Lessee, according to Jordan Peterson, Abraham was just lolling around eating peeled grapes, living the soft life of luxury, when God called him to go to another country. How Peterson got that idea about the life Abraham was living I have no idea, there's nothing in scirpture to incidate such a life, and as a matter of fact we get a glimpse of the family life he came from later when his son and grandson are looking there for wives. And it's not a lazy life at all, it is a life of taking care of animals at least, and tat's not an esy life. Jacob spends years tending Laban's flock. this soft life Peterson imagines is just that, imagined.
Then he explains god's reason for calling Abraham out of his family as a great adventure that is intended to develop him as a human being, to save him from the indolence of his current life presumably and get him living with more purpose and meaning. Something like that. He then goes through many adventures and trials as part of this process of growing up or something like that, including the call to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. And when he is tring to define God later on in the interview god turns out to be kind of a sum total of all the trials and adventures and their lessons or something like that. Sorry if I'm getting this too far wrong, I do have a memory problem and I do have a problem just processing the kind of thinking Peterson does.
Does he know what the orthodox Christian view orf these things is? I really don't know. God calls Abraham because God wants to make a people for himself, a people of his very own, separated from the idolatrous life Abraham's family lived, in which he grow up. God wants him to himself and he wants a gret people who will come from him as His own people. this isn't the story of a man learning life's lessons, this is the unique sotry of god's calling people to His own pirposes. god doeass the calling, God does the plannjing, god does the training, all for His own purposes. And He promises Abrhama great rewards, the main reward being Himself" I am thy exceeding great reward" He tells him.
And then there is supposed to be some psychological meaning to the story of the sacrifice of issaac too, which I'm afraid has escaped me entirely, but it's a life trial for the sake of Abraham's growing to manly maturity I gather. odes Peterson know that Isaac is regarded as a type of Christ sacrified on the cross for our sins? does he kno that the place God has Abraham build the altar of sacrifice is in fact the very place where Jesus Himself will be sacrificed on the cross almolst two thousand years later? Mt. Moriah. Has he run across that in his studies? Isaac is a picture of the daeth of the Messiah, but of course since he isn't the Messiah god substitutes a ram in his place so that he is there as a picture and Abraham is spared the tragedy of his oloss. but later in the book of Hebrws we are told that Abraham had come to the conclusion that God would raise him from the dead if he was killed, and that is abraham's own recognition of the menaing of the sacrifice as looking forward to the cross of Christ.
Almost forgot that the symbolim of this site on Mt Moriah continues in the time of King David when it belongs to Ornan the MJJebusite where it is a threshing floor, another interesting symbol in itself. David buys the site for sacrifice. Jerusalem is partly built by then, by the Jebusites, a thousand years before Christ.
And surely Peterson doesn't recknon with any of this orthodoxy.
I wonder if the time will come for him when he gets it.
Later: Continuing to listen. Oops, he just said You don't get things you don't deserve. Woopsie. But Protestantism says the exafct opposite. Did he really read the New Testament?
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He's talking about the devil's telling him to turn the stones into bread. then he goes on to the devil's telling Him to throw himself aoff the temple and says So you want god to rescue you from your stuidity? No, not happening. HUm, but of course that's what God always does. Not that sins can be rightly reducced to stupidity in most cases but in a way it's fair to call them that. I've been rescued from ots of stupidity. And go read Psalm one hundred and seven for an example of how god rescues us from all manner ot stuff we get ourselves into.
True we shouldn't pray for these things but not for the reasons he's giving. And then he goes on mentioning his interpretation of how we see through a glass darkly as if it's just a matter of our own personal clouded vision rather than a condition of the fallen world and our fallen condition, because it goes on to say we will "then " see "face to face." We can't see God knnow but we'l;ll see Him "then."
People give Peterson a lot of slack becaue he's so smart and says such sophisticated ethical things. But he makes a mangled mess of the scriptures and should b ecalled out on it because he's bound to influence people to the wrong way of understanding the Bible.
NNow on to What is prayer and he says thinking is secularized prayer. Thinking opens you up to revelation. Prayer gets you revelation. gut nowhere in that does he mention that we pray TO somebody. The world means to request basiclaly. I ask God for something. I may ask Himt o give me revleation, that's a good thinkg to ask Him for, but I'm asking HIM, I'm not just thinking to myself. peterson does make a good point that we do just seem to get thoughts coming into our heads that answer a dilemma we're having and what is thta but revelation as he thinks of it. It's an interesting observation but it's not prayer.
Could go on and on and on. Jordan, stop thinking. "Lean not unto your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge HIm and He will direct your paths." Sto ptring to understand things, address yoruself to Him, yes, as if He is there, as if He hears you , as if He has the answers you need and they may not be the same as the ones that come to you as revelations as you think of them. try it sometime.
Funny how God is sort of real and sort of not real to Peterson at the same time. What if at some point he suddenly realizes tht He is really really really real. What then. What if it suddenly hits him that God hears his every thought, that God sees him, that God knows him. What then. He warns against treting God as a butler to give us what we want but in a way that's how he is treating Him. He's not quite personal to him, not quite a Person. I would hope if it ever hits him that God is indeed a Person that at that point he'll be afraid to think any more of his thoughts about the bible, what the Bible raelly means and all that, cuz he's awful;ly kj wrong about tall that.
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