The Eric Metaxas Show - Jordan Peterson (Encore Continued)

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

Renowned psychologist Jordan Peterson joins Eric to discuss several important topics including masculinity and theology. 

Welcome to the Eric Metaxas show. I shouldn't tell you this, but Eric hired someone who sounds just like him to host today's show. But since I'm the announcer, they told me, so I'm telling you, don't be fooled. The real Eric's in jail. Folks, we continue my conversation from the first hour with the incomparable Jordan Peterson. Well, I guess what I was going to, I first want to say is that we all ought to be able to understand why he's upset, right? In other words, I think we have questions. Of course.

But when people act as though, well, those questions settle it, there's a lot more to the story. Because the God of the Bible sent his son to suffer a tortured death to enter into our suffering. That at least ought to color your picture of the God you're criticizing Stephen Fry. People, Dawkins, Richard Dawkins, for example, has made the case that there's a no more barbaric a character in all ancient literature than the god of the Hebrew texts. And the first thing I would say about that is that I just think he doesn't know what he's talking about. Oh, listen, there is no question he doesn't know what he's talking about. Well, not on that side of things.

No, but listen, I mean, I wrote a book called Is Atheism Dead? And my little reading into Dawkins, I am astonished that he is given the platform, that he has had so many preposterous things, really preposterous. that he ought simply not to be taken seriously on any of this. He contradicts himself at every turn. I mean, he should just stick to science. When he gets into philosophy and this kind of thing, I just find it embarrassing, to be quite honest.

Well, part of the reason that God in the Old Testament has an ambiguous character in some ways is because the world is very morally complex. And so, for example, in the story of Job, God literally bets with Satan to take Job out. And you can imagine that that's a good case study for the hypothetical immorality of God. But you see, if you're a serious biologist

and you were trying to understand how it is that a species came to adaptation and understanding, you'd look at a story like that and you'd understand that what the writers of the story were doing was grappling with the fact that there's an arbitrary element to life. Like sometimes, sometimes you get punished for doing good things. And sometimes you get rewarded for doing bad things. And then the question is, well, how do you maintain your faith in your own existence

and in the structure of being itself, given the reality of that paradoxical complexity? And the answer in the story of Job is, you don't get to question the moral order no matter what happens to you. Not least because if you do that, all it does is make it worse. Like Job has every reason to lose faith in himself. His friends tell him that he wouldn't be suffering

if he hadn't made some mistake that he refuses to admit to and to lose faith in God. Job's wife tells him, look, I'm looking at you. You have nothing left but to shake your fist at God, curse him and die. That's how dire your circumstance is. And Job's insistence is, no matter what happens to me, I will not lose faith. Right. Now, that's a hell of a thing to say. Now, that's expanded massively in the passion story because a lot of terrible things happen to Job, but it doesn't, it isn't taken to the same extent as it's taken in the story of the passion. Nor can even Job be thought.

thought of as as unadulteratedly good as Jesus? Right, right, right. Well, yes, it's clear that Job, although he's a good man, is no more or less than a good man. I mean, there's a resurrection story in Job. I mean, Job gets everything that he lost back and more. And, you know, that's morally ambiguous too, because you might say, well, God isn't justified in torturing you because the ends are positive, right? That's an ends justify the means argument. But that's not the point of the story. The point of the story is that you're required

not to lose faith. And you might say, well, all of the evidence suggests that I should lose faith. It's like, well, first of all, you're bringing to the situation in a prior conception of what constitutes evidence that you haven't investigated. You don't get to lose faith. All it does is make it worse. Now we know this because we know we see people who are bearing up nobly under extremely difficult conditions who maintain their moral integrity, despite the fact that they're undergoing the torments of Job, and we find them admirable. Isn't the idea that those people have a greater perspective? In other words, I think that when somebody says, well, things are going terrible, this is terrible, this is terrible, this is

terrible. You're not seeing the big picture. You don't know where things will go ultimately. You don't know where things will go eternally. And you're insisting that this is it. Yes, yes. You're going to calculate based on this and you're somehow insisting that you have the right to do that. Yes, yes, definitely, definitely. Which is myopic. But, and that of course does be. Well, here's a variant of that argument. So, um, with regards to Christ's proclamation that the truth will set you free. Well, you can get into lots of trouble by telling the truth. You can get punished brutally for it. You can get rewarded for lying. Okay, so what do you make of that? Well, if you lie and you're rewarded for it,

the evidence suggests that the lie was worthwhile. But your point is something like, well, what about everything you're excluding? It's like, yeah, what about that? Okay, so what's the religious proclamation with regard to the truth? It's something like this. if you could see things in light of eternity, you would understand that whatever happens to you

if you tell the truth is the best thing that could have possibly happened no matter what it looks like at the moment. Now that's brutal because it can look like death, you know, and you might say, well, how do you reconcile that? And the answer to that is, well, you know, you're pushing beyond the limits of human understanding when you ask a question like that.

But it's certainly, I can't see how it can be any other way, then there's no better pathway forward than the one specified by the truth. I mean, to posit an alternative to that is to make the assumption that you can wander through the territory with a faulty map. Well, no. Now, that doesn't mean you won't pay a price for telling the truth. But it'll be the lesser price at worst. It'll be the lesser price. I think it's interesting because people like Job who kind of hang on to their faith in the midst of suffering, we often praise them. I mean, when I talk about Bonhoeffer, people say, oh, how can he be?

He was so noble. He was so courageous. And my answer to that, and I'm just curious what you think, to my mind, it's not necessarily noble in the sense that they know God to be real. they know that they can trust God. It's not like they're hanging in there, hoping, I might be wrong. They have some deeper sense that God is God and he is true. And they can't see any other way of processing it. So I don't see Bonhofer as being so much courageous as being full of knowledge that God is real.

And so it looks like courage to people who aren't sure whether God is real. But for him, it's simply, this is reality. I know God is real. this is the right path. I can't imagine any other path. Yeah. Well, it's complicated, eh? Because to some degree, that knowledge, let's say, that the truth will set you free,

could be defined as the willingness to stake yourself on that proposition. Right. Because you'll live in accordance with that dictate, and you'll take the slings and arrows that go along with it. So the knowledge is actually a reflection of that commitment. And that's a form of faith, right? So that's the part that's, I suppose, bounded by human ignorance. I'm going to step forward with the truth, regardless of what happens.

And I'm going to reveal by doing so my commitment to my belief that the truth will set you free. The belief is actually manifested in the commitment. Now, the other part of that is the part that you referred to more directly, which is you want to have your fears in order. You know, people have commented to me, told me that they admire my bravery. And I think I appreciate that, although it's embarrassing to be praised. But it's also not exactly right. Hey folks, this year I've given you so many reasons to try balance of nature, but now I've got one you cannot ignore.

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you would like to understand. So if you know that, well, then it's a matter of having your fears in order. I suppose that's part of the rationale for proclamations such as the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. It's like, what's the notion? Nothing is written that won't be, nothing is hidden that won't be revealed. Well, that's another thing to be terrified of. It's like, or to celebrate. Meaning?

You know, if you're in the gulag suffering, it's about knowing that evil will be dealt with. God is a judge and that this wickedness will be revealed as wickedness. That it's not, that they won't get away with it, you know. That's part of the calculation. Yeah, well, that would be faith in the fundamental justice of being and becoming, right? And of course the problem is, well, the problem is time. obviously. But time frame is a problem. The fact that time frame is a problem is part of the reason that faith is necessary.

Well, again, when you talk about faith, I always just find myself going to this spot where I think that we can make it seem like faith is this white knuckle like, I'm hanging in there, I have faith. But God wants us, and this is clear in many places in scripture, he wants us to know that he is real and that he can be. trusted so that we actually know, not that I hope, but that I actually know so that in the midst of the suffering, I know that he is with me, that I can depend on him. Not that gosh, I hope it's true, but that I actually know. I think that God wants us to know that it's true. You learn that progressively. So, for example, if you're in psychotherapy and you're called upon to confront things that terrify and upset you. Exposure therapy, let's say.

What you learn in the course of exposure therapy is that the degree to which you can tolerate the slings and arrows of fortune is proportionate to the courage that you manifest when you make the encounter. So what happens to people, so imagine you're treating someone who has an elevator phobia, and so they can't get on elevators.

It's often associated with agoraphobia, for example. In its final manifestations, agoraphobics end up so afraid of everything they can't leave their house. So what are they afraid of in the elevator? Well, they're afraid they'll get trapped. Okay. Well, why are they afraid they'll get trapped? Well, they're afraid they'll get trapped and have a heart attack, and they won't be able to get to a hospital and they'll die.

So the elevator is a place of death, but that's not all. They're afraid that they'll get trapped in the elevator with other people, And while they're dying, they'll make a fool of themselves. So not only are they afraid of death in the elevator, they're afraid of a humiliating death in the presence of others. You're making me afraid of elevators, but please continue. Well, what happens is that you expose the person who's afraid to the elevator gradually, right? So maybe you start 20 feet away and you say, well, how do you feel when you're looking at the elevator?

And what you notice is they're not looking at the elevator. And you say, no, no, you have to look at the elevator. okay, and then they look and they look away and then they look away and then they look longer and if you do that carefully they're 20 feet away or 40 feet maybe you have to start there

it doesn't matter you get them to the point where they're just looking at the elevator they've learned to overcome their fear enough so they won't look away well then you move them 10 feet closer and you do the same thing and then you move them right to the threshold and maybe that's enough for one

for one session or two sessions. And then the next day they come back and you say, look, this is what's going to happen. We're going to go up to the elevator like we did yesterday. And the doors are going to open and you're going to look inside. And they say, well, I don't think I can do that. And you say, well, you know, we'll start slowly again. You'll find that you can do it.

And eventually you get them inside the elevator and you say, look, I'm going to hold the doors open. The buzzer might go off. Don't be afraid. I'm going to hold the doors open. There'll be no tricks here. you can leave whenever you want, I'm not going to get in your way. The person has to trust you.

And then they go in the elevator, and then they don't look. They look at the ground. And you say, no, no, you can't avoid it. Look everywhere. Look at the numbers. Look at the corners. Look at the other people.

Look at everything that you want to avoid. Well, if you continue to do that, they eventually get to the point where they're going down one floor and then they can take elevators. But what's interesting that also happens is that they don't get less afraid, you see. Not exactly. What they do is get braver. They get braver.

That's not the same thing. Because if you're brave, you continue to advance even if you're afraid. If you're not afraid, you're just not afraid. It's way better to be brave. So what happens with exposure therapy is that bravery generalizes. So people, if you expose people to what they're afraid of in the form, of an elevator, they start to confront all sorts of things they were avoiding. Okay, so why am I telling you this?

Well, that's how people learn to walk with God. Because what they find is that if they throw themselves into the fray of life, that they make contact with something that enables them to bear the burden. And the promise of faith, this is what the crucifix symbolizes in some fundamental sense, is that to the degree that you're willing to, you voluntarily enter the fray, God will be with you. It's a matter of definition.

You see, that's the thing, is that God in that scenario is the spirit that enables your bravery in the face of danger. It's a definition. Well, what is that? Well, the answer to that is, well, we don't know. In the final analysis, it's something ineffable,

which is always the claim about God in the Old Testament anyways. I want to get to that. Go ahead. Well, Moses, who's about as close to God as you can get, sees his back. And that's it for an instant, right? But if he'd hung around another 1,400 years,

he could have seen his front, don't you think? Well, that's the proclamation. I mean, you know, the ineffability of God, God in the New Testament. You talked about this last night. You talked about this a lot. I wanted to interject, but I couldn't because I was not on the stage with you.

but in my mind, I wanted to say, well, now hang on. God reveals himself in the person, I mean, this is what Christians believe, in the person of Jesus, to give us the ability to see God in that way, in a very different way than he reveals himself in the Old Testament. Although in the Old Testament, let's face it, he reveals himself as a friend. as someone with whom certain figures have a relationship. They talk to him. See, that's the mystery, is the relationship element to it, right?

And so this is one of the things that the more materialist-athist types really have a problem with, the notion that our fundamental mode of being is relational. I think you can make a very strong case that our fundamental mode of being is relational. And if that's the mode of being that moves us forward most appropriately, world, then I can think you can also make a strong case that that's because it mostly

deeply reflects the structure of reality itself. It reflects also the structure of God, because if God is, you know, one God and three persons, from before time in eternity, God was in a relationship with himself. The Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, were in relationship before time began. I mean, that is a pretty radical idea about God, that God somehow, at the heart of who he is is relationship. I don't want to throw something at you. You haven't had a chance to think about. I want to ask you, you seem often,

because you're a Jungian, I'm not going too far by describing you as a Jungian, you know, you so brilliantly, it's why people love you, you so brilliantly are able to look at any story or many stories, but also particularly what you call the corpus of the Bible, and to pull out archetypes and patterns and things. When you spoke about the story of Cain and Abel, that scripture where it says,

you know, sin is crouching at your door, Cain. Like a sexually aroused predator. Now, where did that, okay, I'm glad you brought that up. I've never heard that before. Where does the sexually aroused predator come in? Well, I looked at about 40 different, well, it's implicit in the idea that you invited it in to have its way with you. But I mean, it sounds like a like a succubus or an incubus.

It sounds like something. It's something you can enter into a creative union with. That's the sexual component. Okay. There's equivalent, well, I could say something crude that works. He's f***ed with me. Right. Well, there's an element of predatory manipulation there that produces an outcome,

like a creative outcome. This is a very old idea. This is why we use it as a curse. Right. Right. It's because even our relationship with evil is also relational. It's creative. Right.

Well, so there's an element there where a sexual component of that is the right metaphor. Hey, this is Eric Mattaxas. For years, I've told you about Nutrametics, a professional supplement brand trusted by doctors since 1993. NutriMedics offers a variety of health bundles. Whether you want to support your immune system, improve your sleep, promote joint comfort or detoxification support, Nutrametics has a health bundle right for you. The best part about Nutrametics,

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Oh, it's great. Or pick up the luxurious MyPillow bedsheets starting at 4998. Visit MyPillow.com or call 800-978-3057. Use promo code Eric to unlock huge discounts. That's promo code Eric, Mypillow.com, 800-9783057. Continue my conversation from the first hour with the incomparable Jordan Peterson in the box. Bible, these things, which can be seen as metaphors and archetypes, are also in many cases

literal. When Jesus was casting out demons, they were actual demons. This wasn't an idea. In other words, this is not, and I don't know whether you agree with this, but the idea is that there are literal demons and angels, and that's... Well, I don't, I would, the only thing I would just ask you about in relationship to that is what do you mean by literal? I mean that there are creatures, that there are demonic creatures, that that they're, that they're demonic creatures, there are spirits, dark spirits, just as there are angels, and they're actual created beings. I mean, this is the basic biblical view that, you know, when Jesus was casting demons out, that they were actual demons, that there are actual demons, that they're fallen angels, that there's this created

order, this invisible created order. And so when Jesus does, I mean, a lot of course, it makes, you know, modern materialistic thinking people. even materialistic Christians. It makes them uncomfortable this idea. It seems very medieval. But I don't think there's any way you can read Jesus doing that. Here's one way of think. Where are there anything but actual demons?

Well, one of the ways of thinking about that is that it's very difficult to invite one idea into your soul without inviting the entire host of associated ideas. Right. And that the host of associated ideas is something that's reasonably conceptualized as a lie. Right. And so the woke mind virus. Well, you can invite one progressive idea in. But the thing is, the whole clamoring crowd of ideas comes along with it.

And it has a living, does it mimic life? here's a way of thinking. But wait, isn't this the question, Jordan? This is the question. Otherwise, what you're saying is right and true. But then I'm also wondering, it's kind of like talking about cancer as a metaphor and a cancer, you know, but then you think,

but in some cases, there's an actual tumor that may be excised. It's not a metaphorical tumor. It's an actual tumor. Well, I guess I just, see, what I don't understand is what you mean by actual, because whatever the demon is, let's say, in the Christian landscape,

it's not actual like a table is actual. That doesn't mean it isn't real. It's of a different category of real. Well, that's what I'm saying. But it's a personal, just as an angel, you know. Well, is it a soulless entity? I don't know when we talk about souls, what we mean. You know, whether angels have souls. But what I know is that in scripture, it's very clear that angels are created beings.

They are not humans, but they're created beings. God has created them. A fallen angel is a demon, but they're actual demons. They're not, it's not an energy force or whatever. They can talk. Look, I've been in the room when people have done deliverance where demons talk. It's horrifying. I mean, M. Scott Peck wrote about this at the end of his book, People of the Lie, about being, you know, at an exorcism. And it's really, really extraordinary. But there, But so, yeah, it depends on how you want to find your terms. But, yes, these are actual demons. Well, it's the actual issue that, like I said, that it's... Well, because when you... The risk in using words like actual is that you reduce the phenomena unconsciously to the material.

And you do that... Well, no, no, these are immaterial by definition. They're immaterial. Okay, well, then you have... Okay, so then you're positing. a form of immaterial actuality. Absolutely. So my question would be, well, what is the reality of an immaterial actuality?

I'm not disputing what you're saying. But I mean, look, if you ask a scientist, what is energy? They'll just stare at you blank. They don't really know. They can talk about it. But do they know exactly what it really is? No, they don't. They barely know what light is.

I mean, you know, we can describe it, but it's this, it gets difficult at some point. You know, if we're talking about photons, it gets difficult. It gets difficult at some point. Here's one way of understanding a demon. So imagine that you go to a dinner at your colleague's house and your colleague has a teenage daughter and you have a conversation with her over dinner and you find out that she has some progressive ideas

and they're a little on the warped side. But, you know, 80% of her is just kind of a normal kid. Okay, and then later you go to a protest and she's there with 100 kids like her in a mob. Okay, and she's 10% woke, and the person standing beside her is 10% woke, and the person standing beside that person is 10%.

But it's not exactly the same 10%. And if you get 100 people in the room, then you have the whole demon. Right, and then the mob acts in accordance with that spirit, and that spirit's real. Look, what you're talking about is, I mean, it's absolutely fascinating. And at that point, it becomes difficult.

And I get annoyed at Christians who over-literalize, say, what's the spirit of this or spirit of that. Well, it is even not. Well, that's even true. Like I would say- It is true. But the point is that there's certain cases where you cannot parse the demonic.

You don't know what is at play. At Mili or at Rwanda, how many demons, or is it just some vague demonic thing? Sometimes people make it sound very serious. simple, and I think it's complicated. What you're describing, that kind of mob mentality, there's clearly something demonic at work, but we can't say exactly that we know. But when you're doing an exorcism with a person, you can ask a neat demon to name itself, it will name itself, you can cast out this one demon. So it operates on both levels,

at least as I see it. Well, I don't know enough about that particular domain of theological practice to comment on it wisely. Welcome back. We continue my conversation with Jordan Peterson. So there's a notion, for example, of the eternal nature of a particularly evil spirit. Right. So how might we understand that? Well, part of the system of ideas that's at the core of the woke ideology is the spirit of Cain. It's a kind of bitterness and resentment. It's a kind of hatred for the successful.

And is it immortal? Well, it's been around for thousands of years. It'll be around a lot longer than you are. Does it have an existence independent of you? Well, it does insofar as it lasts. How do we conceptualize? The demon question is sort of, it's something like, how do we conceptualize the reality of active ideas that exist in the transcendently personal space?

right i mean we have notions of satan for example that are independent they'll be around a lot longer than any of the people that hold the ideas right well and are they are they real well they certainly um depends on how you define real but that's the point is i think it's both and i think it's uh it's facile to say uh it's exactly this or exactly this i think sometimes it's complicated i mean i think that sometimes it's definitely complicated you know it's no different i mean

there are people who have demon possession. That's a real thing. They can also have, you know, somebody can, through tremendous wounding early in their life, open a door to the demonic, you know. We're talking about many things at once. So I think there's some people that want to make it, it's exactly this, and others, it's exactly this. These are difficult things. We're dealing with invisible things.

And, you know, I'm grateful for your willingness to just kind of think about it, to try to reason what is this? What is it play? Well, you see, as a psychologist, you see people who are possessed by their whims. You see people who are possessed by bad ideas. You see in your own life how straightforward it is to be possessed by rage or resentment. you see that you invite all sorts of terrible things along for the ride when you allow that to happen.

You could imagine what would happen if you dwelled on it, if you stayed bitter and resentful in your fantasy for thousands of hours, which people will do. You have no idea how dark the places they go can become. Really, people have no imagination for this sort of thing at all. It's unbelievably dark, and it's dark to the point where it's only properly describable in religious terminology, because it is something that gets to the heart of what constitutes evil itself. So that's all true.

What that means in relationship to the demonic, I would say, well, when you ask such questions, you push yourself right to the limits of what it is that's possible for us to understand. And so my knowledge fades out at that point. You're absolutely right that people can invite very dark things into inhabit them. And people do that. And you know that that's wrong when you do it. You know, you start to dwell self-righteously on your bitterness and resentment. You feel that you're justified.

Then you start to harbor feelings of resentment and nurse the corresponding requirement, even moral requirement for vengeance. and that can take you that can take you very rapidly to a place where you're fantasizing about murder and that's just when the party starts Right. Well and again, to my mind one of the questions is at what point do you actually invite demons in

and I don't think we certainly don't have time to talk about that but I want to ask you just before we go because I want to be sensitive to your time your wife recently whom I had the privilege Tammy to meet a few times times has been public about her embrace of, of Christian faith. Catholicism specifically. Yeah, specifically.

But generally, of Christian faith, of the Christian, you know. And when you talked about the, at one point you were talking about how the crucifixion is the second part. God lays the foundation and the crucifixion opening oneself up to that. kind of thing. Do you think Jesus could have done that without being God? In other words, when you, it's interesting because we're not talking about... I would say that the more you do that, the closer you get to God. And the insistence in the Christian story is that there's a limit case there, and the limit case is the identity between

man and God. Now, I always try to talk about things practically insofar as that's possible. Well, you know that you become more than you are by challenging yourself. Well, more than you are implies that you're moving towards some ultimate realization, right? You're on the pathway to some ultimate realization. You may never get there, but you're on the pathway. The fact that we believe that we can improve is an indication of our belief in that. We all know that we improve as a consequence of challenge. We know that.

Well, the Christian story at minimum is the consequence of adopting the ultimate challenge. Well, the insistence in that story is that the more of the challenge you undertake, the more you walk with God. Well, I think in some ways that's, in some ways that's self-evident because the contrary hypothesis is the more you shrink away, the safer you are. Well, no one believes that. Right. Okay, so does that mean that you can confront everything? Well, what does Christ confront? Well, he confronts death, right?

But much more than that, painful death, like maximally painful death, at the hands of a multidimensional tyranny of imperial state plus mob, plus the mob of his own people, and then multiple forms of betrayal. including the betrayal of his best friend and his own people, and then betrayal in favor of those known to be criminal, even though those who choose the criminals know that they're choosing the criminals and that he's innocent.

Like it's a limit story. And in that the story of Christ is the story of the confrontation with everything tragic and malevolent that life has to offer. And the idea is that, if you don't shrink away from that, then God will walk with you while you undertake that. And I don't think there's any difference between that claim in some fundamental sense and our understanding that the more responsibility and challenge we take on voluntarily, the more our characters develop.

Well, what's the limit case? Well, the Christian passion is the limit case. So is it true? it's a stupid question because when you ask questions and let me ask it is it true it's a definition of truth welcome back we continue my conversation with Jordan Peterson it's a definition of truth I mean Jesus it's a way of conceptualizing he says I am the truth in the way of the light

now you know this is the famous C.S. Lewis Trilema I want to use the word Trilemma that he's either Lord lunatic or liar because a morally beautiful human being could never claim to be the truth. Yeah, that's a wild statement. Unless he actually were true. Otherwise, you'd say he's crazy. No one comes to the father except through me. Yeah, only a lunatic would say that or an arrogant monster unless it were actually true.

I mean, I don't know how you get out of that. Well, even then, it's such a strange thing to say that it's not exactly the sort of thing that you would presume that a manic would say, like a grand, It's not, it doesn't have the flavor of grandiose mania, grandiose mania. It's something, it's something much stranger than that. And there's something very, very profound about it, which makes its interpretation even more complex. The idea is that you discover your identity with the spirit god of your ancestors

by undertaking the adventure of your life. That's the claim, and the adventure of your life is your voluntary confrontation with all the conditions of life. And the promise there is that if you, like Abraham, if you take that on wholeheartedly, something will make itself manifest within you that will continually transform your character upward,

really in an unending manner, that will make you more and more capable of thriving in the world now and tomorrow and forever. And I just think that's true. Now, what it means in the final analysis that is true, I don't know, because I don't know how to conceptualize like what's the relationship between the soul of man and God?

Well, that's the same question is, it's something like, what's the ultimate meaning of the cosmos? It's like, well, you know, who knows? That isn't something that, anyone can straightforwardly say. One answer is to bear the cross upward toward the Holy City of Jerusalem.

And there's something to be said about that manner of interpretation. Does the cosmos itself depend on that? Yes, but we don't have time to get into it. Well, it's a way of looking at things. And here we are, in that, here we are embodied in our mortal form, so to speak,

in this immense expanse of time and space, that's the reality that surrounds us, what's the significance of our life? Well, if you reduce us to the merely material, then nothing. But who's to say that a prior reduction is the right move? The Christian assumption is there's no difference between the human fate and the meaning of the cosmos. Well, insofar as we're people, that's definitely the case.

What does that mean in reality? Depends on how you define reality. If you define it as a materialist, it means nothing. Well, go ahead and see what happens. What happens? We know what happens is the bottom drops out of the world. Meaning disappears from the world. And then people can't sustain themselves.

They become nihilistic or they tilt in an ideological direction. The problem with talking to you, Jordan Peterson, is that the more I talk to you, the more I want to talk to you. And that's just a problem because we have a limit. I would like to talk to you for much longer. I know we're out of time. Let me simply say thank you. Congratulations on the tour.

The we wrestle with God tour. When you're in Wallingford, give a shout to my brother John. He'll be in the 12th row. He's about my size. You'll recognize him. And congratulations on wearing a jacket louder than my own. Not easily done. God bless you, sir.

Thank you. You bet. And thanks for the invitation.