Jordan Peterson Rule Six Redo: Strive to Improve the World While You Work on Yourself, Too

            Sometimes, perhaps too often, the Bible is read as if it was a casting call for what it takes to be a good Christian. For example, those readers who attend church have all heard preachers say things like we need to have to have faith as strong as Abraham’s, or passion for God as wide and deep as King David’s; we ought to dare to be Daniels and have the bravado of the Apostle Peter.

            Ironically, most Biblical heroes, including Abraham and David and Daniel and Peter, were actually deeply-flawed humans we really don’t want to emulate. I mean it.

            For all his faith, Abraham and Sarah both laughed at God when he told them that they would have a son. And, far worse, they sent Abraham’s eldest son Ishmael, and his mother Hagar, into the desert to die because Sarah was jealous of them. How’s that for a house in perfect order? Would you want to emulate Sarah or Abraham?

           When King David saw Bathsheba bathing, he knew he’d have to have her, no matter the price. And the price was steep. To hide his affair and her pregnancy, David had Bathsheba’s husband Uriah murdered in battle. That dysfunction set the pattern for the rest of David’s life. His eldest son Ammon raped his sister Tamar. Another son killed Ammon, and then staged a coup against David. Not a house in order. 

            And Peter? 

           Well it is fair to say that, at best, he had a rocky relationship with Jesus. That was never more on display, of course, than on the night Jesus was arrested. Peter screwed up the courage to follow Jesus’ armed guards to the High Priest’s house. Then, just inside the courtyard, by the fire, a servant girl asks if Peter was one of Jesus’ disciples. Peter replied, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

            When a second woman asks Peter if he followed Jesus, Peter doesn’t merely claim ignorance, he flat out denies Jesus.  “I don’t know the man!” 

            Finally, a whole group of people standing round the fire notice that Peter is speaking with a Galilean accent. They figure he just has to be a follower of Jesus and say so. This time Peter calls down curses from heaven. “He swore,” says Matthew. And then, hearing the rooster crow, Peter goes off and weeps bitterly. Some rock. Some model for what it takes to be a good person, never mind a good Christian. 

            Now, all of these Biblical heroes, and many more: Abraham, Sarah, Daniel, Samson, Gideon, Saul, David, Bathsheba, Solomon, Rahab, Jonah, Peter and the disciples stand as a warning against the idea of treating the Bible as a book full of heroes we should emulate. 

           Perhaps even more seriously, we can pass on trying to emulate Abraham or David or Peter because, in their failures we see ourselves. We are already like them. We are deeply flawed too. 

            Now, I am not going to pull out my former Calvinist doctrine of “total depravity,” here, and argue that we are all absolutely divorced from God and good. But I don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater either. We need to be honest not only about our strengths, but also our weaknesses.

            All of us—every last one of us—no matter how good a dad or mom we are, no matter whether we’ve earned millions or accolades at work, no matter whether we’ve won awards from governments or boards or NGOs—each of us, like every Biblical hero, each of us is also deeply flawed. 

          We all need new beginnings. Our tempers are short. We take the easy or expedient way out sometimes, rather than stand on principle. We hold grudges. We’re addicted to cigarettes or cigars, porn or praise, alcohol or the internet. We refuse to be vulnerable with our kids when it comes to our weaknesses or emotionally available for our spouses when they need us. We fudge on our income tax. We speed. We get angry too fast and apologize far too infrequently and slowly. We engage in petty white-collar crime. Not everyone of us does all these things, not by a long shot. As it is with most Biblical heroes, none of us has our house in perfect order, either. This just is the human condition. 

            It can be very depressing. But this is where Christianity can help us. Jesus freely offered an antidote to the reality of our flaws. The antidote is grace. In the big, cosmic picture, the gospel message is this: Try to be like Jesus. But when you or I sometimes fail, as we undoubtedly will, don’t give up, don’t freeze, don’t think of yourself as worthless. God, after all, is not keeping a scorecard. God always welcomes your new beginnings. 

            Jordan Peterson, on the other hand, says, “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.” And what I’d like to know is this. Who has ever set their house in perfect order? This “perfect order,” is a high bar. No one in the Bible, excepting—maybe—Jesus, has ever met it. 

            And yet. Abraham and Sarah managed—at least according to the myths—birth a nation. David made that nation an empire that eventually gave us the Law and Prophets. And Peter and his pals not only criticized their world, but went on to build a church that has now existed, for better or worse, for 2,000 years. None of these institutions or nations were or are perfect; but all have also made great contributions to human well-being through the centuries. These institutions, like the people who founded and support them, are flawed and need grace but have the capacity to do great things. 

            The thing us, we can criticize the world, and in fact (and even better), work to make the world a better place, even if we are flawed, because the grace Jesus preached, the clean slate we have with God or the cosmos or karma or whatever you want to call it—the grace Jesus preached is an invitation to keep trying to love neighbour, even when you fail; to keep striving against the injustices of the Roman Empire or the Religious Establishment, even if you are a coward. The grace Jesus preached is an invitation to new beginnings even when last year (or last night) was a bit of an embarrassment to you. Grace is your endless well of motivation to strive for better rather than worry about setbacks. Grace isn’t salvation from sin, it is rather, as John Caputo would say, God haunting our souls with the desire to do better; God whispering in our ears that our families, our churches, and our city and world—all of it deserves our best, if flawed, efforts. Grace is God’s prayer to us to give being God’s hands and feet a whirl, again and again.

            So no, Jordan Peterson, I don’t think it is “set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.” It should be, rather, “Strive to improve the world, while you work on yourself, too.” Working on ourselves and the world together is a single project. Grace makes doing both—working on the world, and working on yourself—plausible and possible, an antidote to our flaws. 

Not Really About Jordan Peterson #5: Let Go But Don't Withdraw from Your Adult Children

            Jordan Peterson says, “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.” It has a nice ring to it, and on the whole, Peterson makes some sense in this chapter—if you are talking about young children. 

            Mind you, what Peterson writes irks me sometimes. I don’t like what he says about hitting kids. He’s generally not for it, but makes exceptions. I disagree. I don’t like what he says about single parents, either. He thinks single parenting is a bad idea, while I think it’s a different idea with its own unique challenges and rewards.

            But Peterson is writing about parenting little kids, and when I was done the chapter, as a father of adult children myself, and as the son of an elderly parent, I wondered “but how does one parent adult children?”

Jordan Peterson doesn't write about older parents and
their adult children

            You know. These older kids are in their thirties or fifties. They are still tied to you by cords of love and affection, but those cords can fray and strain under pressure. You know what I mean.

            For example. Let’s say Peter and Joyce love their son Joe. What is more, the three of them share great memories together of Joe’s early years—memories of camping trips and dinner discussions, of hockey tournaments and family Christmases. Peter and Joyce gave Joe a close to ideal childhood.

            But then Joe grows up, goes to university, gets married—very happily—and he and his wife take a very different approach to dealing with life than Joe’s parents took. Joe lets his kids stay up all hours without supervision, until they fall in their tracks, exhausted. Joe and his wife don’t cook and feed the kids mostly pizza and McDonalds and Chinese take-out. Joe uses physical punishment on his children that he himself never experienced. Joe also turns out to be a poor money manager, and so he and his family have to live in a small apartment while juggling huge consumer debts. And yet Joe and his wife somehow find the money to drive a new Audi and take annual vacations in Italy or the Caribbean. Joe, unlike his dad, doesn’t dress for success, doesn’t go to his parents’ church or gym or barber anymore, and forgets his parents’ birthdays.

            Joe is a dramatic case, but he’s also a good example for how love does not solve every practical issue or potential arena for disagreement between parents and their adult kids. And while Joe is a sort of bumbling example of how children can choose a very different path than their parents did, it is also true that there actually are lots of potential areas of disagreement between older parents and their adult children. They can disagree about things like personal loans and their repayment, or not; different ideas about estate planning or charity; health and mental competency issues; how-close-to-live-to-each-other decisions; and even about the level of honest, emotional disclosure and sharing between older parents and their adult children.

            As I thought about this large reality, I also realized that there is very, very little—perhaps nothing—in the Bible about how parents should treat their adult children. There are some stories that involve the two. King David’s adult son Absalom staged a military coup against his father, and when Absalom died, David was so heartbroken and paralyzed over his rebellious son’s death that his loyal supporters were angered. An old prophet and priest named Eli had two sons, Hophni and Phineas, who stole from the tabernacle offerings. Eli didn’t know how to handle it so God took the priesthood away from Eli’s family and made little Samuel his next great prophet. King Solomon once threw a spear at his son Jonathan, in anger. Not a great role model. 

            The story that seems the most likely candidate for addressing the relationship between parents and their adult children is the parable of the prodigal son. The barely-adult child, here, asked for his inheritance and wasted it. When he came home a pauper, his older father received the foolish son back with open arms.

            But honestly, this parable is not about parents and adult children. This parable is about the shocking quality of God’s love. Because, you see, no parent of adult children would ever be as gracious as the divine father. That’s the whole point of the parable. Beyond this, there isn’t anything in the Bible explicitly meant as instruction for parents on how to parent adult children.

            In a way, this isn’t a surprise. During the Roman Empire era, it is estimated by demographers that of children alive at age ten, half would die by the age of fifty. There were many, many fewer older adults with adult children in Bible times than now; and even those elderly parents lived, on average, much shorter lives than we do. We sometimes forget what a profound impact modern medicine has had on our lifespans.

            So, how do we do it? Or better yet, since every situation is different and unique, are there at least some principles that we can use as guidelines for how we should parent adult children? I think there are—at least two of them. My Peterson-type rule would be “Let Go but Don’t Withdraw.”

            First, let go. Do not pursue your children. At marriage, “A man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife.” While I’m not a literalist about such things, in general, parents should let go of their children, whether into marriage or into coupledom of another kind, or into adult singleness—children must be allowed to truly leave their first home behind. 

            And once they are gone, let them go. You raised them to become independent, you must risk letting them be so. Don’t pursue them. Don’t hover over them as if you were quarterbacking a powerplay. Don’t offer unsolicited advice about finances, about when to have children, about where to live, about how to treat siblings, or about how often to visit. Don’t nag your kids to get the results you want—don’t nag them about vacation locations or visit frequency or what they feed their kids or how late they stay up. Don’t compare how well you did at their age to how they’re doing—by any measure: financial, number of children, happiness, marital age. Don’t make snarky ironic or sarcastic remarks about their dress or jobs or cars or bank account or parenting. In Galatians 5:15, Paul says, to church members—the family of God, and so somewhat applicable to biological families too, “Don’t bite and devour one another. Take care that you are not consumed by one another.” Let them go. 

            This means, by the way, that you must also let go of the inevitable discomfort and even anger you will feel as your children reflect on whether or not you were a good parent in your day (and believe me, you were not perfect). Kids of all ages will always judge their parents, often with a very myopic view of their own parenting. Wise parents, in response, let it go . . . they don’t get angry or defensive; they apologize if apologies are asked for; and they continue trying to be good parents.

            Paul also says in Galatians 6 that we are “called to freedom.” Paul is referencing, here, the freedom we have in our hearts to follow Jesus no matter what governments or friends or employers or emperors or parents might say about it. This is the same freedom belongs to your children. Don’t pursue them beyond what their freedom to let you in invites.

            So, don’t pursue your children, but second, don’t withdraw, either. Love one another, says Paul, applying what Jesus said about how we should treat all people to how we should treat people who sit in the pews with us, and what certainly applies to how we should treat our adult children, too. Don’t use the letting go, the freedom, as an excuse to indulge yourself by letting go so completely that the love is no longer tangible. Let go, but don’t withdraw.

            Withdrawal is a refusal to nurture your relationship with adult children, and in extreme cases a decision to sever the relationship, to wash your hands of them. What does withdrawal look like? It is rarely or not ever inviting your kids into your life socially. It is a refusal to be there—as you are able—to help with things like doing renovations or a short-term loan or celebrating a promotion. Withdrawal is making shared arrangements for babysitting or visiting or birthday gatherings so difficult and opaque for your adult children to arrange so as to suggest you are really not interested. It is to keep secrets about your finances or wills or power of attorney wishes so that your children do not know your intentions and are forced to live in the dark, where mistakes are made and things go bump in the night. Withdrawal is to evince a total lack of curiosity about your children’s lives, their hopes, and dreams. It is to refuse to answer the phone; it is to go away without telling the kids where; it is to keep secrets about your health, or your relationships, or your problems, or your depression, so that kids who would help if asked, are never asked. 

            Listen—letting go while not withdrawing requires older parents of adult children to walk a fine line. I do not want to suggest for even one moment that knowing my two principles are a cure all for all the practical problems that older parents face with their adult children. And I have said nothing at all about the adult children’s responsibility in these relationships. Some adult children withdraw or cling unhealthily, no matter what their older parents try. But that is another blog for another time. 

            So finally, if you are in doubt about the fine line between letting go but not withdrawing, consider trying, at least, to talk to your children about it. Tell them you want to let go but stay in close touch. Sit and listen carefully as you give your children time to reflect on what you are saying, and respond. But as an older parent, be up front. Be open. Talk about it together, if you can. You are, after all, all adults.

Jordan Peterson Rule Four: Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday; Not to Who Someone Else Is Today

            Some readers of this blog will know my wife, Irene. She is pretty amazing. Which is wonderful, most of the time. There are challenges. You see, I can’t help but compare myself to her.

            Who cleans the house more often and more thoroughly? Irene or me? Irene.

            Who shops most often, and for the least amount of cash, and yet brings home the freshest and healthiest produce? Irene.

            Who has more structured play ideas for the grandkids, more energy for them before bedtime? Irene.

            Who knows how to dress me so that I don’t look like something pulled out of the broom closet? Irene.

            Who phones the kids more often, keeps up on their birthdays and anniversaries, and insists that we visit regularly? Irene.

            I know all this. I live with her after all. Irene is smarter than I am. More attractive than I am. More gracious than I am. She works harder than I do.

            The truth is, when I compare myself to the love of my life, I fall short. Ultimately, I don’t mind, of course, since I truly am in love, and adore everything about Irene.

            My problem is that I also compare myself to other people, besides Irene. To people who I don’t necessarily adore like I adore Irene. And when compare myself to some of these people, I again find myself lacking, and I find that irritating. Such comparisons weigh on me, like the dark.

            I compare myself to newly published novelists and doubt that I’ll ever be as good a writer as they are. So, I struggle with insecurity.

            I compare myself to the other sixty-year old men in the gym—many of them lithe and muscular, and I realize that compared to them I’m a jelly donut. I struggle with body image. 

            I compare myself to some of my activist-minister colleagues—you know, the ones who have time to show up at every demonstration on behalf of a good cause, who blog and organize for the environment or against racism—I compare myself to some of my activist-minister colleagues, and I feel as if I just don’t have the energy, the get up and go, the time to do likewise. 

            I compare myself to some of my classmates from the PhD program in Communication Theory that I was part of many moons ago, and I’m a bit jealous that I didn’t go for a cushy tenured teaching job like some of them did. 

            I compare myself to members of my congregation, too, sometimes. It is hard not to. There are, among them, some very successful, very wealthy people. I’m not wealthy, and if the truth be told, it can be hard, or confusing, or even a bit scary negotiating the pastoral do’s and don’ts of being a minister in that kind of context. There are some members in my church who have been recognized nationally for their charitable or business achievements. I have not been so recognized. There are some LPCC members who feel comfortable walking the halls of power in the city, province, or even nationally. Not me. It can be humbling to be a minister in this sort of context, where there are so many accomplished people all about. I think it could be the occasion for some jealousy on my part, or even, more darkly, resentment. I don’t think it has been--not yet, at least--but I think most of the parishioners in my congregation can understand the temptation.

            By the same token, when I compare myself to others in the churches I have served, I can sometimes feel unaccountably and improperly privileged or accomplished. Some people still look up to ministers, and that can feel--special. Not everyone in my churches has published hundreds of magazine and journal articles or two books, like me. Not everyone has kids as amazing as mine. Such thoughts can be the occasion for some crowing on my part. I try to keep it in check, because these kinds of comparisons are actually very self-serving, but I think most of you can understand the temptation. 

            Listen. When we compare ourselves to some people, we all feel as if we come up short, so we compare ourselves to others and perhaps then we feel a bit better. It’s like we’re in a race—a rat race maybe—straining and failing to catch up to some ahead but looking over our shoulders with a self-satisfied smile at others we have surpassed.

            Comparing ourselves to others, however, is to turn them into benchmarks and it is to miss their essential humanity. You usually don’t see the spirit or light that lives in people you compare yourself to; you only see their adornments, their possessions, their certificates and Facebook Likes or the lack of such honors—which means you never come to really know such people at all, which leads to your own loneliness and alienation. Spending too much time comparing yourself to others invites at least three of the deadly sins into your life: Pride, because I’m not like them. Envy, because I don’t have what they have and I don’t like them for it. And greed too, an unaccountable passion to acquire as much as them, or more, when actually I have quite enough. Like I said, comparing yourself to others is a rat race, and if you are focused on such comparisons, you will suffer the dark of depression, of loneliness, of meaninglessness.

            For all these sorts of reasons, the Apostle Paul, in Galatians 6, urges Church members to take pride in carrying their own loads, and in helping others carrying their heavy loads, and in that way letting their light shine. Then we can take pride in ourselves, rather than comparing ourselves to others.  

            Now, Peterson suggests that the best way deal with the temptation of comparing ourselves to others is to focus on comparing ourselves to who we were yesterday. It just seems like very reasonable advice. 

            But I want to add something to what Peterson says. I’d like to suggest that comparing yourself to others or even to yourself can get in the way of something even more essential, more precious, more desirable. Instead of being focused on comparing, why don’t we focus on letting our light shine? Even if it is just a little light compared to everyone else’s? 

            A year ago, there was a big alt-right, Nazi, Klan demonstration in Charlottesville. One protestor drove down counter protestors with his car, and killed somone? Thirty people were injured.

Rev. Osagyefo Sekou (l) with fellow-clergy singing
"This Little Light of mine."

            Rev. Osagyefo Sekou was there, and he remembers how amped up the protesters were becoming. “The Nazis were marching past us,” he said, “in these various battalions, cursing and yelling—mostly homophobic slurs—at us.”

            So, rather than stick to the plan, which was to give silent witness to nonviolence and peace and compassion, Rev. Sekou started singing. He broke into “This Little Light of Mine, I’m Going to Let It Shine.” Sekou and his fellow protesters drowned out the racist cries of the Nazis, who were shouting, “you will not replace us.” 

            “The tension went down,” said Sekou, “and it shook the Nazis. They didn’t know what to do with all that joy. We weren’t going to let the darkness have the last word.”

A Neo-nazi Sekou and friends sang to.

            Listen, comparing yourself to others—or even to who you were yesterday, is to go rooting about for darkness—the darkness that belittles you, shames you, makes you feel inadequate or jealous or not up to snuff. Peterson is right about that. Don’t let the darkness, the "better than" or "worse than," have the last word. Focus, instead, on letting your little light shine. For we all have the light of Christ within, if we only dare let it shine.

            And when I add my light to your light to his or hers and theirs; when our lights shine in community the little becomes big. Don’t compare, instead, carry one another’s loads, says Paul. That will remake us into church, refresh our city, maybe even shake the world.

            Let’s shine our little lights together. When we sponsor refugees. When we bring clothes to the New Circles charity for redistribution. When we build cabins for Camp Scugog and its inner-city kids. When we reach out to our elected officials. When we feed the hungry. When we beautify the church and neighbourhood with flowers and gardens and music. When we say thank you to volunteers. When we open the church doors to community seven days a week. When we sing as one and lift our voices together to insist that what is wrong in the world does not have the last word, but Jesus’ way, whether lived by believers or doubters, Muslims or atheists—Jesus’ way, loving our neighbours—that is our light and we shine together. 

            Don’t spend too much time comparing yourself to others. You would do better, as Peterson suggests, to compare yourself to whoever you were yesterday. But what we really, really ought to do is focus on the light, being the light. Let your little light shine with mine. Don't compare, but dispel the dark instead.

Jordan Peterson, Rule Three: Make Friends with People Who Want the Best for You."

            In “Make Friends with People Who Want the Best for You,” Jordan Peterson actually offers up mostly cautionary stories from his own youth about acquaintances who didn’t want the best for him.

            Chris was a kid who—seriously—made a hobby out of crashing his truck and hating his dad. He tragically died by suicide after suffering a psychotic break. Chris’s cousin Ed, on his first-ever trip out of his village, to Edmonton, spent the weekend in a seedy hotel smoking weed. Peterson’s other acquaintances brandished shotguns, insulted women, fell out of trees half drunk, and spent hours driving their cars in circles around Fairview, Alberta. None amounted to anything, at least by Peterson’s measures.

           And, in his one literary example, Peterson describes how the hero of Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground damned himself by having fun saying, “No, I won’t help you,” to a prostitute, Liza, even though he had earlier given her reason to believe he was a friend. 

            With so-called friends like these—stoners, truck crashers, drunks, and sadistic Johns—with friends like these, who needs enemies? 

            It’s odd. In a chapter entitled “Make Friends with People Who Want the Best for You,” Peterson spends most of his energy describing a bunch of toxic losers, but never describes true friendship. Peterson does echo warnings you find in the book of Proverbs: “A righteous person is cautious in friendship.” Or again, “A person of many companions may come to ruin; but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." Except that in Peterson’s chapter, it’s all about ruinous companions with nothing about the friend who sticks.

            The little Peterson does say about friends is all implied in the chapter’s title: “Make Friends with People Who Want the Best for You.” Or, to put it as plainly as I can, “Make friends if they come with benefits.” 

            This is an oddly self-centered, almost narcissistic approach to friend-making, one that is so pragmatic about costs and benefits that it empties friendship of all beauty, ideals, and mystery.

            But when it comes to friendship, that’s about par for the course these days. Friendship has fallen on hard times. We don’t reflect much on it, aspire to make it a life goal, or spend lavishly on it for the pleasure of it. For most of us friendship is an occasional diversion. In life's banquet, we consume friendship like an appetizer. We don’t dwell on it or deeply value it. For example, if your roommate came home late from a date and you asked her if she was late because she had been out with someone special, she might well reply, "Oh, no. He's just a friend." Just a friend. Nothing special.

            The Biblical picture of friendship is quite different. Friendship is actually a kind of love. Here’s the context. The Bible describes at least three kinds of love. There is eros, erotic love, like the love Adam and Eve shared when they were naked and not ashamed; or the love the young man has for a black Shunamite woman in Song of Songs: “How sweet is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your oils than any spice.” 

            Second, the New Testament emphasizes agape, agapic love. This is the unconditional love for one’s neighbour, as in, “Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

            And finally, in the Bible, there is philia, friendship love. Philia is agapic love not for all your neighbours, but for the neighbour who walks with you, shoulder to shoulder, in some shared pursuit or pastime. It is, in other words, unconditional love focussed, over time, on one person. For example, when Jonathan died, David sang, "You were very dear to me Jonathan, my brother.  Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women." Proverbs says "A friend loves at all times, but a brother is born for adversity." In John 14, Jesus links love and friendship when he says, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends." How is that for a pragmatic cost-benefit analysis of friendship?

            But it isn’t only the Bible that so lavishly values friendship. In the classical and medieval worlds philia love—friendship—was thought of as a higher-level love because it is freely chosen rather than commanded by God or biologically necessary for procreation or desired for sexual pleasure. Both Aristotle and Plato (he of Platonic friendship) wrote extensively about friendship—what it was, why it mattered, and so on. In a world without Facebook and toys, friendship was one of the only games going. And so, it was deeply sought after and cherished.

            Such friendship begins when you join a person in pursuit of a shared goal or vision, and it grows as you discover that the sharing is a pleasure. The thing shared might be as simple as stamp-collecting, or tennis, or even a glass of wine and conversation. But when, either purposely or surprisingly, the shared walk grows into mutual regard, and then into a mutual love of both being-with and being-for another person, that’s friendship. Friendship is agapic love not for every neighbour but for the one you have chosen to walk with.

            Please note. Not just anyone you grow up with, or golf with, or work with is a friend in this sense. Just a few of your two or three hundred or more Facebook friends are friends in this sense. It takes more than liking a post, more than being together; friendship takes a shared sense of a mutual goal or vision that leads to mutual regard that grows over time. 

           The Old Testament story about Job, told in a book with the same title, is mostly there  to help the reader understand—or at least come to grips with the impossibility of understanding—suffering. The story is told, however, as the tale of a couple of friends who try, at least, to be there for each other in a mutual, loving way while in pursuit of a shared goal.

            The hero is Job. In chapter one of his story we learn that he had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, seven sons and three daughters. 

            Then Satan—in the book of Job Satan is one of God’s esteemed cabinet members, and not the demon we’ve made of him since—one day Satan makes a bet with God. Satan says, “you know, if you took everything away from Job—took away his sheep and oxen and children and wealth—Job would curse you rather than worship you.”

            God says, “You’re on.” And so, Satan sends evil Sabeans to run off with Job’s donkeys and oxen and slaughter Job's hired hands. Chaldeans rustle his camels. A storm destroys the house his children are partying at and kills them all. And finally, in chapter 2, Job comes down with leprosy. 

            Job tears his clothes. He shaves his hair. He scratches himself with broken pieces of pottery. Job’s wife says to him, “Hey, why don’t you just curse God and die?” 

            But no. Instead, Job says, rather philosophically, “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord took away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” I’m not sure I like the theology here, but it’s what Job believed.

            So, Job lost everything. Everything, except his friends.

            According to the story told in the Bible, Eliphaz Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite heard of their friend’s misfortune, and so went to visit. When they saw him, they wept aloud, tore their clothes, put sand and ashes in their hair. Then they sat down with Job for seven days and nights without saying a word. Sat silently. “For they saw that Job’s suffering was great.”

            Well, I’ve heard of dropping by a friend’s house when he or she needs a hand. I’ve heard of going to the hospital for twenty-minute visits when someone has surgery. I’ve heard of travelling across the country to go to a friend’s wedding or funeral. I’ve even heard of travelling around the world with a friend, for months on end, to have fun. 

            But to sit a week, silently, to share a friend’s suffering while trying to understand it--that’s not anything like the toxic acquaintances Peterson warns against, nor is it anything like his “friends with benefits,” notion of seeking out friendships only after doing a cost-benefit analysis to make sure the friendship will leave you a net-profit-of-some-sort benefit.

            After a week of silence, Job and his friends spend forty more chapters discussing the meaning of Job’s suffering, trying to understand a misfortune that all humans must sometimes face. Like many friends, Job’s pals didn’t agree about the subject of their talking together. But they did share in this pursuit, this love of truth, while continuing to express their deep regard for Job. Remember, philia is agapic love for someone who walks with you, shoulder to shoulder, in some shared pursuit or pastime—perhaps a pursuit for truth or pleasure, but in Job’s case even the reality of shared suffering.

            Peterson entitles his chapter “Make Friends with People Who Want the Best for You.” I’d say, instead, make friends with people you enjoy walking with, sharing with, and who you hold in high regard. Along the way, you will discover that this sort of philia grows into its own kind of love, a love not subject to cost-benefit analysis before anything else—but a love that is very, very good all on its own.

Jordan Peterson, Rule Two: Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping.

"'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it. 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself'" (Matthew 22:37-38).

         Do you remember Earl Silverman? His story is about five-years old. It was told, back then, in Macleans Magazine.

         Earl Silverman, of Calgary, died by suicide after going bankrupt trying to make a go of Canada’s only shelter for abused men. He opened the shelter, he said, because after twenty years of physical and emotional abuse by his wife, when he sought shelter in a Domestic Violence safe-house, he was refused entry because he was a man. 

Jordan Peterson

         Silverman’s death became an Internet sensation. Typical was the Reddit user who wrote, “This is what happens when we throw men on the garbage heap.” Harry Crouch, president of the National Coalition for Men wrote, “He was a victim of feminism,” and “murdered by suicide by the feminized state of Canada.” Blogger Dean Esmay warned that men’s rights activists would now be “coming for” feminists.

         Today, there is growing impatience among some men, and especially among some young white men, impatience about a world they see as tilting against them. The traditional privileged throne that men sat on, so well captured on the TV show Mad Men,is under attack. Not only do women now compete with men for the best jobs, but more women complete University than men, and they do it, on average, with higher grades. Meanwhile, it isn’t only women, but Asian and African students who are perceived as winning too many scholarships and also making it tougher on young white men to get ahead at work, at school, and in the marketplace.

 

Jesus.

         The privileges that go with being male are disappearing, and a growing number of young white men are angry about it. Great-paying life-long union jobs that needed little education at places like “The Motors” in Oshawa or the steel mills of Hamilton are gone. Now, you need a College or University degree just to get your foot in the door, and you need life-long learning to stay relevant in today’s gig economy. 

         Today, there is growing impatience among men, and especially young white men, about a world they see as stacked against them. For example, it used to be cool to be macho, but now macho is out, too. The #MeToo movement is just the latest reminder that sexual mores are changing. If you are a young white male, like Prime Minister Trudeau, you must come to grips with the fact that what was once seen as flirting is now considered assault. 

         Nearly as difficult, today’s men are also supposed to be able to share their feelings and fears. Strong and silent is so twentieth century. Today’s men are expected to empathize, put their kids to bed, and do the dishes. They must be emotionally present. As a result, a segment of today’s young white men feel as if they’ve become—as Arnold Schwarzenegger famously put it—“girlie men.” 

         It frustrates a certain segment of today’s men. It is as if they are at a lovely banquet, a table loaded with a sumptuous feast. But they cannot eat, because they have long four-foot arms without elbows. Asa result, they can neither bend their arms to lift food from their plates, nor bend them again to bring the feast to their mouths. They are trapped and hungry. It is all there right before them: the wealth, the jobs, the girls, the Molson Golden BBQs—but because they came into the world with long arms but without elbows, as individual men, they are unable to partake. 

         This is the scene Jordan Peterson wants to help fix. So, he tells these frustrated young white men, “Listen, I understand. I get it. We’re for order but women give us chaos. It’s undermining the hierarchy.” 

         Jordan Peterson doesn’t devote all of Chapter Two to the plight of men. But elsewhere he is all over it. In his videos he actually breaks down in tears talking about how young men are lost in today’s society, how they are not encouraged, how identity politics and political correctness works against them, how they cannot feed themselves what they want when they want.

         What Peterson does say in this chapter is that while men represent the yang of order, women represent yin of chaos. “For the men,” says Peterson, “[women are a] direct encounter with chaos, and it occurs with devastating force every time they are turned down for a date”—language that tragically echoes the complaints of the Toronto Yonge St. murderer, incel Alek Minassian. In case we didn’t understand him the first time, Peterson adds of women and their chaos potential: Each is like “the mother grizzly, all compassion to her cubs, who marks you [Mr.] as potential predator and tears you to pieces.”

         And so, what is the solution, according to Peterson? Everyone—but especially young men—needs to buck up. They need to fight back. They need to take back control and privilege. They must order their own lives to fight the chaos. Along the way, Peterson tells men to stop playing victim, he denies that there is such a thing as white-male privilege, and he refuses to call gay or trans people by the pronouns they prefer—insisting that all this gender stuff is really a plot by left-wing politicians who are Marxists.

         Peterson is finding a ready audience for his message. For example, on Instagram, thirty-year-old @DominantLobster – a male data analyst from the Netherlands – writes: “We hear too much about rights and how much we need more of that. I feel Peterson's talking about responsibilities, not being a victim.”

         Buck up, men. Peterson says, “If I am someone’s friend, family member, or lover, then I am morally obliged to bargain as hard on my own behalf as they are on theirs. If I fail to do so, I will end up a slave.” Or, in the words of Rule 2, “Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping.”

         So, just as the Earl Silverman suicide hit a nerve with a certain kind of disillusioned man, Peterson has struck a nerve with the same constituency. And I can understand why, at least in part. 

         We do live in a time of profound change. Our country, our schools, our economy, our ideas about what is right and wrong—everything is changing. Good jobs dodemand top notch skills and life-long learning. The gig economy doesmean there is no relaxing. New people from near and far dofill the workplace and university. They challenge us with different ideas and priorities and cultures. The middle class is shrinking, and people who fall out of the middle class are angry. We hear a lot about the injustices done to women and First Nations and Gays, but it often feels, to young white men especially, that they get all the blame while everyone else gets the love.

         And again, Jordan Peterson’s response to this angst, this anger at the way the world is turning for the young white male knocked off his pedestal, is the second rule: “Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping.”

         I don’t like it.

         Neither would Jesus, nor just any other religious tradition in the world. We counter with words that sound similar but have a very different sense. Jesus suggests that what we need to do, both on good days and when the world is in crisis, as his world was, is this: We must love our neighbour as ourselves.

         The Bible is full of this kind of language: “What does the Lord require of us, but that we do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with the Lord.” Nothing about how I should look after myself, first, there. The Old Testament prophet adds that, God, “lifts the poor from the dust and the needy from the garbage dump.” It’s God’s way. Jesus praises those who love their neighbors. “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” And, in an Old Testament verse about refugesthat Jesus actually quotes Matthew 22:9, the great commandment and the second one like it. In this passage Jesus says, “Do not take advantage of foreigners who live among you in your land. Treat them like native-born Israelites and love them as you love yourself.”

         Look, of course, Jesus knows that you will help yourself in whatever way you can. You are supposed to love your neighbour as yourself after all. Jesus is not saying we should be pansies or pushovers.

         The thing is, in his life, Jesus’ strength was most visible in how, against all social convention he surrounded himself with and loved: tax collectors, Roman soldiers, prostitutes, fishermen, foreigners, the sick and lame.

         This is Christianity. We do not live in fear of the other, or even of change. But we do live for our neighbour. 

         So sure, today, there is growing impatience among men, and especially young white men, impatience rooted in a world that doesn’t privilege them like it used to. That seems tough and even unfair. It frustrates some young men. 

         But think back to that illustration I half-told you, earlier, based on a story Saint Augustine once told. There is a group of frustrated men, sitting around a table, a table loaded with a sumptuous feast made up of every delicious delicacy imaginable.

         These men are very average, except for one feature. Each has arms without elbows, arms four-feet long. As a result, even though each man had a fork in hand, his long, straight arms could neither bend to lift food from the plate set before him, nor bend to bring the food to his mouth. 

         But what if instead of trying to feed himself first, each of these long-armed men took food from plate four feet away and then reached across the table to feed a friend? What if instead of privileging himself, each fed a neighbour? Then everyone around the table would be satisfied, and the sumptuous feast would be a feast indeed. In Christianity, it is our neighbors who give us life as we give it to them. It is our neighbors who make us human together rather than I, me and myself against the world alone.

         So, do not merely “Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping.” Down that path, the person you are responsible for helping is eventually going to seem, to you, like a very personal problem. Instead, as with Jesus, love your neighbour as yourself.

Jordan Peterson Rule One: Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back

I'm beginning a series of talks, to be completed over two summers, on Jordan Peterson's Twelve Rules: An Antidote to Chaos. Given the wide interest in Peterson, I'll post them here too. JS

"See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; 

so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves" (Matthew 10:16).

          The truth about humans, says Jordan Peterson, is that we are like lobsters.

            Lobsters live in the sea of green beneath the waves. There, they hide under rocks and eat whatever edible garbage sinks to the ocean bottom. Not a life of ease. I wouldn’t like to be a lobster.

            Now, some bits of seascape are more lobster friendly than others. These ocean plots have a great shelter and get more than their fair share of food floating to the bottom. Lobsters know this and they compete with each other for the best property. It’s a lobster-eat-lobster world down there.

            Lobsters compete by waving their antennae threateningly; they swing their legs here and there; and they spray each other with chemicals that say, “out of the way, or else.” They thrust and parry with their claws and exoskeletons, and—if none of this works—fight until one knocks the other upside-down.

            After the fight, the winner takes the real estate, and the loser skulks away. Soon after, the most desirable lady lobsters throw themselves at the champion, for mating. The rest of the lobsters grovel. The big lobster has status. He is dominant, top dog—or crustacean—and gets whatever he wants from all the other shrimps.  

            There is more. Lobsters don’t actually have brains, but they do have a few tightly packed neurotransmitter nodes—an early evolutionary step towards a brain. When a lobster wins one of these property wars, this micro- sort-of brain makes a chemical called serotonin. Serotonin does many things, from aiding digestion to helping brain cells communicate. In lobsters, producing lots of serotonin makes you—drugs you—into acting like a confident and aggressive lobster of high status. Less serotonin in lobsters is associated with the meek and mild behavior of a loser.

            Lobsters also have a sixth sense about who has more or less serotonin. They honor and obey the lobsters with the “mostest.” They treat the winning serotonin-sotted lobster as big man on campus. At least until infirmity or age leads to a lost fight. I wouldn’t like to be a lobster.

            What interests Jordan Peterson about this deep-sea drama is that he thinks it is a pretty good picture for how humans behave, too. He notes that we humans have serotonin in our brains, too, because humans and lobsters share a common evolutionary ancestor. Then, he argues that this brain structure means we too are forever chained to the whims and drives serotonin still produces in us. For that reason, whether we like it or not, he believes that human life, like lobster life, is essentially “my” personal battle against all others for status and dominance. He argues that we are hierarchal beings driven to climb the ladder, even if it means pushing other people down. He thinks it is normal for men to want as many women as possible and for women to exercise their power through refusal, if they are able.

            What is more, just as lobsters with lots of serotonin have swagger, Peterson argues that humans with lots of serotonin have swagger too. So, if we want to be top lobster, dominant at home or work or on the street, we need to increase our serotonin levels. We do this by adopting the posture of a winner. 

            That’s why, says Peterson, even losers should stand up straight with their shoulders back. This will impress other people, and if they are impressed, your brain will unconsciously respond by making more serotonin which will make you more powerful and stronger which will make you walk with your shoulders further back, and so on, a positive feedback loop that will soon make you into a Neptune of the ocean deeps, or maybe King on Bay St.

            What are we to make of all this? A few things. First, it deserves to be said that apart from all the biological and spiritual objections I have to Peterson’s ideas, standing up straight with your shoulders back is, on the whole, good practical advice in many, if not all, situations.

            Proverbial advice is like that of course. Such advice is always context specific, and never a general rule that always applies. Proverbs are “sometimes yes, sometimes no,” sort of things. That’s why there are so many contradictory proverbs. For example, which should it be: The pen is mightier than the sword, or actions speak louder than words? Which should it be: Good things come in small packages or the bigger the better? Which should it be, “stand up straight with your shoulders back” or, "if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."

            I mean, standing up straight with our shoulders back usually looks good on us. Refusing to stand up straight with shoulders back may lead to adopting the iPhone slouch, which in turn causes myopia and middle-aged back problems. Standing up straight may send positive middle-class, white-privilege vibes out there into the business world or the gym or the Yorkdale customer you’re serving. This is social convention, like a firm handshake or dressing for success. And people do notice, and even if they don’t bow, they are usually suitably impressed. In fact, as many of the youth in this church who have spoken from this pulpit can tell you, I usually tell them, before they read scripture, to “Stop. Stand up straight, shoulders back. Look out at the audience. Smile. Read slowly.”

            So, second, it is when you dig a bit deeper that what Peterson says—or rather, why Peterson says this—that his advice becomes problematic for me. You see, what Peterson describes is a modern human world where, we are told, an ancient biological instinct, the drive for individual dominance—is nevertheless inescapably normative or right, for now. That is, Peterson writes as if the fact that lobsters want to dominate each other by climbing the social hierarchy is a universal animal law built into our genes in such a way that the good life can only be one where we struggle to dominate others in order to become top dogs. This is called biological determinism.

            The trouble with this view is that humans have undergone a whole lot of evolution since we shared an ancestor with the brainless lobster. We’ve added cranial capacity, including a frontal cortex and a cerebellum, and other odd bits of brain, so that we are no longer driven merely by instinct rooted in the most ancient part of our brain, the tiny amygdala. In a way, Peterson wants to hitch the whole of human meaning and happiness onto how successfully individuals succeed at satisfying urges and instincts rooted in the most ancient echo chamber of our pre-brain evolutionary selves from billions of years ago.

            Now, I would never deny that there is an ancient animal amygdala that still whispers (or even sometimes shouts) at us in the present and that it gives us things like fight-or-flight reflexes and that some humans are very competitive and want to dominate others. But the truth is our brains also now get to make rational choices and community choices about what matters. We are not prisoners to the lobster part of our brains. Humans have much more grey matter to work with than lobsters. For example, we can use empathy rather than brawn to solve some problems. We can rely on family or committed communities we voluntarily join to give us a rich emotional life even if we walk with a slouch or are differently abled so that we can’t stand up straight. We can choose to sacrifice resources like cash or time in order to live a quiet retirement or volunteer at an inner city shelter or donate to a great museum instead of investing in domination. Unlike lobsters, we can make moral choices about which values and goods are the most important to us and which we will therefore strive for.

            Third, one of those moral choices most of us have made is this: while the individual is important to us, the community and its needs are too. And communities work best when they are tied together not by dominance but when they are tied together by deference rooted in chosen values and ideals like love and kindness and long-suffering and compassion and justice. Sure—the individual in us wants to personally succeed, but all of us also want to belong, to be attached to others in emotionally rich and satisfying ways that the lobster can know nothing of. Dominating others may be an instinct built into some of our genetic heritage but our big brains mean that getting along cooperatively is a possibility too. We can choose communal ideals and soulful action. 

            In fact, instead of being led by the nose of our most ancient animal instincts, Jesus uses quite a different animal analogy to describe how we should live. He said we should be as wise as serpents (who were, in the ancient pre-scientific world, considered to be very wise indeed), and as harmless or gentle as doves.

            Jesus is all about our rising above basest instincts and using our entire brain to accomplish not merely personal dominance, but to build a community of mutual care, of shared flourishing. Such flourishing takes more than individual animal drive and serotonin; it requires using the wisdom of the whole brain, and the brains of others, to determine the wisest path forward. And the twist that Jesus—who knows that those who live by the sword die by the sword—the twist that Jesus adds, is that besides being wise we should be gentle. We should be humble, patient, kind, looking to the welfare of others rather than to their defeat or submission. We choose to love our neighbours as the first priority.

            So sure, in your day to day activities, head up, shoulders back, stand up straight. That is a short-term strategy that is sometimes useful, especially for the lobster in us. On the other hand, be as wise as serpents—use all your brain, not just your base instincts—be wise as serpents and gentle as doves, choosing love rather than war, peace rather than strife to achieve your aims in life. This is the sort of human flourishing that Jesus preached and lived.

            And so, while I would not like to be a lobster, I do want to be like Jesus.