Jordan Peterson's Current Mode of Faith won't give him Rest for his Soul
Why the incomplete status of Jordan's faith makes peace difficult to find
I appreciated the reflections on faith in @giles_fraser piece reflecting on @jordanbpeterson 's quixotic response to belief in God https://unherd.com/2021/08/does-jordan-peterson-believe-in-god/. I think it quite clearly expresses what faith often feels like from the inside.
I also understand why the Catholic theologians in their new book on his religious work assert that it falls short. The right question would be "falls short FOR what?" The answer is "for the public witness required to establish the church.”
The book of Acts has Christ responding to his disciples' very understandable question "when will you restore the kingdom to Israel". His answer is "It's not for you to know times and the dates but you will receive power from the Holy Spirit and you will be my witnesses."
I am not saying that @jordanbpeterson hasn't been used by the Holy Spirit as a powerful witness over the last 4 years. I believe he has. The missing piece that keeps him from the peace that he seeks, as his friend @PageauJonathan has pointed out is figuring out church.
In both of his talks with @BishopBarron he complains that in his experience the church has failed to realize the power and demands necessary to initiate the meaningful quest that he has succeeded in doing especially in young men. Barron both times agreed with him, as do I.
The puzzle of the church, which is perpetual, and which @giles_fraser knows well, continues, and I believe it will until she, the church, is ready be revealed for her groom. Yet the church is not an incidental aspect of Christ's mission to THIS world here and now.
I'm re-reading @holland_tom In the Shadow of the Sword where he notes that in late antiquity competing monotheisms emerged as a powerful force that reshaped world history. That transformation happened because of the rise of the church.
The aspect of faith that @giles_fraser points out in his piece points to the aspect of what I call "God #1". This is the God that is not just another THING in the world as Aquinas noted. I first noticed this in @jordanbpeterson in his debates with Sam Harris.
Harris made a career of debunking what I call "God #2", the God that Harris sees people pray to for troubles and needed parking spaces. The God that has rules and intervenes, an agentic God (God #2).
When asked what kind of God @jordanbpeterson believes in I very much heard a description of the arenic God (God #1) that created the world from behind the scenes through processes we find in science.
The God of the Hebrews is uniquely both agentic and arenic, replacing what Kaufmann calls "the meta-divine realm" in paganism.
.@jordanbpeterson embraces God #1, the arenic God in public, but clearly wrestles with God #2, the agentic God in private, which is essentially how religion in sanctioned by modern secularity. As @PageauJonathan noted he won't find rest for his private soul without the church.
He will, as @giles_fraser and other clergy like us probably find different unrests within the church, but those will likely be more with the church than with God. A living Christian faith wrestles with both God and his bride but at least you're not alone.
While there is certainly a tribal-validation motivation within the church to see @jordanbpeterson "cross the line" in terms of public profession of faith there is also a pastor concern. He seems so often publicly tortured in his current space. We want to see rest for his soul.
It's difficult to avoid being a bit suspicious of a post like this one from a Pastor. It reveals the endless tendency of the church and its leaders to make THEMSELVES the primary requirement of "peace", "faith", "belief", and their endorsement of the rigid requirement of conforming to their simplified religious formula, for the comfort of abandoning your own struggle, which is the only thing they can offer. There is a "Body Snatcher" mentality to promoting the enveloping of the church's, or the "bride's", own formalized structure as a means to "peace", and of course the implicit accusation that the evident difficulties Jordan Peterson faces in life are caused by his failure to join the Body Snatchers.
Many of us resist this dogma, as it seems to fly in the face, in direct opposition, of the profound, difficult, and weighty ideals of Jesus, his solitary existence, his lonely struggles, his victory, and his story.
But, as the Pastor here is only selling "peace" in this post, and not depth, profundity, vitality, struggle, work, or growth, we might be able to take him at his word. If Jordan Peterson were to surrender his own difficult battles, lack of absolute certainty, introspection, and internalizing of religious ideas, and instead chose to embrace the deeply embedded mediocrity, and formulaic "Perpetual Sin, Outsourced Redemption, Self Distrust, and Humble Worship" of Christendom, he might very well feel a sense of "peace", and possibly boredom. It can be astonishing to witness the current, modern, painful mediocrity of Christian sermons, Christian music, Christian art, Christian movies, Christian community, and the church, but I imagine if you simply give up on the difficulties of seeking God, you might feel a sense of enervating, deadening, and flaccid "peace".
The final line of this post, "We want to see rest for his soul", is the most telling. It offers the dubious "we", meaning, I assume, the Body Snatchers of Christendom and the church, with whom the Pastor is immutably aligned, and it also offers the vague, false, cunning virtue of presenting the notion of unconditional "love" and goodwill towards a popular figure like Peterson, with whom the Pastor has no relationship, except that of a weaker parasite attaching to a stronger, more courageous, imaginative, if often scattered religious thinker. Pastor Paul should join the far braver Peterson in pursuit of Christian wisdom, not the other way around.
This is not to denigrate Pastor Paul, who is intelligent, and I think reasonably well intentioned. But, like most religious leaders, he is completely absent of courage and has sold his soul to the mediocrity of Christian formula. This causes his YouTube videos simply to present the same, interesting, repetitive, entertaining, but inevitably fruitless philosophical concepts, and the same sleight of hand to return all ideas to his, and Christendom's, simplified, stripped down, utterly foregone conclusions.
The problem is that there have always been "Jordan Petersons" throughout history, and there are millions of "Jordan Petersons" today, battling, struggling, suffering, questioning, and striving toward our most basic inclinations, coming into a relationship with our lives, the Divine, and the meaning of our existence. I believe if someone like Pastor Paul, who is bright, with life experiences, would only embrace a deeper courage, rather than insisting on the "peace" of formulaic preaching to the Choir of Mediocrity, he could really reach and help some people on their journey.