The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 202. Meaning, Awe and Conceptualization of God

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00:01:09.020 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast season 4 episode 61. I'm Mikayla Peterson. This is part 3

00:01:16.800 of meaning, awe, and conceptualization of God where we continue to investigate the religious realm.

00:01:23.560 This episode is comprised of multiple season 4 episodes from the podcast, specifically Jonathan

00:01:29.260 Pajot, James Orr, and Nigel Bigger, Ian McGilchrist, Lawrence Krauss, Christopher Cazor, and Matthew

00:01:36.900 Petruszek, and Bishop Barron. Today's part 3 is also accompanied by the release of the YouTube

00:01:42.740 version of all three parts of our Meaning, Awe, and Conceptualization of God series.

00:01:49.320 Before we start, I'd like to talk about Dad's Black Friday sale for his Discovering Personality

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00:02:32.560 it, you should check it out. You can visit jordanbpeterson.com slash personality or visit

00:02:38.300 jordanbpeterson.com and click on courses in the menu. It'll take you to the same page. I hope you enjoyed

00:02:43.580 this episode.

00:03:02.060 See, one of the things I've thought is that at minimum what Christianity is is a thousands of

00:03:08.180 years-long discussion about what constitutes the human ideal. It's a purely psychological

00:03:13.700 viewpoint. Now, I understand the metaphysical implications, you know, and I don't want to

00:03:20.240 dispense with them, but it's best to start with what's simple. So there's this discussion of what

00:03:27.540 constitutes the ideal, and we're exploring it and discussing it, and we explore it and discuss it in

00:03:34.380 all sorts of interesting ways, right, because it's not merely rational. Bach writes this soul-inspiring

00:03:40.540 music, and that makes us feel a particular way, and that's a hint as to the nature of the ideal, and

00:03:45.780 then there's these great cathedrals that are built all across Europe, and they're awe-inspiring

00:03:51.020 masterpieces of stone and light, right, so opposites conjoined, and they bring the primeval forest into

00:03:57.080 the city, and they provide color, and the music is set in there, and then there's the invocation of the

00:04:02.320 ancestors, and the dogmatic formulations that Christianity consists of that go back centuries

00:04:09.480 as well, and all of that, and that's all part of this exploration, and to me, it's the exploration of

00:04:15.900 that central animating spirit, and when we're debating the post-modernists who say everything

00:04:20.400 is power, this is the sort of thing that needs to be pointed out as a rejoinder. It's like, no, it's not.

00:04:26.560 We're doing our best to manifest this ideal that we're discussing. We're flawed and fragmented and

00:04:32.440 ignorant, and we don't know. So, for example, you asked me earlier, Nigel, what sort of things I had

00:04:38.940 to discuss in order to make people attracted, say, to a discussion of Genesis, and what it is is that I

00:04:44.820 try to get the wheat from the text, and in the chaff, I think a lot of that's my ignorance. It's not

00:04:51.580 necessarily chaff, but I'll leave it be because I can't, I don't have the intellectual wherewithal to

00:04:56.180 make sense of it, so I just leave it be without despising it. Because I can't understand, it

00:05:00.960 doesn't mean there isn't something to it. Now, you know, we're still stuck because we have problems

00:05:06.560 like, well, the idea of the resurrection, you know, which is obviously a very big problem in a very

00:05:16.200 fundamental sense, and I leave that be, except to say that I have seen, you know, in my studies of

00:05:23.000 mythology that there are stories of dying and resurrecting gods throughout history, and the

00:05:27.840 idea of Christ seems to be of that type, although it's not only that, but it's something I can't touch,

00:05:34.220 and that's a problem, but that doesn't mean that there isn't this investigation that we're all

00:05:39.980 undertaking, including us in this conversation, of what constitutes the ideal and how we could manifest

00:05:44.720 it if we could only understand it, and I think that's unbelievably compelling to people, and it's

00:05:51.360 not only compelling, they die without it, because we can't live with only knowledge of our limitations.

00:05:58.160 We have to be moving towards an ideal.

00:06:01.880 Well, I mean, just a quick thought there. I mean, certainly within the Christian tradition, the claim

00:06:08.700 is that God's decision to become incarnate is not accidental. He chose this particular human being,

00:06:17.820 not just because he had to choose some human being in order to become a human being, but he chose a human

00:06:24.220 being and, as it were, exhibited the qualities that he wanted to, as it were, disseminate as a kind of moral

00:06:31.120 exemplar that were profoundly countercultural to the values and the exemplars of the time.

00:06:39.680 So you think of the kind of the weakness of Christ in some contexts, the sort of the, obviously the sense

00:06:47.260 of self-sacrifice, the radical openness to those on the margins, the poor in particular, the ceremonially

00:06:56.320 unclean, and, of course, to women. And so it's as if that this is completely subverting the kind of,

00:07:04.160 the sort of power narrative that dominated first-century Palestine, particularly in the form of the

00:07:12.400 sort of the Roman legions and the Roman imperium. And so I think that's a quick thought.

00:07:19.520 I've really been struck constantly by some of Jung's descriptions of Christ as a member of the

00:07:25.520 Trinity, because Jung makes much of John's sense of Christ, the logos that's there across time,

00:07:33.280 which I read something as something like the creative consciousness that's involved in the

00:07:39.200 bringing to awareness of being, something like that. So it's maybe identical to consciousness itself,

00:07:45.520 at least in its higher stages. It's very abstract. But then there's Christ, the carpenter, who lived in

00:07:51.680 a particular time and place, which is kind of a mystery, because everyone asks, like in the movie,

00:07:56.480 Jesus Christ Superstar, you know, why that time and that place? And the answer is, well, it has to be

00:08:02.640 some bounded time and place. And so if we're, if what Christ is, is a representative, in some sense,

00:08:09.520 of what a human being is, is that there's a divine aspect to us, which is this creative consciousness

00:08:14.960 that's very abstract. But it's also localized intensely, you know, in a historic, in an arbitrary

00:08:21.520 throne, to use the existential phrase, historical context. And then each of us is unique in that

00:08:27.520 manner. But there's something universal about each of us, too, that enables us to reach out to each

00:08:32.320 other. And also gives each of our individual lives a larger significance that otherwise they

00:08:40.240 just wouldn't have at all. Well, yes. And the significant, you know, one of my students once

00:08:43.840 asked me a brilliant question is like, well, if the, if all stories have the archetypal structure,

00:08:49.120 why not just tell the same archetype over and over? And I thought, you know, well, isn't that so

00:08:54.560 interesting? Because what you want is you want old wine and new skin, so to speak, right? You want,

00:09:00.320 you want the universal story particularized. And then I thought, well, that's exactly what Jung said

00:09:06.240 about the figure of Christ, is it's the universal story particularized. And, and both of those,

00:09:10.800 like both the particularization and the universality, it's the intersection of those

00:09:14.960 two that produces the meaning. And it also produces, I guess you say meaning, I would say human dignity.

00:09:23.120 Because on the one hand, there is individuality. No one quite grasps the truth or speaks the truth

00:09:30.640 in my time and place, like me. So, in a sense, everyone is a unique profit,

00:09:37.280 and has a unique responsibility. But we are commonly subject to a universal order, universal

00:09:45.680 obligations, universal calling, which, which endows our little lives with a larger significance.

00:09:53.520 The important things are hard to articulate in words, they're implicit meanings, all the deep things

00:09:59.600 like love, religion, poetry, music. How do you say these in words? How do you say them in language?

00:10:06.960 But they have extraordinary meaning and power. They're the things we live for,

00:10:11.040 not for the things that we can say, put down in a notebook, if you know what I mean.

00:10:15.120 I try to look at things scientifically, insofar as the science allows those things to be viewed.

00:10:20.800 Okay. And so, to the degree that I can look at religious matters from a biological perspective,

00:10:25.600 I do that, because it's simpler. Okay. So, I believe that the religious instinct manifests itself

00:10:32.320 in a variety of fundamental motivations, but they're abstract motivations to some degree. So,

00:10:39.760 the experience of awe, that's a major one. The experience of beauty, that's another one.

00:10:47.200 The experience of admiration, and the desire to imitate, those are crucial. And so, one of the things

00:10:57.120 that I would point out, you can tell me what you think about this, and I've been trying to formalize

00:11:01.200 this idea, and I don't know its extent. So, I look at Christianity in particular, although not uniquely

00:11:08.640 Christianity, but Christianity in particular, as a thousands of years investigation into the structure

00:11:16.960 of the abstracted ideal to imitate. So, imagine we imitate those we admire. Okay. But we're abstract

00:11:26.240 creatures. So, we want to know what's the essence of what should be imitated itself. Now, we investigate

00:11:32.640 that. It's not all explicit. We have to represent it in music. We have to represent it in art. We have to

00:11:38.400 represent it in architecture. Because we're hitting at it from multiple different domains. And that is

00:11:45.280 a reductionistic argument, right? It says nothing to do about divinity itself. Sure. It's purely

00:11:51.120 psychological or a biological argument. You're saying that everything is relevant. That what these

00:11:57.840 philosophers were talking about, what these artists were painting, what these musicians are doing,

00:12:05.040 what filmmakers are doing, this is all something that's trying to get us that way.

00:12:11.920 No, that's what a cathedral represents. You know, it's an expression in stone of this yearning to bring

00:12:22.000 the material world into harmony with the spirit. It's something like that. And that's what music

00:12:26.960 does as well. And there's this proclivity within us to strive upward. And the cathedral, I mean,

00:12:34.640 the cathedrals, they're absolutely amazing. These lattice-like structures of stone. There's something

00:12:40.960 about the harmonious interplay of shadow and light that's key to it as well. It's like the opening up

00:12:46.160 of dark matter to the light that pours in. That's all embodied in the architecture. And I can't say,

00:12:54.240 and neither can anyone else, what that ultimately represents. And then to bring music into that space

00:12:59.440 and tradition, it's all pointing upward to something, to the direction that we're supposed to go.

00:13:05.840 It's so terrible to see these buildings empty out. I mean, thank God that they're being preserved in

00:13:11.360 some sense by the tourists who come there driven by a sense of awe. But we can't inhabit them anymore

00:13:18.160 the way that we used to. And that's a terrible thing. It means there's a kind of ideal

00:13:23.040 that we're no longer pursuing. Perhaps we're no longer pursuing it. It seems like a catastrophe to me.

00:13:32.640 No one really knows how to revitalize it though, unfortunately.

00:13:37.360 Well, I think one of the problems to me when I was in Paris working on Man in the Iron Mask,

00:13:43.280 I would want on a Sunday morning to go to a mass. And it was very difficult to find...

00:13:53.680 Well, for one thing, in a Baptist, church would start at 11 o'clock on a Sunday morning,

00:13:58.960 and the masses aren't like that. But go into, say, the Cathedral Saint-Germain. And there was no one

00:14:08.240 there. It's a magnificent ancient cathedral and a few tourists. And the place didn't feel dead. The

00:14:19.280 architecture was alive. But it was very difficult to have a congregation. And a congregation is what the

00:14:28.160 church, of course, is supposed to be. It's a collection of people who are united and different.

00:14:38.080 It's a collection of sinners acknowledging their sins. And I think that is a fascinating thing to me

00:14:48.320 about how we keep... Well, it's so surprising. It's also so surprising that those hundreds of years

00:14:59.440 ago when most of those buildings were built, that those cultures would dedicate themselves

00:15:06.480 to such great cost to produce these absolutely spectacular, impossible buildings made out of

00:15:13.680 stone or brick. They're like a dance in stone. They're so magnificent. And then to fill them with

00:15:23.360 the greatest of artworks, and to bring the light in in the most colorful possible ways, and then to bring

00:15:31.520 the music in to set the scene, and then to have everyone come in and commit to at least not being

00:15:38.720 as bad as they were, right? Like it was a joint moral enterprise that everyone was involved in. You can be

00:15:44.720 as cynical about that as you want and talk about, you know, Sunday Christians and all of that. But an hour a

00:15:51.040 week to contemplate how it is that you should be living your life, or to become in tune with your

00:15:58.640 conscience once again, which at least the confession can offer that. And then to see that so much effort

00:16:07.600 was poured into that. It's amazing that that over occurred. And then it's also equally amazing that we've

00:16:13.360 stopped doing it. Because you might think, well, wouldn't we be interested in jointly coming together

00:16:21.520 and saying, well, here's how we're inadequate, and here's how we're conceptualizing what would be ideal,

00:16:28.160 and couldn't we move together toward that? And I was talking to Bishop Barron this week about this issue,

00:16:39.200 about the loss, especially in the Catholic Church of young people. And it seems that there's a great

00:16:48.480 adventure there that isn't being communicated properly. And it's a terrible loss for all of us.

00:17:00.240 What do we have to replace that? You know, I've talked to the new atheists, especially Sam Harris,

00:17:06.400 and it's not like I don't understand their arguments. It's not like I don't have sympathy

00:17:10.320 for them, for that matter. But there's nothing poetic or artistic or magnificent about

00:17:22.960 the alternative. Yes. Right? It loses, it loses, it loses. There's something that just disappears.

00:17:30.160 It's the, it's that artistic ineffability. There's no room, there's no obvious room for that in the,

00:17:36.320 say, the Enlightenment worldview. I'm an admirer of Steven Pinker, for example.

00:17:42.000 And he falls into the Enlightenment rationalist camp. And in his book, The Language Instinct,

00:17:49.920 he talks a little bit at the end about culture, philosophy, music, art, and all of that religion,

00:17:55.600 even for that matter, to some degree, but it's like a throwaway chapter at the end. Whereas by my way of

00:18:00.640 looking, that's the whole book, all of that, that artistic endeavor, and that shades into the

00:18:06.480 religious endeavor. And that, that's the, that's not some side effect of human cognitive development,

00:18:13.120 quite the contrary. It's the central feature. And I agree. Well, Jordan, when, when you're

00:18:19.520 speaking with Julia, the, the most recent podcast I heard, the, it reminded me, her, her description

00:18:28.720 of her life reminded me of an experience I had in Russia. I was in St. Petersburg, and we were doing a,

00:18:35.440 a scout for a film I wrote called Love and Honor, based on a novel that I wrote. And, and we were

00:18:45.120 finished with the scout. We had seen everything that, that we were scheduled to see. And this young

00:18:52.000 woman who was in her early thirties, a Russian woman, asked if there was anything else we'd like to

00:18:58.320 see because we had some time. And I said, well, I'd love to see some of your churches.

00:19:04.560 And she got this quizzical look on her face. She was surprised that, I don't know, a Hollywood

00:19:09.520 director would ask that. And she said, well, I'll take you to my church. And I said, you've got a

00:19:16.800 church? And she said, oh yes, I'm Christian. And I said, but you grew up when that was discouraged,

00:19:24.000 and I'm illegal. Are your parents Christian? And she said, no. Um, their mother's, uh,

00:19:31.680 confirmed atheist or her father was baptized as a child, but he's also an atheist. And so I said,

00:19:38.160 well, how did you become Christian? And she said, there was no beauty. I was a young girl walking

00:19:45.760 around and nothing was beautiful. And one day I passed the church and I could see candlelight

00:19:52.240 in it and heard music coming out. And I went in and I kept going and I kept going and I became a

00:19:59.440 Christian. And, and, and that to me says so much. Um, and people have no idea. They have no idea.

00:20:08.320 That's why I wrote chapter eight. They have no idea how much they're starving for beauty.

00:20:12.160 Yes. Like it's, it's, it's a hunger that goes far beyond. Well, let's not say that it doesn't have

00:20:18.480 to go beyond material hunger, but it, it, no matter how well fed you are without some relationship to

00:20:28.960 beauty, there's too much suffering in the world for it to be viable. It's the ant it's along with truth.

00:20:35.120 It's the antidote to, to suffering. It's not, it's not, uh, optional, right? It's crucial.

00:20:44.160 And you can tell that by its economic value for those who are hard headed. It's like,

00:20:48.960 you can't point to anything with more economic value, period, the end. And so.

00:20:55.120 Well, some weeks back when you were, you were, I felt really working your way back that, that,

00:21:03.920 that work and engagement and in your calling, um, is helping to heal and sustain you. Um,

00:21:13.520 you said something along the lines of that, that you wondered why in the, the Christian community and

00:21:22.320 religious community, the people were telling you that, um, your work means so much, you know, why,

00:21:31.760 why it, it, it, it, it's, it's somewhat overwhelming to realize that so many people are drawing

00:21:40.080 from you. And, and I think I can tell you. It is completely. It is. I, I, today I was sitting on a

00:21:46.240 bench with my friend who walks with me and this kid came up to me and he said,

00:21:52.960 apologies for interrupting you, but I was listening to your podcast while I was walking down the street

00:21:58.400 and I saw you here. He said, and he started to tear up right away. He said, five years ago,

00:22:04.720 I was suicidal. And I was, I've been listening to your lectures on a regular basis. He said,

00:22:10.640 an hour and a half a day, which seems like an overdose to me. Um, he said, he's invented prosthetic

00:22:19.920 limbs and has helped all sorts of disabled people and is on his way to MIT. It's like, it's a random

00:22:29.760 meeting on the street, you know? Yes. Yes. And thank God for that too much.

00:22:36.400 Yes, of course it is. But I tell you, and like, I know you like to understand, you know, that's the,

00:22:43.600 the, um, there's something else you said a couple of weeks back about, I, I want to,

00:22:50.640 I want to understand why I want to understand why this story makes sense. And, and I do too,

00:22:56.880 but the what of it all, um, that to me gets at the why of it all, but the what of it all

00:23:03.200 is that you speak to people like me and like others who, who know this, this experience of more,

00:23:16.240 who know, who know what it is to stand in awe, um, to, to feel the awe of a moment. And you combine

00:23:28.000 all the different elements of, of perspective, of thought, of experience, and you, you

00:23:38.160 validate or endorse that, that people who choose faith and who see courage and sacrifice as crucial

00:23:49.520 divine values are not idiots. It's, I think that that's, it's no accident that crucial and cross are

00:23:58.000 the same thing. Yes, exactly. And, and, and, and, you know, we, we go through this thing of, well,

00:24:06.880 um, you're, you're, you're just, you're, you're choosing an opiate. And, and to me, it's like, well,

00:24:15.040 um, the, the alternative is not attractive to, I, when I started working on the Pope story, I came across

00:24:22.960 a, a statement that, uh, I believe is one of the, um, talk show, um, guys, late night talk show guys

00:24:31.120 had said Conan O'Brien, I believe it was, but he said that, uh, Pope Francis had made a pronouncement

00:24:37.120 that he thought even atheists could go to heaven. And in gratitude, atheists have said, um, that the

00:24:44.880 Pope, when he dies is welcome to enter their endless void of nothingness.

00:24:48.880 Well, that, you know, the problem with that worldview is in some sense, that endless void of nothingness

00:25:00.480 confronts us right here and now. Yes, exactly. That I, I try to tell people I'm, I'm not so much

00:25:08.240 concerned about life after death as life after birth. Um, you know, Jesus said, come that you can have life

00:25:15.140 and have it more abundantly. And, and I'm not trying in a movie to, to, uh, espouse my particular

00:25:23.100 dogma. I don't believe in my own dogma. My, you know, my own dogma is, is, is limited. And, and I'm

00:25:31.460 not, I'm not trying to think that when I was in school and I'd study systematic theologians, and I

00:25:36.740 remember asking my mentor, who was the head of the department, um, what is really the point? What,

00:25:44.040 what are they trying to do? And he said, well, they're, they're trying to have a system of

00:25:50.660 understanding that, that holds up, um, from every angle. I thought, but well, how's that working out

00:25:58.920 for them? Because ultimately you get into, do you have faith or not? When I write a story, it's, it's,

00:26:08.200 I've got to jump in and trust. And I don't know where they'll lead, but I know that to not jump in

00:26:17.600 is, is death. And so for me, it's like the old Testament says, you know, I set before you life

00:26:28.000 and death, choose life. And, and that to me is what I, I hope my work's about. And I'm damn sure it's

00:26:36.980 what your work's about. Let's, let's delve into this faith issue a bit too, because the faith is a

00:26:45.500 very complicated term and, you know, it's often parodied by the rationalists, you know, to have

00:26:55.200 faith in God is parodied as a, like a primitive and superstitious belief. But my psychological

00:27:06.400 investigations convinced me that there's no action without faith because we are always stepping into

00:27:13.800 the unknown. We have to take a leap of faith to exist, to do the simplest of things, to literally

00:27:22.540 to move. And that has to do with what I said earlier, is that we're trying to move from a place

00:27:28.680 of less value to a place of more value. So we have to make some assumptions about what constitutes value.

00:27:34.860 And then we have to believe that our actions are going to have the outcome that we desire.

00:27:38.900 And we do that without evidence. I mean, that's partly why to be human is to be riven with anxiety.

00:27:44.420 It's because there's no certainty. And so you can't act without faith. And so then the question

00:27:50.040 if you accept that proposition, you can't act without faith. And I actually believe, I don't

00:27:55.600 believe that that's a disputable proposition, unless you view people as deterministic in the

00:28:03.140 way that clocks are, you know, so that we're just stimulus response machines. It seems to me that

00:28:09.100 instead we're moving into the unknown. And we do that in dread, in some sense, dread and hope. And we do

00:28:16.220 that because we have faith. And when we lose that faith, our lives fall apart. And we don't know which

00:28:22.620 way is up or down. And so then the question is, well, if we have to have faith, what is it that we

00:28:29.560 should have faith in? And then the answer seems to be something like, well, we should have, if we have

00:28:35.580 to make a decision about that, maybe we try to have faith in what, in, in the idea that the best should

00:28:41.420 be pursued and will prevail as an organizing principle. And then the question is, well, what

00:28:47.280 is the best? And the answer is, well, that's really hard question. And so we need cathedrals and we need

00:28:53.460 box music and we need the stories in Genesis and we need the world's great literature. And we need all

00:28:59.700 of that theater and drama and art and aesthetics to help us understand what the best is and to determine

00:29:07.660 how it should prevail. And I don't see that technically as any different from, I think it

00:29:13.320 is the same thing psychologically as the worship of Christ. I think it's the same thing because

00:29:22.100 again, I'm trying to speak psychologically to think about what Christ represents. I'm not thinking about

00:29:28.140 him as a historical figure. That's something we can get to later.

00:29:31.360 That image, which is seen, for example, laid out on these massive cathedral domes, Christ

00:29:43.240 as logos, as, as generator of the world. It's, it's the idea that the proper mode of being

00:29:49.180 is brought into existence by consciousness that's operating according to the highest possible

00:29:54.620 principles. And like, why wouldn't, and that is the kind of faith that's maybe got some courage

00:30:02.680 associated with it, right? I'm going to act as if this is the case. We're all going to act as if this

00:30:07.500 is the case. Now that begs the question, does that make it real? Well, Pope Benedict XVI, who's a

00:30:15.120 great intellectual hero of mine, said the church always does three essential things. The church

00:30:19.940 worships God, it evangelizes, and it cares for the poor. Poor broadly construed, as I say, anyone who's

00:30:27.000 suffering, right? But that first move, as we said earlier, is indispensable. The church worships God.

00:30:32.480 It teaches the world right praise, because without right praise, the whole thing falls apart.

00:30:37.640 Secondly, it evangelizes. What's that? Well, that's a cool thing too, because euangelion in Greek,

00:30:43.160 good news, they were playing with that because the, the Romans would have used that in the eastern part of

00:30:48.980 the empire to announce an imperial victory. They would send an evangelist ahead with the good news,

00:30:55.160 euangelion, hey, Caesar won a victory. So these very edgy first Christians who had zero social status,

00:31:01.000 no power, no military behind them said, oh, no, no, I got the true euangelion. It's about Jesus risen

00:31:08.080 from the dead, who was put to death by Caesar, but whom God raised. So that's the proclamation of the

00:31:14.540 good news that now we have hope. Now the sacrifice has been made and God's love is greater than anything

00:31:20.320 that's in the world. Okay. Now I got those two things in place. Now serve the poor. Now go where

00:31:25.840 the pain is, go where the suffering is. But if you divorce them from each other, and that, that has

00:31:30.560 happened. So who cares about worship and that's fussing around with altars and sacristies and who

00:31:35.600 cares about evangelization? Let's just get down and serve the poor. Then it does devolve simply into

00:31:40.780 social work, right? But if the three are together, worship God, evangelize the dying and rising of

00:31:47.040 Jesus and serve the poor. Now the church is, is cooking, you know? All right. So let's, let's look

00:31:53.080 at the second one of those. So, you know, it seems to me, I can understand this, not that whether I can

00:31:59.880 understand it or not is a hallmark of its validity, but I have to try to understand what I can understand.

00:32:04.800 I can understand the idea that bearing forward in a moral direction, acting as if being is

00:32:13.760 intrinsically good and that human, that humanity as part of that is also intrinsically good,

00:32:20.200 bearing up under, bearing all that up as a set of propositions, even in the most extreme cases of

00:32:27.080 suffering. I can see that as a valid moral good. That's, that's Christ's refusal to be, um, what would

00:32:35.380 you say, corrupted by the injustice of his, and, and terror of his fate. And so that might be something

00:32:43.300 like, you don't have the right to become a tyrant no matter how badly you were tyrannized, let's say.

00:32:50.060 And I think that's an unshakable moral proposition. Um, but then there's the resurrection element of it,

00:32:56.420 because I could say, well, the first thing I would say is, well, I kind of understand that

00:33:00.580 psychologically. Parts of us die and, and they have to die because they're in error. They have to be

00:33:06.700 cast off and we're reborn constantly as a consequence of our movement, our ascent forward. There's no

00:33:13.360 movement forward without some death of the past. And so I can see the resurrection idea as a

00:33:20.140 metaphor for the part of us that continues onward, despite our failures and constantly reconstitutes

00:33:28.260 our spirit. It's not something trivial, but then there's the insistence on in the church of the

00:33:34.940 bodily resurrection, which is, well, let's call that a stumbling block to modern belief. No, no doubt

00:33:41.540 about that. That's something more than mere metaphor. And so you might ask, well, why is it insisted upon?

00:33:47.340 Why isn't the proposition that you have a transcendent moral obligation to bear,

00:33:55.000 to, to, to operate for the good of all things, regardless of your suffering,

00:34:00.080 a hard line, no justification with, um, the defeat of death necessitated.

00:34:08.340 I'm not trying to make a fundamental critique of the idea of the resurrection, because I know there

00:34:13.080 are things that I don't know. I, I, I know that for sure. And God only knows how the world is

00:34:18.940 fundamentally structured, but, but it seems, and this is a Nietzschean criticism in some sense,

00:34:24.860 too, and a Freudian criticism. It's, that seems in, in some real sense, too good to be true.

00:34:30.480 Yeah.

00:34:30.840 So, and, and so what do you make of the, what do you make of the resurrection? How do you

00:34:35.780 conceptualize it, even as it's related in the gospels?

00:34:41.220 Yeah, good. You're raising a lot of interesting things. First of all, everything you said about

00:34:44.740 it in terms of psychological, um, archetypes and metaphors, good, fine. I think those are

00:34:50.160 legitimate. I think those are, are correct perceptions of things. And it has indeed functioned

00:34:55.520 that way in a lot of the literature of the world, resurrection type stories. But I think what's

00:34:59.860 really interesting about the New Testament, as, as Lewis said, you know, C.S. Lewis, when someone

00:35:04.840 said, well, um, the New Testament is just another iteration of, of the ancient myth. And he said,

00:35:09.460 anyone that says that has not read many myths because there's something so distinctive about

00:35:14.360 the New Testament. And what I, I would say, Jordan, first this, I think from the first page of

00:35:21.440 Matthew through revelation, what you get throughout is this, what I call this grab you by the shoulders

00:35:26.960 quality. They knew about literature that is conveying deep psychological and philosophical

00:35:33.340 truth. You know, Paul certainly knew that literature very well. Um, it doesn't sound like that though.

00:35:39.880 It has overtones with it. It bears some of that. It has family resemblances with it. But what,

00:35:46.660 what you find on every page is this euangelion, this good news. So everything you said is true.

00:35:55.120 I think it is true, but it's not exactly news. It's part of the philosophy of Perennis has been

00:36:00.340 around for a long time. And a lot of the great thinkers of the world. And again, I agree with it.

00:36:04.820 I like the philosophy of Perennis, but the New Testament is people who grabbed everyone they met by

00:36:12.700 the shoulders to say something happened. Something's happened here that we were not expecting that was

00:36:19.480 not part of, of our, of our thought system. And it's so shaken us up that we feel obligated to go

00:36:26.360 careering around the world and indeed to our deaths, announcing it and defending it. And what it was,

00:36:33.860 was the fact here in the, in the 10th chapter of Acts of the Apostles, uh, this sort of almost tossed

00:36:40.440 offline. We who ate and drank with him after his resurrection from the dead. Um, I don't think

00:36:48.460 people trading in mythic talk use that kind of language, mythic language. And again, I say it with

00:36:54.500 high praise. I love the myths. Uh, but you know, once upon a time and in a galaxy far, far away,

00:37:00.660 and then a mythic story unfolds, but read the Acts of the Apostles. Um, did you hear about what

00:37:05.640 happened? It was first was up in Galilee and then in Judea, you know, those people that John the

00:37:10.060 Baptist, remember John the Baptist? Well, and then there's Jesus and then in Jerusalem. And then

00:37:13.960 we, we, we, who ate and drank with him after his resurrection from the dead. It's, that's what,

00:37:21.080 and then look at Paul, Paul who saw him on the road to Damascus. Now the Pauline letters,

00:37:27.140 man, they do not read like myths. They just don't. And I love the myths. I love the philosophy

00:37:31.780 apprentice, but it doesn't read like that. It reads like someone who is, has been so bowled

00:37:37.100 over by something and he wants you to know about it. And it's changed everything. And I think what

00:37:42.480 it was, was what we said earlier. It's okay. Now, now we know God's mercy and love is greater than

00:37:51.360 anything we can possibly do. Why? Because we killed God. And that's why Paul will say, I'm going to hold

00:37:56.380 up one thing to you, Christ and him crucified and crucified. I mean, it was the most horrific thing they

00:38:00.980 could imagine in the ancient world. It was deeply embarrassing even to talk about a crucifixion.

00:38:05.800 Paul says, no, no, let me put it right in your face. See, the author of life came and we killed

00:38:10.880 him, but I got the good news. It won Gileon is God's mercy and love is, is greater because he brought

00:38:18.480 this Jesus back from the dead. Well, you do have a, you do have the following argument, which is that

00:38:24.200 it isn't clear, which is harder to believe whether that happened or whether people made it up,

00:38:29.300 because if they made it up, that was really something. And that, that does strike me quite

00:38:34.100 frequently reading the new Testament. There are, there are lines in there that hit so hard. You

00:38:38.740 think, Hmm, it isn't obvious to me how someone could have just thought that up. So, and there is

00:38:45.340 that, well, and Jung, Carl Jung, um, who I greatly admire, you know, he believed, I think in the same

00:38:51.420 way that C.S. Lewis did that. And he doesn't talk about this that much, but that there is this

00:38:57.080 archetypal mythological pattern of the dying and resurrecting hero that has this psychological

00:39:01.480 reality, which is extraordinarily deep, but that, that archetype was realized once in history and

00:39:08.520 that's the fully realized. So it, it, it came from the, the, the mythic realm, let's say the realm of

00:39:14.420 eternal truth, the realm of pattern, instinctive pattern for that matter, and was fully realized at

00:39:20.700 one point in history. And you might think, well, if it's going to be fully realized, it has to start

00:39:25.760 somewhere, you know, it can't start everywhere at the same time or. Right. Right. What's an

00:39:32.280 archetype look like when it takes flesh might be a way to get at that. Well, well, and, and the thing

00:39:37.140 is we, we do see this and it does grip us because movies, like we see representations of this all the

00:39:44.420 time. In, in my new book, I talk a fair bit about Harry Potter and no, Harry Potter is definitely an

00:39:52.120 archetype taking Christ figure, taking flesh. Oh, well, clearly he's in battle with Satan himself,

00:39:57.580 obviously. I mean, and, and she has an unbelievably profound mythological imagination. And the thing

00:40:03.840 that's so fascinating about all of that is that because her mythological imagination is spot on,

00:40:09.700 she captivated the entire globe and, and produced, you know, this immense storehouse of wealth and

00:40:16.180 dominated the entertainment landscape for a decade. And, you know, people don't take that seriously,

00:40:21.180 but it's a, it's a great mystery to watch that. Absolutely. They should. It's, it's, it's a,

00:40:27.480 you know, anything that grips people's attention like that is obviously worth paying attention to.

00:40:33.340 Yeah. So, you know, Lewis called them good dreams, right? So all the sort of archetypal

00:40:38.440 anticipations of the gospel, the good dreams of the race, or use the Jungian. I love Jung too,

00:40:45.960 but what happens if that archetype of the person perfectly pleasing to God, you know, Kant's language,

00:40:51.180 what would happen if that archetype became flesh? And indeed, that's how they put it. The word became

00:40:56.580 flesh and dwelt among us. I think that's also the question we should each be asking ourselves

00:41:01.240 in our own lives. Yeah. It's like, well, who could we be? And you say, well, you don't have to ask

00:41:08.300 yourself that question. It's like, well, good luck with your conscience. Then you should be another

00:41:13.020 Christ. That's the objection to the self-created person. It's like, yeah. The, the, the idea that you can

00:41:19.880 create your own values is, well, good luck. Right. Try luck with that project. Yeah. Good luck. Right.

00:41:25.080 It's not, it's not going to work. You know, Newman referred to the conscience. I always love this as

00:41:30.260 the aboriginal vicar of Christ in the soul. So he took the language descriptive of the Pope, you know,

00:41:35.080 the vicar of Christ, but he said the aboriginal vicar of Christ is the conscience. John Henry Newman.

00:41:40.280 Okay. Cause I was thinking of Eric Neumann. So. No, John Henry Newman. And I, it's,

00:41:44.620 it's a beautiful way of describing it because we'd say the Christ dwelling within you is the voice of

00:41:50.020 the conscience that's calling you to sanctity, ultimately to heroic self-sacrifice to being who

00:41:57.620 Christ is. It also is, it is what people worship because here, here's a way of thinking about it

00:42:03.440 technically. Well, look, when I have a conversation with you, there's something I want from you. I want,

00:42:10.900 I want everything you can give me. I want you to be as, as, as, as there as you can possibly be.

00:42:18.660 That's what I've been demanding all the time. If my attention, assuming a properly constituted

00:42:25.260 subjectivity, if my attention wanders, that means you're not delivering. And so if you're wandering

00:42:31.780 around and everyone's attention is wandering away from you, you're not delivering and conscience,

00:42:36.800 because we're so social work, social creatures to the final degree, conscience tells you when you

00:42:42.800 deviate from the ideal and that ideal is what people worship. They, by attending to that manifestation

00:42:48.800 of the ideal in you, they worship it. And so that's there. It's there in the, in the demands that we can't

00:42:57.000 help but make of each other and of ourselves. There's no escape from that. And so I, I do think it's a

00:43:03.400 perfectly good question. What would happen? And this is the right question for your life. What

00:43:09.100 would happen if you took that seriously? And so again, what I see is that it doesn't seem to me to

00:43:15.280 be, if the church can no longer attract young people, it has to be that they're not taking that

00:43:23.960 with sufficient seriousness. Now, yeah, I think there's a lot to that. I don't want to externalize

00:43:30.020 the blame. It's like, I know the church is a human organization and all of that. And, but,

00:43:34.720 but it's still evidence.

00:43:36.600 But it's not just that, you know, it's, it's not just about going to church. I, one time I, I told

00:43:40.420 you something and, and I don't know if I could drive, if I was able to drive it through there,

00:43:45.160 there's something about being in a hierarchy that is that, because there's an aspect of being in a

00:43:51.340 hierarchy that you talk about, which is this kind of striving to, to kind of be the best within that

00:43:56.100 hierarchy, but there's an aspect of being in a hierarchy, which is that the hierarchy covers you.

00:44:01.880 Oh, definitely. There's no doubt about that.

00:44:03.880 Yeah. And so there's something about submitting.

00:44:06.380 That's why the lowest, the lowest status members of a chimp group will still fight off interlopers.

00:44:12.660 Yeah. And so there's, there's a value in being in a community and a, and a hierarchy where you,

00:44:20.340 like, I go to confession, right? I go to confession. I go to my priest and I confess my sins and,

00:44:26.900 and I give that to him. He actually takes responsibility for, for an aspect of listening

00:44:35.160 to my sins and, and kind of participating in my salvation. And he, and so the weight ends up being

00:44:41.320 distributed across the community. It's not, so you don't actually just bear it on your,

00:44:46.840 on yourself. And it's not just even, and it's not just a living community. It's a,

00:44:51.060 it's not just those that are alive in the, in the hierarchy, but those that are,

00:44:54.480 that have left their story. All the saints are part of this hierarchy that you engage in,

00:44:59.360 that you participate in, and that you see as consolation, as examples, as, you know, as examples

00:45:06.180 of people who have lived through difficult things that you can kind of, that you can shoulder up

00:45:12.160 against, you know? And so that's one of the reasons why I, I kind of insist with, at least for the

00:45:16.600 people that watch my videos is, is when I say go to church, it's not just because I'm trying to

00:45:22.220 moralize you into doing something. It's because it's a, it's actually a participation in how

00:45:27.140 the best vision of reality works.

00:45:32.940 I've got no objection to any of that.

00:45:37.180 But I've seen you, I've seen you, I'm probably one of the only people in the world that has

00:45:42.280 actually seen you in church and seen you, you know, squirm and squirm in church.

00:45:49.380 Why?

00:45:53.620 See, the other thing, I was reading, again, I was reading this book and it's mostly a jumping

00:45:59.220 off place for me to think. It's like, there's also something, because I'm not inside the church,

00:46:07.040 so to speak. It's hard to say what the utility of that is.

00:46:12.880 The utility of being inside the church.

00:46:16.400 Of being outside it.

00:46:17.820 Oh, being outside the church.

00:46:18.220 Because I'm an outsider talking about religious matters.

00:46:21.400 Yeah, but I think that, I think that, I think that it has played a great role. Like I, I've often

00:46:27.240 said something that, I've often said that you're something like King Cyrus. If you know the story

00:46:31.520 of King Cyrus in scripture, King Cyrus was a Persian king who told the Jews to go back to Israel and

00:46:38.900 build their temple. So he wasn't Jewish. Like he wasn't, he wasn't an Israelite. He wouldn't believe

00:46:43.340 in the God of the Israelites, but he was like, Hey, you know, that temple of yours looks pretty nice.

00:46:47.380 Why don't you just go back there and, and rebuild your own, own thing. And so that's definitely an

00:46:53.200 effect that I've seen you have, you know, the number of people that have become Christian because

00:46:57.840 of you is hilarious. Sorry. It's not hilarious, but it's just kind of, it's just kind of this

00:47:02.580 strange thing. Cause you, you, you kind of stand outside and you look at, you're looking at the

00:47:06.600 door and you're looking at the church and you're saying, Hey, this isn't not so bad. You know,

00:47:10.040 look at this. What is, what is going on here? Like, what is this about? And, and then because

00:47:14.820 of that, it's also, do you think you've got something better?

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00:51:20.160 What was it? Milton? Didn't Milton write Paradise Lost to justify the ways of God to man? It's a hell

00:51:32.720 of an ambition. In some sense, that's what this entire religious endeavor does, the literary endeavor

00:51:37.220 as well. What's the point of all this? What's the meaning of this? And, you know, when you think about

00:51:43.340 that in two, two propositionally, and this, I also saw this in my therapy practice, it's like, well,

00:51:50.900 what's the meaning of life? And I could easily get off on a nihilistic argument with some of my more

00:51:55.400 intelligent clients. They had a rejoinder for every proposition about why life was valuable.

00:52:01.060 But then if you said to them, don't be so sure that that part of you is your friend. Look what it's

00:52:08.980 doing to you. It's so destructive. And it has all of its self-justifying arguments, and they might

00:52:14.540 even be coherent. But look at the consequences, and then contrast that with your own experience.

00:52:23.600 Like, when does that sense of nihilistic despair disappear? You know, for some people, it's when

00:52:28.620 they're with people they love. They're with friends or family. Some people find it in creative activity.

00:52:33.060 Some people find it in charity. There are various sources of meaning. And that's not propositional.

00:52:42.180 You see it in your own life, right? You can literally in therapy have people track that it's

00:52:47.020 like, well, you're nihilistically depressed. Let's let's watch your life for a week and see

00:52:51.060 how that ebbs and flows with what you're doing. And then see if we can get you participating more in

00:52:59.000 what makes it ebb than what makes it flow. And that's empirical in a sense, right? I'm not asking

00:53:05.360 you to believe something. I'm asking you to watch the structure of your own reality to see where

00:53:09.700 meaning manifests itself. And then you could say, in some sense, the sum total of where meaning

00:53:17.240 manifests itself, that's where God resides. And that relationship with God that you described

00:53:24.080 as, as the, what would you say, as that, that has to be maintained by our good behavior.

00:53:35.280 I suppose that's that desire to live in that space of meaning. And then you can propositionalize

00:53:44.060 that you can say, well, that's associated with love. And it's associated with courage. It's associated

00:53:48.460 with these classical virtues. And it's not these things that we've learned to deem as evil.

00:53:54.080 And that's, that's where you, is that, is it reasonable to say that that's where you

00:53:59.240 find God if you're searching? Is that the, is that an appropriate way of looking at it?

00:54:04.660 I think so. I met a guy one time who told me he went to a lecture and the lecture was on God's

00:54:11.620 existence and the guy was lecturing. And then after the lecture, my friend came up to him and said,

00:54:15.780 you know, everything you say is a bunch of malarkey. There's no God. It's just,

00:54:20.760 your lecture is just meaningless. And the guy said, okay, um, what I want you to do is for the

00:54:26.400 next week, I want you to treat everyone that you meet as if they were Jesus in disguise.

00:54:34.060 And the guy left the lecture and he went home and, you know, he gets home and, you know, mom's there

00:54:39.320 doing the dishes. And he thought to himself, well, if this were Jesus in disguise doing the dishes,

00:54:42.840 I'd probably go up and like help my mom do the dishes. And then dad came home from work. And rather

00:54:47.340 than ignore him, he said, Hey dad, how was, how was work? How's everything going? And, you know,

00:54:51.040 cause if that were really Jesus in disguise, I would do that. And then they're eating dinner

00:54:54.800 together with the family and there's one hamburger left. And he turns to his brother and says, Hey,

00:54:59.260 why don't you have this? And the guy told me his life was completely transformed by literally one

00:55:05.480 week of acting in this sort of way. And that's not really surprising. Pope Benedict talked about this in

00:55:12.820 one of his encyclicals, that one way to God is to act in this sort of way to act as if God exists,

00:55:20.460 right, right, to act as if other people are Jesus in disguise. And, you know, Mother Teresa talked about

00:55:26.340 that too, that for her, the poor and the leper and the destitute were all Jesus in disguise. And so she

00:55:34.900 served them as if they were Jesus. And so that is one way, it seems to me to move towards God. I don't think

00:55:41.660 it's the only way though. And the reason is that I know a philosopher, Alistair McIntyre, who mentioned

00:55:47.560 to us in class one day that he was an atheist until he carefully studied the arguments for God's

00:55:52.740 existence. So there are at least some people, at least one person, Alistair McIntyre, who really did

00:55:57.300 come to God through that way. But I think the more common way is through lived practice, lived action.

00:56:02.340 You brought up the case of severe depression. And, you know, it is the case, of course, that

00:56:10.060 you can make profoundly coherent arguments for why your life is meaningless and why

00:56:17.540 meaning there is just a vast nullity to all existence. But the question isn't, are they

00:56:23.440 coherent? The question is, are they true? The question is, are the premises right? Because

00:56:27.520 anything can be coherent within false premises. The question is, is it the case that your life is

00:56:32.500 worth nothing? And the answer has to be no. That's a false statement. It's a false apprehension of

00:56:38.740 reality. Well, look what happens if you act that out. Of course. But even then you could say, well,

00:56:44.840 no, I'd be doing a sum. If within the grips of depression, you'd still be thinking that I am

00:56:49.980 acting according to a good, given the premises that I have about the meaninglessness of my own

00:56:54.540 life and of all life. So I think the foundation, which keeps going back to the same question,

00:56:58.860 the foundation of truth must be there. But then the next thing to say is not that you are wrong about

00:57:03.840 your life being meaningless as a false statement, but that you're also loved. You are loved. And it's,

00:57:11.080 I think that's the kind of thing, at least my own experience that can take you out of the darkness,

00:57:15.560 that your life is not about you and your own thoughts. It's not about you and the systems that

00:57:20.700 you are building. Ultimately, you are in response to something much greater than you. And that thing

00:57:26.640 that's greater than you is looking at you and calling you out and saying, I love you. So it's not,

00:57:31.880 it's not an either or, it's not, well, what's true propositionally about the nature of existence

00:57:35.560 and is there a soul? It's, it is that, and I'm calling you, which is a universal call for us as Catholics.

00:57:45.420 This exercise that you described, Dr. Kayser, I believe that

00:57:51.860 when we see other people,

00:57:56.360 except under very extraordinary circumstances, we see

00:58:03.560 an illusion that we project upon them. Mostly, it's a simplifying illusion. We don't see the whole

00:58:11.860 person, partly, I suppose, because we couldn't tolerate the complete vision. It would be too much

00:58:19.860 for us, you know, so our doors of perception are three quarters closed. And exactly why that is,

00:58:26.180 isn't obvious. But I do believe that the more accurately you perceive a person,

00:58:32.740 the more you perceive them in the manner that you described. You see this eternal, recurring,

00:58:41.780 conscious hero, striving against the darkness. It's, and when you treat people like that,

00:58:53.780 of course, they're, but compelled by that. It's a compelling way to be interacted with.

00:59:00.900 Although, I don't know what it is, is that maybe

00:59:05.360 it's not obvious how much of that you can tolerate, which is a very strange thing, too.

00:59:14.520 You know, I'm thinking about this. Most of what we perceive is our memory.

00:59:21.480 And sometimes that is stripped away, and we see what's there. But seeing what's there is awe-inspiring.

00:59:28.860 It's, it's, it's, it's gripping, and, and it instills terror. And I think that's the same as the burning bush.

00:59:36.820 And in some sense, everything is a burning bush. But

00:59:40.380 you're blinded to it.

00:59:49.480 The

00:59:50.000 you, you see what's there, I think, when you really love someone, a child.

00:59:57.960 You really see that in a child, if you, if you're a parent, right? You see, you don't see a generic

01:00:04.920 baby. You see that actual person. So that memory that pushes generic baby into your field of vision

01:00:14.760 dissipates, and you see what's actually there. And that love drives that. I imagine it does that.

01:00:21.240 It, it, it, love seems to, like I always thought when people fall in love with one another, they see the

01:00:28.000 perfection that could conceivably exist. It's like the curtains of, of illusion pull apart momentarily, and

01:00:35.720 you see the paradisal state that could be there hypothetically, if everything was done properly.

01:00:41.520 And that drives the love. And then maybe if you work across time, you can achieve that to some degree.

01:00:48.480 You know, because other people think about themselves as deluded when they're in love. And

01:00:52.540 that's a very cynical way of looking at it. It certainly doesn't apply

01:00:57.160 to the love between a parent and a child.

01:01:00.180 Yeah, I think, I think you're right. I mean, I know in my own life, um, having children has been

01:01:07.700 such a unbelievably enriching experience. And I think about, um, you know, especially when kids are

01:01:15.520 little and they're asleep, you go in there and they're just sleeping and you see their little

01:01:19.540 chest moving up and down. There's something painfully beautiful about that. I mean, you just

01:01:24.800 wish it could go on just indefinitely. And for me, that is something that taught me something about,

01:01:33.060 about God's love, right? If God really is God, the father, well then, you know, we, that's sort of

01:01:41.020 how he looks at us. And he sees the good, he sees the effort. And of course there's imperfections too,

01:01:48.220 but I don't know it for me, having children is a kind of, I try to sometimes tell my students,

01:01:55.280 most of whom don't have kids, what it's like. And it's very hard to describe. So the best way I

01:02:00.740 came up with was, well, remember when you were a little child, you know, like six and you thought,

01:02:05.900 um, oh, boys have cooties, girls have cooties. And the idea of romance or kissing someone is just

01:02:10.820 repulsive. And then, you know, you could imagine trying to explain to a six-year-old, look,

01:02:15.200 at some point you're going to look at someone else and just find this person unbelievably captivating

01:02:19.180 and you're going to want to kiss them. And you can say the words, but a little kid's been like,

01:02:22.700 no way that that's hard to describe. And, and I think becoming a parent is similar to that in that,

01:02:29.520 yeah, it seems to me that it is so enriching that, uh, and has given so much, at least to my life and

01:02:37.740 including calling out something for me that would have never been elicited because there's kind of

01:02:41.900 sacrifices that you'll do for a kid that you'll never do for, you know, an adult.

01:02:45.300 So that, that's interesting. That ties in with this, this idea that you brought forward of

01:02:51.720 treating everybody as if they were manifestation of Christ. You see that meaningful fragility in your

01:03:00.880 children and it's beautiful. And maybe if you're, if you've been warped and hurt, you get resentful

01:03:08.360 about it and, and jealous of it. And that can lead to all sorts of terrible things, but to the degree

01:03:14.040 that you can, that you're privileged to see that, that calls you to be a better person.

01:03:22.080 And you can think of that, you know, biologically, well, you have these fragile creatures that you're

01:03:31.340 responsible for. Of course, that's going to call you to a higher mode of action because otherwise

01:03:37.920 they're not going to live, you know? So it's, it's very practical, but so then, but what you see

01:03:45.420 there is if that, if you view someone with love, then it's incumbent upon you to treat them as if

01:03:54.100 they're valuable. And then the more you treat other people as if they're valuable, the better person you

01:04:00.820 are. That just comes along for the ride in some sense. So none of that seems questionable to me, that

01:04:06.740 that seems solid. And so then maybe the more, the more love you view other people with, the higher the

01:04:13.860 moral demand that's placed on you. And then I would say too, well, then that's another reason why it's so

01:04:21.260 important to be truthful and, and in some sense to be good, because it isn't obvious to me that you can

01:04:27.020 withstand that moral load. If you're compromised by too much sin, it's too much. And then that's

01:04:39.480 another thing that, that we're not very good at teaching young people about, you know, we shouldn't

01:04:43.100 do that. You know, it's like, there's a sanctimonious authority that goes along with that. That's the wrong

01:04:51.840 tone. It's more like, you know, I don't know how you lay it out properly, but you tell people that you

01:05:06.220 love how to avoid the road to hell. And you don't do that because you're shaking your finger at them,

01:05:13.820 or because you're a moral authority. You do it because you don't want them to burn.

01:05:23.800 And I think there's too much of the moral authority still in the church and not enough of the,

01:05:30.840 you know, the love that helps people avoid the fire.

01:05:40.000 I think that what you just beautifully described is the, the unity of the love commandment that you,

01:05:45.780 you love your, you love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind,

01:05:48.940 and you love your neighbor as yourself. The love, the love of God identifies the pattern. And then

01:05:54.720 that interplay between the love of the neighbor and the love of the self they're, they're inextric,

01:05:58.980 they're, they're differentiated, but inextricably intertwined. And so to, to love the neighbor

01:06:04.480 is to see the neighbor as he or she actually is, and to respond to the actuality, not to your

01:06:10.440 desires, not to what you want this person to be in a utilitarian instrumental sense, but to the reality

01:06:16.320 of that eternal soul right there. And in and through that, then you see who you are.

01:06:22.620 And that's a commentary on the 10 commandments, right? That's Christ's summation of the 10

01:06:27.220 commandments. So that's another, another illustration of that abstraction, proper behavior, the story on

01:06:35.680 top of that, the propositions, that would be the 10 commandments, let's say, so then Christ is

01:06:40.420 challenged on the 10 commandments, something like rank order these if you're so wise, right?

01:06:47.260 Right, exactly. Because you're going to say something heretical. And Christ does this unbelievable slight

01:06:54.220 of mind, and, and extracts out two superordinate principles. And it's done in such a compelling way

01:07:03.820 that the interlocutor who's basically a prosecutorial mind, like an inquisitionist, in some sense,

01:07:10.680 is reduced to silence. And that's, that's a very powerful story. It's one of those stories, you read

01:07:17.540 that, you think, it's not obvious how someone could have made that up. There's a lot of genius.

01:07:25.540 There's an immense well of moral genius in that story. And the idea that that's some sort of casual,

01:07:33.800 false construct, you know, produced, you know, produced, for the purposes of power. It's like,

01:07:41.820 well, you try to write a story that short that that's, that is that wise, see how far you get with

01:07:47.360 it. So.

01:07:50.080 No, I'm a Catholic, heck, rituals, our whole thing, you know.

01:07:53.600 Yeah, well, there's peace in ritual, right? That's the thing, you know, what to expect.

01:07:57.580 That's right.

01:07:58.500 It's a place of safety. And, and, and in a world that changes constantly, ritual is the

01:08:04.400 only thing that provides order. And so we may need that now more than ever, because things

01:08:09.160 are changing so unbelievably fast, which is also partly why the church should be careful

01:08:13.840 about being too relevant. It's like,

01:08:15.800 Yep, I agree. I agree.

01:08:19.560 Catholicism is as sane as people get.

01:08:21.780 You know, it's Baroque, right? And, and, and it's Gothic, not Baroque. It's Gothic. It's dark. It's,

01:08:30.260 it's, it's, it has the same aesthetic, in some sense, as a horror film. And I'm not being, I'm not

01:08:38.640 being, I'm not saying something denigrating by that. I mean, it's part of its strange mystery.

01:08:44.040 And all that strangeness is necessary, because people would be much more insane without it than

01:08:49.280 they are with it. And it's a container for that religious impulse. And that impulse is to the,

01:08:55.520 to the good.

01:08:57.900 Yeah. And, and, and the image of the, of the crucified Christ, and also the act of communion

01:09:05.380 gathers in all the extremes together, right? It's like, if you think of the symbolism of

01:09:10.780 communion, you'll notice that it gathers in every extreme from the highest to the most

01:09:15.320 transgressive, all of it comes together.

01:09:17.820 That's worth unpacking that. It's ritual cannibalism in the service of God.

01:09:23.360 Yeah. Yeah. And, but it's also, it's also seen as a, as a normal, like meal of communion.

01:09:30.780 And it's an also seen as a, as a sexual union, because you, there's a relationship,

01:09:38.320 there's a notion in which then in the altar and in that moment of communion, there's the

01:09:42.820 joining of heaven and earth, you know, the raise up the chalice and there's this joining,

01:09:46.620 which is, which is this image of this, the sexual union between God and the soul between

01:09:51.160 God and his church. And so all of it, it just jammed into this, into, into this ritual as

01:09:57.260 a, as a kind of center of reality would call it.

01:09:59.680 Um, and so, like you said, if you get rid of that, then you're going to have all kinds

01:10:04.740 of strange, factitious versions of it that are going to pop up.

01:10:08.060 Bye.

01:10:15.820 Bye.

01:10:15.920 Bye.

01:10:17.620 Bye.

01:10:28.440 Bye.

01:10:30.540 Bye.

01:10:31.740 Bye.

01:10:31.940 Bye.

01:10:32.020 Bye.

01:10:32.060 Bye.

01:10:34.480 Bye.

01:10:34.640 Bye.

01:10:35.120 Bye.

01:10:35.380 Bye.

01:10:36.180 Bye.

01:10:37.060 Bye.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - November 26, 2021

202. Meaning, Awe and Conceptualization of God - pt. 3

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