Schedule your time. Start taking control of yourself. See if you can stop saying things you know to be lies. Can you even clean up your own room? No. Well, you should think about that. You should think about that. Because if you can't even clean up your own room, who the hell are you to give advice to the world? You can do this in a room. It's quite fun to do it just when you're sitting in a room, like a room, maybe your bedroom, you can sit there and just sort of meditate on it and think, okay, if I wanted to spend 10 minutes making this room better, what would I have to do? And you have to ask yourself that.
SPEAKER_00And that's important about the future of ARC, because ARK, this movement, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, has been an alliance between some key figures. There's uh Baroness Philippa Stroud, who is Christian, Paul Marshall, who is Christian, and Jordan Peterson, who is in many senses kind of the least Christian aspect of the leadership of ARK. And at the first ARK conference in London in 2023, Jordan Peterson was a very prominent presence. At Arc 1, Jordan Peterson talked about faith and responsibility and climbing Jacob's ladder, which is a theme that he returns to again and again as he looks at the Old Testament and thinks about our way out of our modern melodies.
SPEAKER_02Now 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. And how do we construct and climb Jacob's ladder? How do we comprehend it?
SPEAKER_00Jordan Peterson wants to climb Jacob's ladder. Jacob's ladder in the Bible is not something that we climb. The angels of God ascend and descend on Jacob's ladder, and it's clear in Genesis that the Lord himself seems to be the bridge that unites heaven and earth, and Jesus himself in John chapter 1 identifies himself as the stairway to heaven, the one on whom the angels of God ascend and descend. Jesus unites heaven and earth, not our strivings. But that's the Jordan Peterson philosophy, and it's the very much the tidy your room kind of philosophy and make your bed sort of philosophy. At Arc 2, Jordan Peterson made more manifest what has always been an ambiguity about ARC. Does it spell Ark as the Alliance of Responsible Citizenship, or is it the Ark of Noah? And at the end of Ark II, Jordan Peterson was very insistent that all aboard the Ark and how do we survive the storm of modern life? Well, this is what he was saying.
SPEAKER_02Well, how then do we build an Ark? We admit our ignorance and we look to the heavens for guidance, and we take heed of the words of our of the best of our ancestors. We take a page from the story of Noah. And Noah is a wise man and a good man, given his time and place, as God himself attests to, and Noah in his wisdom has a revelation that the storm is brewing and the waters are about to rise.
SPEAKER_00And for the next 15 minutes, Jordan Peterson piles up the ifs. If we can do this, if we can do this, if we can do this, then we can get aboard the Ark. And this is the final speech of Ark 2. An orchestra starts to assemble and play themes as Jordan Peterson sort of summons us in this way towards the heroism of all aboard the Ark. He's trying to stir our willpower in this way, and this is how it all finishes.
SPEAKER_02If you sacrifice what's lesser and you bring your best to the table, and you do that in a manner that's hospitable and inviting, then everyone else could and would do the same. And then you dine forever with your coming forever's up to heavenly banquet. And you set the world right. Pick up an oar and row.
SPEAKER_00Which is, of course, not how arcs work. And yet, in Jordan Peterson's imagination, it's it's as though we go down into the galley and we leave, heave, all aboard the ark, pick up an oar and row as though we are slaves in this slave ship, um, trying our best to get through the storm. Whereas throughout uh church history, you know, Augustine, for instance, would picture the ark as, of course, it's the body of Christ. The door in the ark is like the side of Christ that was pierced, so that we can be one with Jesus, enter into the body of Christ and be saved, right? Not to strive, not to be another slave who is rowing. Um, pick up an oar and row is the very opposite, really, of the Bible's message. It is not what the Bible is saying, but it is in keeping with the philosophy of tidy your room, make your bed. It is a personal solution, but it is a condemning and burdensome solution. And it is really a million miles from the Jesus who said, Come unto 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 am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Matthew chapter eleven, verses twenty-eight to thirty. The philosophy of make your bed and tidy your room and pick up an oar and row is the kind of burdensome teaching under which you will collapse in a heap. And not coincidentally, Jordan Peterson has collapsed in two great heaps. The first he recovered from and Ark was born. The second, well, we pray for him, and I do genuinely pray for him to recover from this. But he won't recover by trying to tidy his room or make his bed or pick up an oar and row. And for those who have followed his message, I'm very grateful for many having followed him into church and been interested enough to pick up the Bible and read through Genesis for themselves, encounter Christ in the Gospels. There have been so many people who've been leapfrogging Jordan Peterson into the kingdom of heaven, and for that I'm grateful. Um Jordan Peterson is very much into archetypes. And if there is any archetype uh for Jordan Peterson, I I guess he is a Moses figure in lots of different ways. Uh he has a uh a very Augustinian anthropology, but a Pelagian soteriology, to put it a different way. He is very good at pointing to the tragic frame of humanity in Adam. But his answer to Adam is not so much Christ, his answer to Adam is Moses, the one through whom the law came, and so he will write twelve rules for life and twelve more rules for life. And archetypally, Moses is the one who does not get to the promised land. His young assistant, Joshua, the one whose name means Jesus, he is the one who actually leads the people into the promised land. Jesus gets into the divine promises. Moses as Mr. Law, he dies short of the promised land. He goes up Mount Pisgarh and he looks over into the promised land, and he doesn't get there himself. At least archetypally, he doesn't get there. We know that he is with Jesus in heaven. If anybody ever doubted that, then you can just look to the transfiguration. In Mark chapter 9, for instance, and there you see Jesus with Moses and Elijah in glory. Moses himself trusted Christ. Moses himself had eternal life. But archetypally, Moses does not get to the promised land because the law does not inherit the promise. More rules for life don't get you there. Rowing doesn't get you there. Making your bed doesn't get you there, tidying your room doesn't get you there. But going to church doesn't exactly get you there. But going to church puts you in the environment in which you hear and pray and sing and eat and drink these gospel realities. The story of Christ the Great Hero, who himself went through the ordeal so that we might have his salvation. In church we hear a very different message, not just tidy a room, but receive the bread of life. I love the way Jonathan Peugeot spoke at this conference. I love that he spoke of the continuity between the personal answer of tidyer room and go to church. I I love that he has been here for this moment and has been at Ark and able to point people to where life is really found. And I'm slightly more hopeful for Ark this year than I was from last year. It's very unfortunate that Jordan has been ill and we do pray for him, but the messaging, therefore, from the front has been more Christian, I would say, Christian-ish. Um, still the name of Jesus is very rarely upon the lips of any of the speakers. There is a bunch of civilization, Judeo-Christian kind of speech. Uh people, when referencing the Bible, will talk about, you know, the first book of the Western canon, Genesis, says, says X, Y, O, Z. People are still reticent to name their name and and pin colours to masts, but I understand that politics is the art of the possible and that alliances uh require a whole lot of back and forth and people compromising in one way or another. Ah, I'm an evangelist. I would like to hear the name of Jesus quite a bit more. But I was encouraged that uh Ark was heading in a slightly more Christian uh direction. And if we can find a way to uh have a stand at Ark and hand out Bibles like I I would have wanted to have done this year, um, if we can find a way of doing that next year, um I think we certainly will. My reflections on an ARC that did not have uh Peterson there, certainly not uh prominently so, uh, is that it seems like Ark will do okay without Jordan Peterson, that Ark can have an identity without Jordan Peterson, and that that identity can be more straightforwardly Christian without Jordan Peterson. There will still be all sorts of strangeness that people will find in ARK, and because it's an alliance, there'll be things that you really disagree with uh in the room, and if you can cope with that as the nature of political gatherings, then uh I think you could find Ark to be a really interesting place in which to speak of Jesus. But I would say that the name of Jesus needs to be more front and center, not just because that is where salvation is found, although that's the main reason, um, but also if values, Judeo-Christian values, are at the heart of a movement rather than the person of Jesus, what you will end up finding is that the tribalism that you say you dislike and are fighting against will come to define you because you are the ones who have the right values and your opponents are the ones who have the wrong values, judgmentalism, tribalism, pride, and an inability to confess to failure, weakness, and sin will always result if you put values at the heart of things rather than the person of Jesus. Values can only judge you, values cannot forgive you. Only Jesus can do that. Os Guinness, a Christian and apologist, said a number of times at Ark that other civilizations have a rise and fall cycle, but that the people who are defined by the scriptures have a different kind of narrative, not rise and fall, but exile and return. And notice rise and fall is a tragic shape. Exile and then return is a comedic shape. But the basis on which you return from exile is always repentance and faith. And we're not going to see repentance and faith. We're not going to see the owning of error and sin if we are only foregrounding values. If it's only values, Judeo-Christian values, whatever they are, if only values are being held in high regard, then they become shibboleths that you must mouth, they become slogans which you take pride in, they become cudgels with which you beat your opponent. Values will only make one more political movement that has a rise and fall shape. What is it that's going to give us a return from exile? Only the gospel promise of Jesus. And I would love to hear that name far more unapologetically spoken at a place like ARK. Well, if you want to hear the story of Jesus again, we've got a great way for you to do it. It's completely free. You just go to 321course.com and you see Jesus' vision for life, his vision for God and his threeness, the world and its two-ness, you and your oneness. What do the numbers mean? Go to 321course.com and find out. Well, that'll do us for now. Were you at ARK? Have you seen any of the talks? Have you seen Jonathan's amazing talk on AI? I think it is the most viewed talk from ARK in 2026. Why don't you check out that video? Let us know what you think about this video in the comments. Share it around the place and give us a subscribe so that we can catch you on the next video. God bless.