This is an incredible clip of Jordan Peterson, from a couple of years ago, talking about a dream he had of Jesus. It only last four minutes so watch the whole thing.
I won’t make any comments on this….but these quotes really stuck out for me. “Even the tyrannical king has someone to bend his knee to…”Why do people matter?” “You’re in the presence of something greater than yourselves..”
Jordan seeks to psychologically explain his dream – Paul has a better one. “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11).
If you are a Christian – please join in prayer that Jordan will come to confess that Jesus is Lord. And if you are not a Christian – we pray that you too will come to that decision.
Letter to the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge – re Jordan Peterson
Yes, it has been commented on elsewhere that Jordan Peterson has not declared himself a believer. He prefers to say that he acts as if God exists. My understanding about this is because of his dislike of identity politics and doesn’t like to be classified and “one of us” or “one of them” and that leading to polemical adversity.
So I see the argument you imply David, of him being “not quite there yet” without there being a confession of Jesus being Lord. On the other hand I see an argument could be made of him being not dissimilar to the apostle Paul being all things to all men so that nothing be a hindrance to the gospel of the Lord Jesus.
By profession he isn’t a theologian, and he will be inclined to come at this from a psychological world view because of this. I think the message he gives of the dream with Jesus being the transcendent good and there being a need for this so that the kings in his dream don’t fight but have someone to bend his knee to and by implication us all needing this, something transcendent and awe inspiring with this being a psychological necessity is a powerful message. It’s not inconsistent with having the readiness to share the good news of the gospel of the Lord Jesus.
“Your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions” (Joel 2:28).
” Your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams” (Acts 2:17).
That being said, you are right to be cautious about false prophecy. “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves” (Matt 7:15).
Is Jordan Peterson a “ferocious wolf”. Well, he confesses to having a temper. On the other hand there are many who would say on balance he has done a lot of good. “Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit” (Matt 7:17).
The discerning among us will be able to tell the difference.
Peterson has some quite serious psychological issues, as is fairly well documented, and any one who has de-converted from any religion, and in this case Christianity, will recognise waffle when they hear it, and Peterson is a master of this art.
He prattles out a gazillion words and at the end one is left with only only thing to say.
What?
Awe exists, and is experienced, but is of no survival value. Stopping to look at a sunset, might just get you eaten by a wild animal, so it does not do a lot to preserve your DNA. Do the human appetite for awe, the experience of awe (and the sharing of it), demand an explanation?
Is not Peterson a disciple of Jung; his default position would be Jungian dream interpretation?
I have an older friend, a retired dentist, raised in the Brethren, who, in his formative teen and university years, imbibed deeply of Jung and of Schweitzer and his view of the Kingdom of God and of Christ is a mixture of both influences – so near yet so far from orthodox Christianity. It is an exaggeration, but only a slight one, to say that Peterson has breathed new life into him, in his mid 80’s mostly as Peterson provides authoritative justification for adhering to Jung all these years.
Jung’s views about Christianity are so very far from Christ and orthodoxy, likewise Schweitzer’s a-historical Jesus of faith.
Jung was involved in the occult, had a what he considered to be a ghostly guru, a spirit teacher, Philemon. A quick search reveals how discerning Christians should be encouraged to be when weighing the teaching of Jung, to which Peterson appears to be committed and the lens through which he he looks at and interprets Christianity and Christ.
This might give a clue to where Peterson is coming from in the explication of his dream. :
*Briefly stated, at an early stage Jesus became the collective figure whom the unconscious of his contemporaries expected to appear and Jesus took on those projections. In this way, Je- sus’ life exemplifies the archetype of the Christ, or in Jung’s psychological language, the Self, which is a more inclusive word for the inner image of god, the imago Dei, which resides in every person.”
It it taken from this longer comment on some of some of Jung’s teaching about Jesus, which again emphasizes the basis for Peterson’s explanation or interpretation of his dream:
Carl Jung’s ideas and writings about God, religion, Christ, Christianity, and the Christian Church are some of his most challenging, controversial, and fruitful. His approach was to take ancient “thought forms that have become historically fixed, try to melt them down again and pour them into moulds of immediate experience.” (CW:11:par.148) Jung’s own experience of the numinosum (holy) was a lifelong passion and most of his major written works in the last third of his life were devoted to some aspect of religious experience and religious symbols, with particular attention to the symbols of the Christian myth.
In Aion (Collected Works, Vol. 9,ll) Jung addresses Christian- ity’s central figure, Christ, and unpacks the meaning of Christ as a symbol of the Self. At the request of many of his readers who asked for a more comprehensive treatment of the Christ/ Self relationship, and apparently inspired by a dream during a temporary illness, Jung worked on the project for several years, completing it in 1951. Aion remains a “sacred text” for many of us who are intrigued by the convergence of religion and analytical psychology.
One of the most significant insights of the project, which will be the main thrust of this brief article, is the differentiation between Jesus, the historical figure from Nazareth, and the archetypal Christ, the Redeemer. This distinction between the historical and the symbolical is essential if the Christian sym- bols are to retain their power to touch the inner depths of the modern person. As we know, Jung’s diagnosis of modern men and women was a spiritual malnutrition bought on by a starvation of symbols. He called for a recovery of the symbolic life which had been abandoned to a one-sided literal, rational approach to religious matters.
The Jewish rabbi and reformer, Jesus, lived a personal, con- crete, historical life. However, it was the archetypal image of a Redeemer slumbering, so to speak, in the collective uncon- scious, which became attached to that unique life. This power- ful collective image made itself visible, so to speak, in the man Jesus, so that seeing him people glimpsed the greater personal- ity which seeks conscious realization in each person. Jung notes that it was not the man Jesus who created the myth of the “god-man.” Other Redeemer myths existed many centuries before his birth. Jesus himself was seized by this symbolic idea, which, as St. Mark tells us, lifted him out of the narrow life of the Nazarene carpenter. (Jung, Man And His Symbols, p.89)
Briefly stated, at an early stage Jesus became the collective figure whom the unconscious of his contemporaries expected to appear and Jesus took on those projections. In this way, Je- sus’ life exemplifies the archetype of the Christ, or in Jung’s psychological language, the Self, which is a more inclusive word for the inner image of god, the imago Dei, which resides in every person.
Writing from a psychological perspective, Jung was interested in the archetypes of the collective unconscious which were constellated by the presence of the historical person, Jesus. He examined the Christ-symbolism contained in the New Testa- ment, along with patristic allegories and medieval iconogra- phy, and compared those with the archetypal contents of the unconscious psyche which he had observed and experienced. He noted that the most important symbolical statements about Christ in the New Testament revealed attributes of the arche- typal hero: improbable origin, divine father, hazardous birth, precocious development, conquest of the mother and of death, miraculous deeds, early death, etc. Jung concludes that the ar- chetypal symbolizations of the Christ-figure are similar to the Self which is present in each person as an unconscious image. It was the archetype of the Self in the psyche/soul which re- sponded to the Christian message, with the result that the con- crete Rabbi Jesus was rapidly assimilated by the constellated archetype. In this way, Jesus realized the idea of the Self. Most importantly for this article, Jung notes that the experience of the Self and what the New Testament describes as the “Christ within” are synonymous. (CW:11:par.229-231) As an empiri- cist, Jung was not interested in how the two entities may be different along rational theological lines.”
This was just before he had that life threatening illness?
Perhaps , Peterson , a man with some good ideas and not beholden to the mainstream media, emulated a highly intelligent musician acquaintance of mine who returned to the faith of his fathers after a decade or so of atheism and explained his Damascene re- conversion thus :
“My intellectual life did not really begin until I had reconciled myself to the faith in which I was raised”
“I did not think my way into praying , I prayed my way into thinking”.
You can judge the quality of his (pseudonymous ) intellect here :
https://asiatimes.com/2020/12/when-americas-religion-goes-wrong/
He’ll get there.