The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 252. This Lesson From The Bible Will Make You Unstoppable | Franciscan University

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

This episode was recorded on April 4, 2022.I discussed gratitude, faith, and suffering in this conversation at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. How can we be sure that pain is a solid guiding principle as we navigate the world? What is the underlying structure of pain, and what does it point at?We also touched on a myriad of topics around those central themes, such as sin and the symbol of the snake, giving advice, resurrection, the relationship between faith and suffering, evil, the effect we have on others, and sunsets.

Welcome to episode 252 of the JBP podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson. You're about to hear what I think is a fascinating interview Dad had at the Franciscan University of Stupenville in Ohio. It condenses a lot of what he's been thinking about recently. The interviewer asked Dad about gratitude, faith, and suffering, specifically, why he thinks pain should be a guiding principle in our lives. They also discussed the symbol of the snake,

the relationship between faith and suffering, the effect we have on other people and the beauty of sunsets. I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. Father Dave became president of Franciscan University of Stuvenville in 2019. The first Franciscan alumnus to lead the university. For the day of also earned a master of divinity, an MA in theology, a doctorate in education, an executive juris-doctorate, he is a member of the most sacred heart of Jesus, province of the Franciscan Third Order regular. He was ordained a priest in 1996, a well-known Catholic speaker, an, Father Davis written seven books and produced several evangelistic films and video series including Sign of Contradiction, Metinoya, and Letters

to Myself from the End of World through the Mindustry of the Wild Goose. Please welcome Father Dave and our speaker, Dr. Pudier. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And again, I'm just very pleased to turn out to everybody being able to join us this evening. As Dr. Peterson and I were talking this morning, one of the things that he was mentioning was that he often doesn't come to universities anymore for many reasons. We asked him, well then why did you accept our invitation? And his response was because you seemed different. I hope that was the compliment. And it's been a blessing to have Dr. Peterson with us.

He's been so generous with his time, all morning spending time joining us and seeing our campus joining us for Liturgy. So it's been a great blessing and honor to have you with us. So thank you so much. Thanks very much for the invitation. So I appreciated Dr. Peterson's discussion on the corpus of the scripture of the Bible and in the book. And one of the things that he and I had talked about was to discuss a book, not the book, fair enough? Definitely. So when I was praying and discerning about which chapter I wanted to talk about, what I thought was most appropriate,

there are a few things that were going through my mind. On Monday, we're starting the holiest week of the year for us. We're entering in a holy week, which is the time that invites the church and the people of God to look at the cross. It is ultimately going to lead us to the cross and how suffering is so central to the Christian experience and Christian redemption comes about through suffering. So there was that that I was continuing to think about, but I was also pleased Lord, reflecting

on the fact that we're near the end of the pandemic. And one of the things that I've been praying about over the last many weeks and months is how the pandemic is placed in forefront of our culture, suffering, and death, and pain. And it seems to me that we have not dealt with that very well. We've got to the place where so many people are riddled and fear as if suffering is to be run away from it every

class, at every opportunity, the idea that there actually could be something beautiful and wholly and salvific about suffering. So when I was reading through your book and I saw in the last chapter, you speak about suffering and being able to do that with a sense of gratitude, I just felt that that was the place that maybe we could talk about this evening. And what does that look like? The very beginning of the chapter you say,

a much of your life you have been searching for certainty. And then you pivot very quickly to speak about suffering. So maybe two questions. Your search for certainty, how is that brought you to what you spoke about earlier this evening? And why did you make such a quick pivot to talk about suffering? Well, I think it's because if you're looking for certainty, the reality of suffering is certain. I mean, what do you accept as evidence above all else? That's a good question, that's a hard question.

But I would say pain is up there. It's very difficult not to believe in the reality of your own pain. It's somewhat easier not to believe in the reality of other people's pain. That's not so easy either, you know, but it's your pain seems to be undeniably real. And so it does beg a question, which is, you know, if pain is undeniably real, is that which overcomes pain even more real? And I think that's in some sense, that's the idea that lurks behind the idea of the resurrection. I mean I was gonna tell a story during this lecture today although there wasn't really a place for it but maybe this is a good

place for it. I'll tell you something else I've been thinking about which really knocked me for a loop let's, which I probably still haven't really recovered from. So, a long while back, I had planned to do a series on Exodus, I did a biblical series on Genesis, which people seemed to appreciate, which I found extremely useful. It was quite a privilege to have the time in this space to walk through those books and try to understand them. First, psychologically, and I like to speak about things psychologically

before I would ever dare to speak about them religiously. I think you leave that for last resort in some sense. I was thinking about some of the ideas that I talked about today, you know, about the Bible being the foundation of the lens through which we look at the world. We have this idea that the Bible is a living text. And, you know, if we embody it, then it's a living text. That's actually accurate. I think to the degree that we're avatars of the Judeo-Christian tradition that we do embody it for better or for worse, and we're stuck with that, or blessed by it, or both. The reason I didn't tell you this story was because I didn't know how to weave it into

the theme that I was developing tonight, but it's relevant to the theme of suffering and what might, the reality of suffering and perhaps what might be more real than suffering. So I'll tell you this story, hopefully I can do this reasonably briefly. And when Moses is leading the Israelites through the desert, I'm very compelled by that story. So for example, one of the things that's really interesting about it is that the story begins with a tyrannical state. And then it's the spirit of God that leads the Hebrews. Maybe it's the spirit of God that characterizes the Hebrew longing for freedom.

That's kind of an interesting idea, you know, psychologically. You think that what's the spirit of God? The spirit of God is that which manifests itself within you in opposition to tyranny. Could be, you know, that's that's not a bad idea. It's quite an idea. It's a remarkable idea. And maybe it's true. It's certainly the case that that's how God is presented in that story, and in many other ways, but that being paramount above all. And there's another corollary to that, which is, well, we shouldn't be subjects of tyranny if we're children of God, and for Israel, and Israel means we who struggle with God. It's not appropriate for us to be subject to tyranny.

That's interesting too, because I think we sort of accept that idea at face value in the West is that, yeah, slavery is wrong, obviously. It's not so bloody obvious these things. You know, one of the things that I'm really curious about in relationship to the postmodern types, who make group membership, the sign, quenon of existence, is, why is slavery wrong? Exactly. It's just for all groups

and one group lords it over another, it's not wrong, it's just tough luck for the oppressed group. There's no wrong there because it's only wrong if we're sovereign individuals, right, with some intrinsic worth who are not to be subject to arbitrary tyranny. That's when it's wrong. And you have to accept all those other axioms before you get to say anything about slavery being wrong at all. Otherwise, it's just, hey, like Mark's pointed out, it's just brute economics. And so you can make a moral judgment about that if you want,

but what's your criteria for saying that it's wrong? And of course, that would upset people on the radical left who want to presume that it's intrinsically wrong without having to presume all the things that you have to presume to make it intrinsically wrong, and without even noticing that that's just a slate of hand, in any case, so that's part of that biblical narrative too. We're not the sorts of creatures who should be subject to tyranny.

And then the tyranny might be, well, is it the tyranny of a state, or is it the tyranny we impose on ourselves? And I would say probably both. Why not both? The story could be referring to both. We tyrannize ourselves with our own presuppositions all the time. And then you might ask yourself, why?

Why don't we just give up our tyrannical presuppositions? Because they're not worthy and they're oppressive, but we don't give them up. And we often celebrate them. And I think the story has an answer for that too because it's out of the tyranny into the desert It's like is that better or worse? how well worse?

And so what if it's the case that even to escape from the tyranny of your own Presuppositions that you don't go from the tyranny to the promised land you go from the tyranny to the promised land, you go from the tyranny to the desert, and who the hell excuse me wants to do that. And the answer is no one with any sense. It's like, hey, I'll just keep the tyranny. Thank you very much. At least I know where everything belongs there.

And fair enough, I mean, this is a very serious question, and it's an open question in the Exodus narrative, whether the desert is worse or better than the tyranny. And so, and you know, you see this in the real world, lots of people in the Soviet Union pined for the days of Stalin. So I read once that was reminiscences of a extermination camp written by the guards, the good old days. You know, so I don't think there's a tyranny that's so brute

that we can't long for it if it's been shattered. And so that's quite something, all that packed up in that story. Anyways, there is a lights are out in the desert. And they're there for 40 years, and you might think, well, what kind of leadership do they have? It's not that big a desert. And the answer is, yeah, but the desert after a tyranny,

that's no bloody joke. And maybe it takes three generations to get through it. And that's possible. And so there's all that. And then the Israelites are wandering around in the desert. And what happens? Well, the same thing happened to them is it's happening to us. They're worshiping false idols and they're tempted. And it's no wonder they're tempted because while they're in the desert, it's like it's not going so well.

It's no wonder they're having a crisis of confidence, you know, and maybe they're pining for the old days and they're not so sure that the God who informed them that being the subjects of tyranny was wrong because now here we are in the desert. And so they lack faith. And it's understandable. But despite it being understandable, and this is one of the harsh things about the story,

what does God do when he hears their complaints? He sends poisonous snakes in there to bite them. I think that's pretty brutal. And that's the sort of thing that makes the technical atheist sort of recoil about the conceptions of God and the Old Testament. It's not exactly what you expect in some sense from an all-mursafel being.

It's like, you got these poor Israelites. First of all, they're in the tyranny. Then they had to go across the Red Sea. Now they've been wandering around in the desert and that's not good. And so your best solution is to send a bunch of snakes and to bite them. But you think, well, you know,

even if you're in the desert after a tyranny and you lose faith, then the snakes are going to bite you, right? Because that's what happens, because if you're in, you know, a little analog of hell and you lose your faith, is that going to make it worse or better? And the answer is, well, I have reason to lose my faith. It's like fair enough. that isn't the question. The question is, what happens if you lose it? Or you start looking for faith in the wrong directions.

And the answer is, hell gets a little deeper. And it's one of the things that really frighten me. I spend a lot of time studying atrocity. And when I realized on a metaphorical level that the reason hell is a bottomless pit is because no matter how bad it is, there is some bloody stupid thing you can do that will make it worse. And that's right.

And that's a terrifying realization to really understand that. And so, OK, poisonous snakes, and so now the Israelites are not only lost, but they're being bitten by venomous creatures. And you know, there's an echo of the snake in the Garden of Eden in that story. And so finally, the Israelites, they get kind of tired of being bitten by the snakes. And they go to Moses and say,

you want to have a chat with God because you seem to be in there fairly tight with him. How about you get him to call off the snakes and maybe we'll behave a little better? How is that for a deal? And Moses says, okay, I'll see what I can do. And he goes and has a chat with God, which is no trivial matter.

And God doesn't do what you'd expect because what you'd expect, like in this would even work in terms of making it a comprehensible narrative, you'd think, okay, all right guys, you've been bitten off, no more snakes, but that isn't what happens. And I think the reason that it doesn't happen is because there's no getting rid of the snakes. I think that's also why there's a snake in the Garden of Eden is there's just no getting rid of the snakes. You have to learn

to contend with them. It's more that. Or maybe it's better to learn to contend with snakes than it is to inhabit a world where there's no danger. Maybe it's something like that. I don't know. Anyways, God says something extremely surprising and very interesting from the perspective of a clinical psychologist. He tells Moses to cast snake in bronze and to raise it up on a staff. And the staff seems to me to be a reference to the staff of Moses. And that staff of Moses is something

like the thing you put in the ground to orient yourself with. It's the staff of God too. And it's sort of like an axiom. And maybe it's like the tree of life. It's like here I stand. It's a center point. it's sort of like an axiom, and maybe it's like the tree of life. It's like here I stand, it's a center point, it's all of that. In any case, you put the snake up on the staff, that's also the symbol of healing, right? The physician symbol of healing the staff with the snakes. And so it is a symbol of transformation, and partly that's because

snakes shed their skin and are reborn, and so they're viewed as agents of transformation. And so that's all lurking in that symbol. And then God says, get the Israelites to go look at the snake on the staff and then the poison won't poison them anymore. And I read that as a clinician, I thought. That's really interesting because one of the things that we learned, all schools of psychotherapy, learned in the last hundred years, is that if you get people to voluntarily confront what makes them afraid and what makes them want to avoid, then they get better. It's curative. And so that's the message there. It's like, well, if something is terrifying you, pay more attention to it. And that's actually what you teach people in psychotherapy. I mean, there's a variety of psychotherapeutic techniques,

but exposure is probably the cardinal technique. Psychic, if I can find out what you're avoiding and get you to confront it voluntarily, you'll get better. And the reason seems to be is that if you get people to confront what they're afraid of and sometimes what disgusts them, but what they'd like to avoid, let's say, if you get people to confront what they're afraid of and sometimes what disgusts them, but what they'd like to avoid, let's say, if you get them to confront it voluntarily, that could be the future, even, you know,

the indeterminate future, they don't get less afraid. They get braver, and that's different. It's not like they get accustomed to what they're looking at and they're no longer afraid. That kind of happens, but it isn't really what happens. What really happens is they discover there's a lot more to them than they thought. And so they're not as easily intimidated then. And so if you run a clinical client through a session of exposure therapy, maybe they're

afraid of an elevator or something like that, you get them so they'll go on the elevator and sometimes they're often women because women have anxiety disorders more often than men. One of the unintended consequences of that often is the go home and have the fight with their husband that's been brewing for 30 years. Because they're now braver. They see themselves in the different light

because they've confronted this thing that terrifies them. And so it's so interesting in that story that God's cure for the venomous serpent is voluntary exposure to the source of terror. It's so interesting that that's the case. But that, and this is relevant to the issue of suffering, to confronting suffering dead on, to actually focus your attention on that

which you would like to avoid. One of the remarkable parts of that story is also that one of the scariest words ever is if I was God, there wouldn't have been bitten in the first place, right? So they've got the serpent that serpents on the pole, but they're still going to get bitten. And I think that that's what's essential about that,

is just because the serpent is there, it doesn't mean that everything is fixed. It now looks like... Fakes are still there. But the transformation that takes place is the focus of the suffering becomes a symbol of faith for them. And that's obviously in the cross. Well, and part of the faith is the faith

that enables them to go look at the serpent to begin with. OK, so that leads us to the next part, which is in John. Because Christ says thousands of years later that he has to be lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness. It's like, OK, what in the world is going on there? Because that's hell of a thing for anyone to say about anything ever. And it's right, because what does that mean? Why would the

Son of God compare himself to a serpent and why that particular serpent and that serpent in the wilderness? And I knew this old idea that lurks in all sorts of stories, in this corpus of stories that I talked about, you know, there's an idea that the hero rescues his father from the belly of the beast. That's a very, very old idea. And what that seems to mean to some degree is that if you look into the abyss, then that, what, it reacquaints you with the wisdom and possibility of your tradition. It's something like that. It forces that. It forces a maturation and a recognition of what's fundamentally important, that confrontation

with what's terrifying. Well, so Christ says he has to be lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness. Thought, what does that mean? I thought a lot about the relationship between the serpent and the garden of Eden and the idea of Satan because there's an association there between those two ideas, and that's a very strange association too, because there's nothing in the biblical story and Genesis that indicates that the serpent is Satan. That's an idea that aggregates across hundreds of years or thousands of years that

equation. I tried to think that through. I thought, well, the snake is the thing that threatens us. That's true biologically. We're wired to be afraid of serpents, especially poisonous ones, and they've been in an antagonistic relationship with mammals for like 60 million years, very long time. But in some sense, the idea of Satan is, he's the ultimate insurface. And so that's why that equation is drawn across time. It's like, well, what threatens you? Well, snakes, yeah, they're pretty nasty. Well, there's snakes and then there's, well,

the origin of snakes. So maybe you conquer a snake and that's one thing and maybe the next thing is you go out and you find nests of snakes and you root them out. But then there's the snakes that are in the hearts of your enemies. That's a harder snake to deal with. And then there's the snake that's in your heart. And that's the hardest snake to deal with, right? And that's where the equation between the serpent and Satan comes because the worst of all snakes is the serpent in your own heart. And so there's a psychologization of the idea of the predator and it becomes something that's more spiritual,

is that you're most vulnerable to the worst impulses within you. That's the worst predator. OK, so there's the idea of the concretization of the idea of the serpent becoming psychologized up into this figure of the adversary himself and that abides within you. And now, legously, perhaps, is this reference that Christ makes to himself in relationship to the snake? Because I thought,

well, what's the passion? If the snake is what you're afraid of in this concretized sense, then the passion is the sum total of all possible fears. And I think that's right. You know, Carl Jung, he thought about the story of the passion as an archetypal tragedy. And here's what he meant by that. So imagine that you took all the tragedies

that were ever written and you sort of, you distilled them so that you got the ultimate tragedy because the fact that you can identify a bunch of different stories as tragic means they have something in common, right? And so you could imagine you could pull out the central pattern of tragedy and we could flesh out some of what that might be. Like it's tragic when something bad happens to someone. Well what if they deserve it? Okay well then it's not so tragic. It still might have an element of tragedy, but it's really tragic if something really terrible

happens to someone who clearly doesn't deserve it. So what's the most tragic story? Well, it's the worst possible thing happening to the person who least deserves it. Well, that's core to the passion story. That's for sure, right? Because not only is Christ innocent, he's not merely innocent. He's also good, and not just good. He's as good as it gets. And yet, his life is the tragedy of the passion is the worst of all possible punishments

visited upon the least deserving person. But it's remembered way worse than that. That just barely begins to scrape the surface worst of all possible punishments visited upon the least deserving person. But it's remembered way worse than that. That just barely begins to scrape the surface because it's torture and a terrible torture because the Romans' design crucifixion to be a terrible torture, like consciously. And so it's tragedy at the hands of your fellow man and your fellow man Motivated by the spirit of Cain in the most fundamental sense. How can I inflict the most misery possible in the shortest period of time? Let's say subject to that at a young age with four knowledge as a consequence of betrayal by your best friend at the hands of a mob of Your own people who are simultaneously under the thumb of a tyranny that's part and parcel

of what's persecuting you, who persecute you, knowing you're innocent, not just innocent, but also good, and who choose to punish you instead of punishing someone they know to be criminal. It's all of that. It's like the sum total of all possible fears. And I think that's right. And it's so interesting to me that psychologically, that not speaking religiously to the degree that that's possible when speaking about such things is that our culture has put at its center an archetypal tragedy. It's as if we're attempting to

inoculate ourselves against the catastrophe of life. But what's also so fascinating about the story of the passion is that the crucifixion is not the end of the story. The end of the story is the resurrection. And so the implication there is the same as the implication of going into the abyss to rescue your father from the belly of the beast. It's like the tragedy isn't the end of the story. The resurrection is the end of the story. And so then you wonder what that means psychologically because what you see in psychotherapeutic session in the psychothersikethoo peer to Mill you is that if you get people to expose themselves

to what they're terrified of, being terrified isn't the end of the story. Recovering is the end of the story. And so that begs the question is, well, to what degree are we capable of bearing, suffering, and prevailing? And the answer might be to the degree that we're capable of confronting it forthrightly. And that might actually just be true. And, you know, you think, well, how could it be otherwise in some sense, like what's going to call the best out of you, if it isn't the most, what's most challenging? Because it's not that easy to get the best called out of you.

It's not going to just happen because someone rings your doorbell, right? You have to be shook to the core before you're gonna undertake what's necessary to make the sacrifices that are required to put you in alignment. That's, that doesn't happen with no reason. So, well, so, are you grateful for your suffering as a consequence of that? I don't know, that's a high standard, man, that's a high standard, and maybe it's unrealistic, but I think one of the things that faith brings us to is, and we were talking about it when

we're in the chapel, in the firey, is that when we look at the cross, and it's very Catholic, is that we always see Jesus there, that the corpus is there. And because you talk about it in your chapter, but what does it look like to transcend suffering? And what does that individual look like? And in some ways, our businesses are similar, right? People are bringing their brokenness to you,

and they bring their brokenness to me. But I believe in a God that can transform that. So I was asking myself, well, what does that look like? And I recall a priest that I met in Africa, and I believe what he had was Lou Gehrig's disease. So by the time I met him, he was no longer able to really move his arms or legs very well. We were praying that the Lord would heal him in that. And then he began to share his story with me in what had taken place in he and his community in the midst of his sickness and the midst of his suffering. As he said, people didn't used to go to church very much.

But since I've been sick, people are coming and that they wouldn't line up for confessions, but since I've been sick, there's a long line of people coming to confession. So the church was half full and now it's packed. You said people begin to speak and they say that I'm more empathetic, that I'm more compassionate, that I'm more loving, that I'm more kind.

And I'm embarrassed to admit that at that moment as he was sharing his story about the transformation that was taken both in he and in the community I was praying, Lord, please don't heal him. Because if we believe that this is what I want to be, right, I want to be loving and I want to be kind and I want to be generous and I want to be empathetic, but I don't want it to be through the cross. There's got to be another way that we can discover that.

So wouldn't it though, right? But the fundamental key to the central Christian reality is it's through that cross that we are transformed. It's by one thing I was reflecting on, Jesus embraces his cross, his suffering, and says yes to that, yes, which I just can't imagine. Mary says yes to a different issue. Yes, yes, he offers us a question that I want to talk about, is which is more difficult

for he does. Hey, good question. Thank you. I'd rather do a little bit more. Hey, good question. Thank you very I'd rather just say, good question. Thank you very much. I think we're done. Thank you for coming.

Right? But isn't that, in fact, the case is that when Jesus embraced his suffering, he gives life to the world. He breaks the power of this evil one over this snake and gives life. Suffering is no longer meaningless. Actually, it's salvific. But the same thing happened with this priest in this community in Nairobi, Africa, is that he embraced the suffering

in a transformed him. Yes, but it also transformed the community around him because they saw the way in the manner with which he's suffered. And he embraced that. And he found that to be transformative. Isn't that what it means when you talk about transcending this?

And you talk about how the impact that that can have on another person watching. That's what the Gospel is inviting us to. That seems right to me. Okay, so how do you reconcile this? Thank you. What another person. No, reconcile the great. What, reconcile the great. Well, so you tell the story beautifully of the past and the resurrection, but how do

you personally approach that? How do you reconcile this reality? I think that's what you try to do in your life. You know, I mean, this is an idea that I derived, I would say at large part from reading you, Carl Jung, he talked about psychologically again, about the two great ideas about Christ. There's the idea in John that Christ is the word that was there at the beginning of time, and at the end of time it's this temporally eternal divine word, impersonal in some sense almost. in some sense almost. Well, because it's something that extends from the beginning of time to the end of time

isn't so evidently human. It's elevated beyond the confines of what's merely human. But it lacks something as a consequence of that too. It lacks time and place. And the way Christianity... Yeah, exactly. It bridges that gap. I had a student once who asked me, why don't we just tell the same archetypal story over and over? Why do we need all these variations? I thought, that's a really good question. I'm not exactly

sure about that. And then I thought, oh, it's related to this issue, is that there's the divine word, but there's the incarnation. And the incarnation indicates that the specifics of time in place are just as important as the eternal that surrounds it. And so then I would say, well, that's probably true in each of our lives, is that, well, how do we reconcile this? And well, that's your ethical adventure. How do you reconcile that?

And we each do it in our own way. And with tremendous difficulty, I would say. And we each do it in our own way, and with tremendous difficulty, I would say, and we do it aided and abetted if we're fortunate by people that love and care for us. But that is the challenge, you know, on a huge part of the challenge of life. And this is something I totally concentrate on in this last chapter is,

how do you bear the suffering that is at the crux of life without becoming tempted and imbitered? That's really, really difficult. Now, you know, someone might point out, go ahead and be better, see where that gets you, and if you have any sense, and generally people have at least some, they know that being sick and bitter is worse than just being sick. And that being right, it's worse, but it's very hard temptation to avoid. Sometimes you wanna be bitter just out of spite, in some sense, because things are so terrible. All you've got left is your willingness to shake your fist,

you know, and say, well, you know, really? Is this like this many poisonous snakes? Really? That's like, maybe I could have learned with just one or two, not a hundred. And so, but we're stuck, we're all stuck with that. And I think we're stuck with it at every level of our life in some sense is how do we maintain a high order moral orientation in spite of suffering and malevolence. When I was a young seminarian, one of the things that I started to work in a neonatal intensive care

in this summer, I baptized over 20 babies and all the babies died. And it was very, I was a seminarian, I was supposed to have all the answers, right? And they'd come to me and they'd say, you know, tell me real quick, why did this happen? You know, this got, why did he allow this to happen? And I came to the place, a couple of things. and they'd say, you know, tell me real quick, why did this happen? You know, this God, why did He allow this to happen? And I came to the place, a couple of things. One is that I didn't have to defend God. Like in my own mind and my own heart,

there was something very freeing in that. I don't know what, I mean, what kind of explanation, let me explain to you why this happened. Oh, thank you so much for that. Yeah, that makes sense. I wish I saw somebody who had told me that. Right, right. But what I did, what I would continually come to is that,

and this is a mystery of the faith that Jesus is present in the midst of the suffering. somebody who had told me that, right? But what I did, what I would continually come to is that, and this is a mystery to the faith that Jesus is present in the midst of the suffering. And I tell you, actually the first book I wrote was on freedom, and I spent a lot of time in that Exodus text because that's, the invitation to look at Pharaoh and be freed in that. But when we're children, and we fall down

and we scrape our knee, our mom comes and she kisses us and she passes us on the head and said it's going to be okay. And it is. I mean really what is she done? She's kissed me on the head and she's petting me, said it's going to be okay. But we grow up and we don't think that's enough anymore. But my experience tells me is that when when Christ can do that for me, in the midst of my broken mess, in the midst of my suffering, in the midst of my pain, it reminds me that I'm loved, right? I remember sitting in the chapel, it was a Thursday evening, as a seminary, and trying to figure

all this out, and hearing the Lord breaking in the midst of that and say, Dave, I love you. And I said, well, I appreciate that. But that's not the issue. Let me explain the issue. What am I supposed to tell these people? It reminds me that I'm loved. And it's enough. It's enough.

And that's the Christian mystery of suffering. That it ought not be something that we try to escape. But it's actually an invitation that we continually find Jesus because I suggest that when we find God in the presence of the suffering we can find Him anywhere. It's easy to find Him in a sunset or in a baptism, take a brand new baby, pour oil all over them and grease them up and it smells the chrysum, it's wonderful, it's easy to find Him in that. How about cancer? And divorce? And fertility. that when we can find it, it's the mystery of our faith that God enters the messiness rather than just fixing it from the outside. He

enters this and takes this upon himself and transforms it. When we find him there, I suggest we find him anywhere. My experience is that our faith becomes more real, it becomes more authentic, it becomes more present when we can find a minute of that. Yeah, well, what would I say about that? Well, I guess one of the things I would say about that is that perhaps it looks like we have something difficult to do as it turns out, we might think, why wouldn't we, rather that things were easy and pain-free and fair enough, but that isn't what our life is like

It's extremely difficult. It's difficult to maintain an ethical orientation in the midst of malevolence and suffering and that means in some sense and I suppose this is part parcel of the Christian story that we have some divine calling It's something like that. It's like, and that divine calling is to establish what's good in the midst of what isn't. To be Jesus in the midst of it. To be crazed. Yeah, well, that's the, that's the, that's the,

that's the, see, I guess I, I, I don't know exactly what to make of that because I don't know to what degree we're called on to find Christ in the middle of that, let's say, or to be lifted up like that in the middle of that. I think it's both that. Is it Christ? Yeah, it's all fair enough. I think so. The Christ, I mean, to the degree, and this is I think, if I can't, and this

is hard, if I can't find Christ in me, then I can't find him in them. And then if I don't see what he's done, how he's alive in me, then it's a priest or is a believer, it's hard for me to invite somebody else to that. And it's hard for me to see him in somebody else. So that's where I have to first pause as it is Christ who's alive in me. When I experience that, not just read it, it's not just a corpus that we look at, that we read the Bible, but it's a live,

it's a living word, when that becomes alive in me, then it allows me to be able to see that in other people, because I know me. Well, if I find him in me, because I know it goes in this head. Well, when you see people who are noble in spite of their suffering, it is an obling. It is uplifting. Right, like really it is.

And it's been striking to me too. People want to be encouraged in that direction. I mean, part of the reason that my lectures, I would say, have been successful to the degree that they have been is because people find them encouraging. And that actually seems to work, like it seems to be positive. Because it is necessary.

It's a good news. Well, it seems to me. I mean, it isn't necessarily the case that that would be the case, because it could have been that I would have said, encouraging things to people. There's more to you than meets the eye and you're capable of more than you're demanding of yourself. And, you know, if you took on your responsibility and faced the things that you're trying to avoid, that your life would be richer and better and for you and for everyone around you. And the result of that could have been that thousands

of people would come to me and say, you know, I gave that a pretty good shot and your advice is really awful. And everything is, well, seriously, like I took on that responsibility, it just bloody crushed me and I'm way worse off than I was before. And everything's gone to hell around me and like thanks a lot, buddy. And that, it's not like that's a completely incomprehensible possibility, but that doesn't seem to be what happens, is what generally happens is that young people in particular, but not only come to me and say, look, I've been trying to take on more responsibility and to face the things I've been avoiding, and everything is way better. It's like, okay, well, is not something.

Maybe on something. Well, then you ask yourself, well, what's the limit of that? Because that's the religious question, fundamentally, is, well, if you took on all the responsibility you could take on, and you faced everything that you needed to face, what would you be like? Who would you be? And how would the world transform around you? And, well, if the partial answer is, well, if I do that a little bit, things get a fair bit better, then the next question might be, well,

what if you did that completely? And I don't think that's possible in some sense, right? It's like, you know, perfection is a horizon that always recedes, but it isn't obvious to me what the upper limit of that is. And certainly we do see people, I mean saints, let's say. That's right, you say it to my other trace. It's a Francis of his days. Who kind of push the limit and the miraculous things happen around them, maybe in the literal

sense, and if not in the literal sense, close enough, you know, for all intents and purposes. So that's heartening. I mean, I tear myself apart about this in many ways, because I think perhaps it's possible to take on too much responsibility and to crush yourself as a consequence. Maybe that's a sin of pride. Who knows?

It's certainly possible. But my experience so far has been that, when you see people bear their suffering nobly, there's nothing in that but good. That's something. And then when you see people take on more responsibility and decide that they're going to aim up and confront their suffering honestly and forthrightly that their lives get better and the lives of people around them get better too. And so that's very strange as well

because it also means that the pathway to less suffering is through suffering, right? And that's kind of, that would be hopeful if the world was constituted that way. It's like, well, they're suffering. How do you make it worse? Run away. How do you make it better?

Confront it. Yeah, but it's suffering. It's like, yeah, but it's there. There it is. It's right there. It's a precondition for existence or something like that. And it's like you have something important to do as well. And you confront it.

And that's the pathway to transcending it. and you confront it and that's the pathway to transcending it. Probably, it's rough. Maybe we wish it would be different and maybe we don't, too. Yeah, when I was reflecting on parts of your chapter, one of the things I was reflecting on, in light of also the snake, right? I think a good suggestion is not to have a conversation with the serpent, all things being equal,

but he ultimately, they believe the lie, right? And I think isn't one of the greatest lies of the culture of the evil one, I would say. And I find it really interesting. You use the word the adversary in Satan, which from a psychologist and a scientist in this morning you said, yeah, you meant that. That there is an evil. There is a personification of evil. If you read, if you read anything about Auschwitz, about the Nazi death counts, about what happened

in the Soviet Union, if you read that sort of thing seriously, or if you read about people who've done, I read a lot of books about the worst serial killers, and I mean, that's quite the competition, and to be the worst serial killer, which people do compete for, by the way, it's not like the high school shooters don't know about the reputations of all the other high school shooters,

it's not like they don't try to outdo them because they certainly do and they do it consciously. I mean, if you read those accounts and you don't walk away with the notion that evil exists and that the notion of an adversary is like as real as it gets, then you just haven't read very carefully. But how do your peers deal with that when you say that? They don't. You know, I mean, psychologists generally don't, some clinical psychologists talk about evil, but non-clinicians tend not to,

and that's because they're just never, they just aren't confronted by it. You are if you're a clinician. I mean, you see things in families that are so terrible that they're inexpressible and multi-generational often, you know, and the only language that you can really fit that sort of thing in as a religious language. It's, that's the only language that's serious enough.

And, you know, people, I don't know, the idea of evil is taboo idea, scientifically. It's like, have it your way. You know, one of the things that Sojanitsen claimed was that the Nuremberg judgments were the most significant ethical event of the 20th century, or at least among them, because the Nuremberg judgment was that some things are wrong, right? You don't get the excuse, I was following orders,

you don't get the excuse, that's how my culture looks at it. Do you don't get any excuses? That's how my culture looks at it. Do you don't get any excuses? That's what a crime against humanity is. It's like, do you believe in crimes against humanity? The answer's either yes or no, because those are the two answers. And if it's no, it's then, okay, you have the world where that's the belief

and see how that goes, and all have the world where I think that there are things that are evil, and we'll see how that goes. And because you're going to not condemn the imposition of pointless suffering on people for the sake of the suffering, that's not wrong in some fundamental and transcendental sense. I mean, you can say no, you know, say, I don't believe in evil. It's okay, but that has its consequences and one of the consequences is you can't condemn evil. That's a problem, you know, or maybe not. But it's not like a world where you don't condemn evil.

It isn't like there aren't consequences to that decision. You know, and I also think that there's no good where there's no evil, right? And so if you dispense with the idea of evil, don't you simultaneously dispense with the idea of good? I mean, because if something doesn't exist, how does its opposite exist? And if evil doesn't exist, then how does good exist? Because in some sense, those two things are they're integrity linked in their reality.

One of them only can't exist, right? That isn't how things work. If there wasn't something that wasn't good, there couldn't be good. And maybe that's the reason there's evil. You know, metaphysically speaking, because you might ask yourself, well, why would God make a world that's characterized by evil?

And the answer is, well, maybe evil can exist as a possibility, but not a reality. It could, if we did things right, evil could exist as a possibility, and not a reality. Maybe to that end, Augustine says, I quote that I wrote this as preparing, God would not allow any evil to exist,

unless out of it he could draw a greater good. This is the part of the wisdom and the goodness of God. And as the believer, we see that ultimately in the crucifixion of Jesus, that we call good Friday, there's this craziness that we call it good Friday in the darkest day of human history, but it's good, right? That that day is good because of the salvation that comes about from that.

But to be able to make that step, honestly, I think my suspicion is a lot of people that come and see you as a psychologist is because they're not able to reconcile that. They're not able to figure out that there is actually a good and an evil, and those two things ought to be recognized and seen. Yeah, well, it's very difficult to reconcile, especially

if you, you know, one of the things that does happen to you as a clinician and no doubt as a priest is that you see people, often people who are, often people are shattered, not because their life is tragic, although that does happen, but because they've been touched by malevolence. Tragedy in and of itself isn't enough. You can bear a fair bit of tragedy, but if someone had it in for you, and you were betrayed, and your life was blown into pieces because of the voluntary betrayal of someone who was aiming at your destruction. And you think, well, that doesn't happen.

It's like, well, you better wake up, because if you're asleep like that, it could easily happen to you. And I wouldn't recommend it, because it happens to people all the time, and sometimes they do it to themselves. And that's brutal. And recall the story of one of our graduates, she was a nurse, and she was just abating a patient and her head nurse, and was kind of watching her, and she pulled her aside a couple of days later, and she said,

have watched the way you treat the patients. You treat them differently. She said, there's a tenderness about you, and an ability to see the person, there's just something different in your chest. What do you attribute this? And she said, I suppose two things, I've suffered greatly. And this was a young woman that I'd walked with and has known horrible abuse within her

family, which is just such a violation. But she said, I've suffered greatly and then she said, and I've been loved greatly. And it was interesting that her colleague could see that. That there was something different about that. And she attributed to ultimately suffering and ultimately to being loved. Yeah, well, that does seem a can, catalyze a kind of maturity that would

be evidenced in that sort of interaction. We could probably go on for a while, but we're part of thought. Oh, I guess perhaps... I guess I'm hoping that perhaps that you Catholic types stop being so apologetic for your virtues. You know, one of the things that the radicals are really good at is weaponizing guilt. And good people have a proclivity for guilt, you know, because if someone accuses you of something, especially if multiple people accuse you, and you're a well-socialized person, a conscientious person. You're

going to tear yourself into pieces pretty hard trying to figure out if they've got a point. And that's fine, you know, fair enough, but it makes you vulnerable to another satanic synonym is the accuser. Right. His question is, well, how susceptible should you be to accusations? And that's a tough one, because like I said, if you're a good person, it's pretty easy to feel guilty, but the problem with that is, is your guilt can be weaponized, and that's definitely happening. So all of you people with your privilege. So, you know, I guess I'd part with that thought.

I think part of the reason that there's an injunction, a religious injunction, to atone is to come to terms with your privilege so that it can't be weaponized. Maybe. It's more complicated than that. It's a good start. There are all sorts of advantages you have that other people don't have. And no doubt disadvantages as well, right,

that are unique to you. But let's stick with the advantages. It's like, well, what makes you deserving of those advantages? It can't really be historical happenstance. You happen to be born American, you know, which is relatively good fortune. Because you can't really not attribute that to you. You don't deserve that in any sense.

So how do you justify it? And I think the answer is, by leading an ethical life. Like that's actually the answer. It's not like you should lead an ethical life. You should. That's not the issue. The issue is that's how you an ethical life. You should. That's not the issue. The issue is that's how you atone for your under-and-privillage. And the advantage to that is your guild can't be weaponized

under those conditions, not by other people, which is very important at the moment, but also by you. It's like you think, well, I've got these advantages. What am I doing about them? I'm doing the best I can with them. That's how I justify them is. I try to treat them as gifts, and I try to make the most out of them in a way that's maximally beneficial for me

and for everybody else, simultaneous them. I'm actually trying to do that. It's like, well, who could ask for more than that? And I think that's, well, that's one weapon in the culture war. It's like if you're living an ethical life, you know, if you're doing your best, well, maybe you can stop apologizing for your privilege.

And maybe that would take one weapon away from the people who want to burn everything down. Because they definitely want to burn everything down. So, I invite the Corolla, if you guys want to come up and get set, we're going to have a closing in. Just to that end though, one of the things that the United talked about, and I think it's important about the university, is that the goal for our students is just that.

You know, it's to be able to go out into a world and be holy, and be a saint. And ultimately, I think that that's what the world needs is men and women that are going to live courageously. I love town in this chapter you spoke so often times about courageously. Well, this is hard. It's hard to live this life.

It's hard to be faithful. It's hard to be good. It's hard to be right. And yet, it's the challenge that I think our student body has accepted the call that the board has on their life to be successful. Yeah, well I think that's the basis of any real education, is that, you know, it's a call to nobility. It's a call to virtue, fundamentally, because what good is education if it's not a call to virtue.

So, I also asked, Dr. If you would mind if we prayed with him before, through the evening, his wife was unable to join us, but you're certainly welcome any time. I offered him a job earlier. And he didn't say no. He didn't say no. But I must say, in many of our conversations today, some of the things that we're doing here

and some of the things that you're working on, I think there's a great synergy and a great way that we can collaborate. So I look forward to that. Oh, it would be good. This is a collaboration. I suppose. John Paul is going to come up. And I just invite you, if you want to just, what, why don't you stand and you stay, you

remain seated. And we're just going to invite the congregation to stand. We're just going to ask the Lord's blessing upon Dr. Peterson. And also his wife and his son and daughter, that the Lord would continue to pour his blessings upon them. And John Paul is just going to lead us in a song, just a very simple song of blessings. So we ask the Lord to bless you, Dr. Peterson. Lord bless you and keep you. Is faith shy upon you?

Be gracious to you. Lord, plnise, face to our King and give him peace. Heavenly Father, I thank you for bringing our brother to us today. I ask your blessing to be upon He and his wife, his son and his daughter, that them continue to know your love and His wife, His son and His daughter, that them continue to know your love and your peace, your healing. Father, I pray your protection upon His work, continue to inspire Him, give Him courage, give Him strength.

That His mother Teresa remind us, we are but a pencil on the hand of God, that you would continue to part your blessing that you would write well. Fill in with your grace, your presence, and the midst of his own suffering, may he discover and find you there. Middleropart is blessings upon you, Dr. Peterson, God was Father of Simon and Holy Spirit.

Amen, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Much appreciated. Thank you, everyone.

Much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you