Jordan Peterson and Truth

Here is a short excerpt from Jordan Peterson, where he is discussing truth and its relationship to Christianity

Here is a transcription of it.

“Ok, so there’s this spirit of good, let’s say, and what the spirit of good does is act in the world on the potential of the world to generate the actuality of the world. And the Judeo-Christian proposition is that if you confront the potential of the world, with good in mind, using truth – truthful communication – then the order that you extract is good. And then that’s echoed in Genesis, when God is using the word and He creates cosmos out of potential, and every time He does it he says ‘and it was good.’ Which is, I think, it’s so interesting because there’s a proposition there. The proposition there is if you encounter potential with truth the cosmos you create is actually good. Well that’s just absolutely overwhelming idea, it’s like, if it’s true it’s the greatest idea there ever was. “

In some abstract sense, this is right. The problem is that this isn’t what Jesus is talking about when he says, for example, “ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” or “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus isn’t talking about encountering the potential of the universe with truth in general. Rather, he’s talking about a specific kind of truth – spiritual truth. You could say this is Truth, with a capital, to distinguish it from a more general notion of truth. Jesus isn’t talking about knowing the exact equations for the orbit of all of Saturn’s moons, for example, and then creating order from chaos using that information with good in mind – even though that is a similar sort of idea.

Peterson is again here (see a similar analysis here) presenting an abstraction of Christianity which is essentially compatible with secularism. The core of the Christian proposition isn’t that if you confront the potential of the world with good in mind and using truthful communication then the order you extract is good. Even if this might follow from certain ideas associated with Christianity, that’s not the basic point of Jesus’ message and the ‘good news’ – it is more specific and concrete.

Rather, Jesus has outlined a path – a way – which uses and embodies spiritual truth and leads to reunion with God the Father in a state of full and eternal life. This is the sense in which Jesus is the ‘way, truth, and life’.

Your two-fold purpose

“Your ultimate purpose is to find your way back to God, but you also have a task to perform in the outer world.” Paramahansa Yogananda, The Law of Success, p. 21

This is a succinct way of describing the purpose of a person’s life. The first purpose is to ‘find their way back to God’ – to reconnect with God. The story of the Garden of Eden is primarily important from a Christian perspective because it sets the stage – we find ourselves (in many cases) disconnected from God, and this is the point of the story of the Garden of Eden. Our primary purpose in life is therefore to reconnect with God. This is why Jesus is the ‘New Adam’, who has come to provide a way back to God (“I am the way, the truth, and the life”).

The second purpose is ‘a task in the outer world’. This purpose (more accurately, purposes), however, comes from God, and so depends to a significant degree on the first purpose. Once you are able to listen to God better, and respond to Him, be ‘meek’ in the Biblical sense (i.e., responsive to God, or ‘meek as Moses’ who, according to the Old Testament stories, guided the ancient Israelites for a long time and through many challenges – Moses was not meek in the typical sense of the word) – then you will be able to hear what that purpose(s) is and receive guidance on how to act.

Reconnecting with God from a Christian perspective can be done through following the teachings and example of Jesus, and in particular through regular prayer. Prayer and meditation (Yogananda’s focus for reconnecting with God) have many points of contact, and, indeed, there are meditative types of prayer deep in the Christian tradition. I don’t think prayer and meditation should be seen as exclusive or contradictory in the general outline – certain meditative approaches can help to intensify certain kinds of prayer, and so from a Christian perspective, meditative techniques are tools to help with the ongoing prayer life, the ultimate aim being the ‘prayer never ceasing’ – to bring the sense of contact with and guidance by God into every moment of our day-to-day life.


Every jot and tittle – was Jesus claiming the Pentateuch is inerrant?

One problem in Christianity is how to reconcile certain parts of the Old Testament, such as scenes where God is depicted as ordering mass slaughter or genocide, with the core messages of the New Testament, such as ‘love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’.

One simple way to reconcile these things is to say the Old Testament authors are wrong in various places where they depict God as wanting to, say, mass kill all the first born Egyptians. Yet, Jesus repeatedly speaks highly of the Old Testament, repeatedly referring to it and using it as an integral part of certain moral reasonings. Yet, he doesn’t refer to the specific, problematic passages, and so his view on those things is not as clear.

To this, one place to point is in Matthew 5:18. Jesus says “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” A jot or tittle means every tiny little stroke. Is he endorsing an inerrant view of the Pentateuch here?

I don’t think he is, because the emphasis seems to be on the laws within the Pentateuch, not every story in it, and in particular on seemingly little aspects of those laws, as the next line suggests. “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus then goes on to give 6 ‘It has been said to you … but I say to you’, emphasizing seemingly little things, like being angry, having lustful thoughts, and so on. He is saying these seemingly little things are actually quite important – more important, in a sense, than the big ones like murder, adultery, and so on.

So, the gist of Matthew 5:18 and following passages is that seemingly little stuff in the law is actually quite important. Jesus hasn’t come to abolish the laws, but to fulfill the spirit of them, and this is being done by a radical re-emphasis and augmentation of the laws given in the Pentateuch.

So, in context, it doesn’t seem the point of Jesus’ statement is to uphold an inerrant view of everything in the Pentateuch, but rather to uphold a more refined view of the laws within it.

What does ‘Take up your cross, and follow after me’ mean?

In Matthew 10:34, Jesus says


Commenting on this, Robert Barron says

“And this is just what we, his followers, must imitate. Taking up the cross means not just being willing to suffer, but being willing to suffer as he did, absorbing violence and hatred through our forgiveness and nonviolence.”

The problem with this interpretation is that Jesus doesn’t seem to be referring to being willing to suffer here. Rather, ‘taking up one’s cross’ seems to be referring to ‘dying to oneself’, as the next line after it suggests.

This line comes at a point where Jesus is preparing his disciples to go out into the world. These are the elite shock-troops who will start the new Kingdom (and they were quite successful – the seeds they planted led, within a few hundred years, to Constantine becoming the first Christian leader of the Roman Empire, and the beginning of Christianity as the official religion thereof – but this was based on a more organic growth of Jesus’ ‘Kingdom’ before that, where the population of Christians was increasing dramatically).

Here, he is preparing them for the push-back they will almost inevitably get as they start to challenge many prevailing ideas of the time.

So the idea of taking up one’s cross is part of dealing with potential persecution, but is it a call to endure suffering? This doesn’t make sense for various reasons.

Jesus didn’t say that being a Christian meant an increase in suffering. Rather, he said it meant an increase in joy and serenity. So this idea is counter to a basic message in Jesus’ teaching.

Some people interpret the taking up of one’s cross as carrying something heavy for a long time, but Jesus said the opposite – his ‘yoke is easy, and his burden is light’.

Similarly, the connotation of carrying a cross in the ancient world wasn’t of carrying something heavy for a long time, but rather of dying.

So, if we are to say that taking up one’s cross means in some sense dying, are we to understand this literally – as a call for martyrdom?

This doesn’t make sense with the text, because Jesus says ‘whoever doesn’t take up his cross and follow after him isn’t worthy of Jesus’. Whoever means everyone. Understood literally, he meant everyone should be martyred, but if that’s right, then the apostle John wasn’t worthy of him, because John lived to a ripe old age and wasn’t martyred. So, that can’t be the right interpretation.

So what does it mean to ‘lose one’s life for Jesus’ sake’? I think a more reasonable interpretation is the setting aside of an ego-based life, and instead focusing on helping to create the Kingdom of which Jesus speaks, i.e., doing good things in alignment with God’s will. One must lose one’s old ego-centric life in order to gain this new way of living, and taking up one’s cross is a dramatic way of understanding this process of letting go of the ego-centric self, and instead making God (i.e., the good) the centre, which means aligning one’s will with God’s will.

Integrative prayer

By integrative prayer I mean prayer that integrates listening and doing. I.e., the practice of discernment and then action.

Many people seem to think prayer ought to consist of asking God to do things. If it is a part of prayer, this might make sense. On its own, it is probably a mistake.

Jesus was constantly exhorting his listeners to do things. Consider the Our Father, his archetypal prayer. “Thy will be done.” Done by whom? Us. When? Now. We ought to not merely pray for others, but help them, love them, forgive them, and so on. People who miss the dimension of action in their prayers are missing a large point of the spiritual life.

But doing is not enough. Action without discernment is more often than not blind and foolish. Therefore doing implies listening. Prayer centrally involves listening to God, and you can think of this as drawing on the totality of your mental resources. To listen to God is to attune yourself to the information (intuitions, wisdom, reason, empirical data, imagination) within yourself, as illuminated by an on-going, live relationship with or connection to God.

So, the arc is

  1. Discern outcome.
  2. Discern action to take.
  3. Take action. (Note that sometimes this means waiting and letting things play out.)
  4. Repeat.

One part of discernment is not only discerning what action and how to take it, but what it is we ought to be aiming at in the first place. In fact, this part of discernment is probably the most important part.

So, integrative prayer is integrating, or combining, these steps into prayer life on an on-going, everyday basis.

Trusting (‘faith’) God is important for all these steps. If you don’t trust in your relationship with God, why would you turn to Him to discern what you ought to aim for? Similarly, why turn to Him to discern the actions to take once you’ve figured out what to aim for? And if you don’t trust Him, how likely are you to be willing to take (sometimes seemingly risky) actions based on that? So trust is the thread that runs through the steps of integrative prayer.

Trust is gained, like in most relationships, by starting small in the cycle, while simultaneously building a lived, experienced sense of the presence of God in your day to day life. How to do the latter is another, important, topic.

The proper aim of ecumenism

Ecumenism in Christianity aims at unity between branches of Christianity. It’s important to distinguish, however, between unity in spirit and unity in organization.

That Christians have better dialogue, exchange of ideas, and a sense of kinship all sounds like the right approach to me. However, there is also a sense in Christianity that there needs to be unity of organization – one church, say. This to me seems an error.

First, understanding various denominations is important for 3 reasons. 1. It allows you to see what’s working in another approach, and consider how to modify it and apply it yourself. 2. It allows you to see what’s not working in another approach, avoid it, and also give constructive feedback. 3. It allows you to cooperate or coordinate on areas where there is overlap between your approaches.

Having said that, diversity of approaches can be highly useful. The basic idea is the same as in free markets. Different approaches = experimentation = success of certain approaches, iterated. This is similar to various ideas in evolutionary biology – having a certain amount of diversity of approaches is useful.

Therefore, it seems wrong-headed to me for Christians to want all Christians to move to the same church, or even to see it as primarily a competition between churches. Christianity, as a whole, probably benefits from different approaches, learning from other approaches, and being critical of approaches that seem obviously wrong. Understanding what is actually happening in other churches benefits all these points, and ecumenism properly should be about better understanding of other approaches with an approach to unity in spirit.

Christianity is a practice, not a theory

Christianity is a practice, not a theory. Therefore, any objections to it on the level of theory have to be relevant on the level of practice.

For example, I might object to the pacifist philosophy on which aikido is based, and have what I think are knock-down arguments against them. Yet, in the end my objections have to effect the practice of aikido, to be an objection to aikido.

Jesus was very light on theory, and rather all about action, and modern day practitioners of Christianity should heed that – it’s very easy for egg-heads to cause more damage than good, often through unintended side-effects of their proposed theoretical solution.

What’s important

When trying to understand Christianity, two of the most important things are

  1. To distinguish between what is central and what is peripheral and
  2. To distinguish between practical and theoretical.

Consider 1. when applied to scripture. There are many passages in the Old Testament which portray God as a kind of tyrant. Yet, in the New Testament in the person of Jesus, God is portrayed very differently. Christians who try to hold onto both kinds of characterizations intellectually, tend to lose both, because they are incompatible.

If you get clear about what is central, then objections to Christianity based on God supposedly ordering slaughter, for example, lose their import. This is because it is very easy to hold that those characterizations are in some way wrong, even if you don’t know exactly in what way. You have to give up something (scriptural infallibility, say), but you don’t have to give up everything, and the former is a lot better from the perspective of Christianity. You can do this because you have clarity about what is central and what is not, scripturally. Christians risk losing everything if they try to make everything central – they create an intellectually and empirically very fragile worldview. If someone prioritizes aspects of Christianity, however, it is not difficult to create a robust worldview.

Consider 2. There are all sorts of theories about all sorts of things in Christianity (as in life in general). Some of these theories lead to things that cause seeming paradoxes, or perhaps seem to have absurd implications. Many theories that have been prominent in the history of Christianity are also very difficult to test. Practices, however, speak for themselves to a large extent, and tend to be much easier to test qua practices.

For example, it is very difficult to test the Catholic theology regarding the Eucharist and transubstantiation of the bread and wine. However, it is relatively easy to test what kinds of effects regular Communion has on people who do so in a particular attitude. For one to lift weights, it doesn’t really matter if some of the standard consensus about why weight lifting causing increases in muscular strength holds up. It just matters if weight lifting does cause increases in muscular strength. The latter is easy to test, and easy to make use of. It would be ridiculous to not weight lift just because you thought some of the standard theory behind why it works isn’t right.

What does ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life’ mean in Christianity?

What does ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life’ mean in Christianity? The Way is fairly straightforward from the context, it means ‘the way to the Father’, i.e., to God.

The Truth is more tricky. Nowadays, people often equate truth with objects, their location in space, their momentum, and so on. Jesus here is referring to spiritual truth. It is about proper action, values, and relates to meaning or purpose. This is a more ancient notion of truth, and is related to reliable systems for guiding us in our actions. The idea here is that Jesus teaches spiritual truth, and also embodies this truth in his actions.

The Life again means spiritual life. “I have come so you may have life and have it fully.” The obvious connotation here is eternal life, but it is not just life, rather full life. Jesus is the path to full and eternal life, and also embodies it in his own life story (with the resurrection). Full and eternal life comes, at root, from a relationship with the Father, according to Christianity. Jesus is the link between us and the Father, offering us his teachings, his example, and the precedent of his own death and resurrection, which changes on a fundamental level the possibilities for other people, according to Christianity.

Why is a Christian inner sense of peace not ‘of this world’?

Why is a Christian inner sense of peace not ‘of this world’? Because this peace comes from an experience of God, and comes from trusting in God to guide one’s actions. In a phrase, it comes from cultivating a relationship with God.

This is in distinction to a sense of peace that is of this world, such as peace that comes from having a large amount of money in a bank account, having high status in one’s society, and so on.