We who wrestle with God, Jordan Peterson

I have been listening to this audio book by Dr. Jordan Peterson, We who wrestle with God.  The use of the English language is worth the read.  Jordan Peterson is the most erudite man imaginable. The book is quite extraordinary in this day and age. His references are mainly biblical.  I’ve listened to him discuss Genesis and the Apple, the Fall and Cain and Able and Ham.  All of these stories I’ve heard in passing in churches. I’ve read the Bible cover to cover several times. Yet he has insights as profound as C.S. Lewis and Martin Luther King. The book is a long sermon of sorts. We’d fire him as a preacher with the congregation half asleep while the rest were wrestlers. But it’s like the Netflix and Prime stories, Son of Anarchy and Landsman, stories which were made into a series for they’d be too long for a movie. This book has chapters, thankfully.

The central thesis so far is hubris and pride.  God and I.  He hasn’t mentioned Martin Buber, the other great philosopher who discussed the individual and existences like Descartes.  But while he touches on reality and perception he has to this point emphasized morality, right and wrong and ethics.  He’s confronted moral relativism. He has had the courage to describe Mao, Stalin and Hitler as the most evil men of the 20th century.  In Canada we are soft on communism and there are Jewish die hards who don’t want to criticize Marx, a Jew, just like their are Chinese die hards who want to protect Mao despite his death camps. When I visited Moscow I saw that the Russians , more than westerners had dethroned Lenin along with Stalin.  It had been the gaslighting of intellectuals to agree Stalin was a bit ‘much’ but protected Lenin nonetheless, Yet there in the Moscow museum was evidence of the millions Lenin murdered in his personal purges. Not quite the tens or hundreds million Stalin killed but a goodly number for a man who once played croquet in his back yard with Royalty.  

I had read an earlier book of Jordan Peterson because I’d found his interviews superb. The book was dense and intellectual summarizing history in a remarkable way.  It was like Nietze whereas I prefer something simpler and lighter like Thoreau. Mostly that is my age.  Younger I would have loved that book.  Today I prefer synopsis.  This book, We who wrestle with Gods is anything but. Yet it is compelling.  

I began to listen to the book on my return from driving Vancouver to Ottawa to visit my relatives and see the new nephews and say hello to the neice to be.  Jordan Peterson argues pretty much for spiritual laws and describes a creative unity at the centre and warns not against the fringe but rather what lies beyond the fringe.  I’ve agreed with him in support of social arrangements which put the family at the centre as the creative tradition versus the ravings of the single person who wishes to be God.  I like the Trinity. I like duality.  I accept that the one became many and I’m not that One. There is God and I but really God is all that is indivisible.  

I do not I think share Peterson’s sense of imperatives. I’m not morally relative but while I’ve watched with horror the ‘diversity is our strength’ absurdities and tyranny I believe in multiplicity and relish variety. I am interested in the hierarchal men and women who wish to be one.  I’ve not so much wanted to be one but rather to be left alone and to be able to assist and serve.  I have been captain and I have been the surgeon but rather prefer assisting another. I”m a second son.  Jordan Peterson speaks as a father and sounds more like a second son. I know some women who are threatened by him because I believe he so effectively exposes duplicity and dishonesty.  Some women will use every means to be ‘first lady’ but have no desire to be ‘first man’.  Their fight is with their sister and not with men. A man might engage in lone combat whereas such a woman is always political.

It’s a truly brilliant book. I’m now listening to it in the morning in half hour to and an hour bits while I walk the dog. I suspect it will make me a better person whatever that might be.  My God is a loving God and personally I’m certain of foregiveness and a special place in the centre.  God is good all of the time. I’m just not sure if my approach to life will get me a Lamborghini.  Obviously the world if we believe has spiritual and social laws and deference to the centre is part of that I’m not as wealthy as I might be because of choices I’ve made.  I don’t sense that Jordan Peterson is more fulfilled than I am but then I met the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu and thought there were very nice men too. My own narcissism or paranoia may limit my appreciate of the truly great .  Jordan Peterson is that as a professor.  I’m only early in his argument and I do hope that he touches me as C.S. Lewis touched me with his surprised by joy.  He may well be John who comes before but there is no doubt that Jordan Peterson is in the room of greatness’s and espousing profound insights into Biblical truth, civilization and the wisdom of the ages.  

At times I wrestle with God and was touched by the passage with Jacob.  That was then. Today I’m more likely to say I play peek a boo with Jesus.  Jordan Peterson has a great sense of humor but maybe he thinks too much. Who am I to judge. I love best his joining Fry in a tag team debate.  I am so grateful to live in a time when men like Jordan Peterson are still openly teaching.