He initially came to my attention because of his sudden high profile regarding free speech.
Keep in mind that he occasionally (rare enough to ignore) lapses into swearing type blasphemy when agitated. This should not by itself detract from his content he provides though the habit does betray his current worldly state. He attempts to intellectually explain the bible with a emphasis on psychology. Many times you can see he is right at the edge of belief but then he stops himself. As someone else put it (forget the name) it seems like he is stumbling his way to God, his own intellect being his chief stumbling block. Other things to keep in mind is his beliefs in evolution and Yung.
Lastly he explains in excruciating detail, the intro was 2 hours of him not even getting past the first sentence of Genesis. This happened because he also explained that this first book (in fact the first sentence of that book) only makes complete sense when augmented with the new testament which is quite a statement in itself. A lot of the detail he provides is of more worth than anything the "church" puts out which annoys me frankly.
Jordan B Peterson - The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories
Posted : 6 Sep, 2018 06:22 PM
rambo919^ : You yourself mentioned how he "lapses into swearing type blasphemy"... doesn't that raise any red flags? You are obviously someone like myself who seeks an intelligent Christian researcher. Peterson is not the man though.
I have some severe issues with Peterson's underlying thought process. And I will barely scratch the surface that Peterson himself admits in online interviews. Is he intelligent? Yes, very much so. Just as Satan must be intelligent beyond belief. Is Peterson Satanic? Well, he does not stand with God's Holy Word and pushes anti-Christ material. He used his controversies to elevate a celebraty status, a cult of personality, within the desperate conservative & Christian realm.
So is this man of the mind (a trained psychologist) a mind manipulator or just a "good person who needs some more time until he becomes a believer". (Notice I did not say "Christian" as Peterson is notoriously slippery with that word.)
A few severe errors:
- In "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos" he openly states in the "Overture" his disbelief that the Bible has any true reality other than being a moral compass:
"I proposed in Maps of Meaning that the great myths and religious stories of the past, particularly those derived from an earlier, oral tradition, were moral in their intent, rather than descriptive. Thus, they did not concern themselves with what the world was, as a scientist might have it, but with how a human being should act. I suggested that our ancestors portrayed the world as a stage�a drama�instead of a place of objects. I described how I had come to believe that the constituent elements of the world as drama were order and chaos, and not material things."
This says it all. The Bible cannot be literal, being one of these many "great myths and religious stories". And he does refer to Christian myths often. Evidence of that is also shown in his interest with Eliade, Jung, etc.
Even in his book suggestions he has: "The Bible: Designed to be Read as Living Literature"... which sounds lofty and yet when you read the preface, it is nothing but a Modernist rejection that most of the events of the Bible even took place. And here they are making money off the Holy Bible, selling it as fiction.
- Peterson's flip-flopped on being a "Christian". Which I believe would have him fall into the category of Matthew 10:33:
But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.
and
II Timothy 2:12
If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us:
- He's into Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy (Peterson's book recommendations on his official website and his many references to Nietzsche). Nietzsche... the philosopher who wrote "Anti-Christ"? The man who hated all things Christian?
- He's a follower of Carl Jung. Who openly used Kabbalah in his work to promote certain concepts. Also being the "Orthodox Judaic" Lurianic variety.
(This hits home with me as in the past I was previously into Jung as well... when I was in apostasy and shamefully into the Kabbalah & actual "authentic" Orthodox Jewish mysticism via a teacher [Rabbi].)
Jung was also anti-Christian; having many "supernatural" (read: Satanic) experiences. Just look at Jung's "Red Book" which was dictated to him, after a mental breakdown, through an angel called Philemon. For many years "Jungians" (Jung's followers and gatekeepers) kept silent about the "Red Book". Now within the past couple of decades as academia has completely lost it; Jung's "Red Book" suddenly becomes acceptable. At best, it is New Age trash and at worst it a Satanic scripture. I believe it to be the latter, as Jung and his occult teachings (religion as myth, all religions are ultimately the same & man-made, alchemy and Kabbalah as learning tools, etc.) are not dying away and always find an audience to intitiate the lost into the "deep things of Satan".
How does that not raise any alarm bells with thinking Christians? Where did the discernment go? Are we so desperate for some 'leader' instead of Jesus Christ?
