Jordan Peterson's Message to the Church

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Welcome once again, everyone, to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, to talk about a video that is circulating quite a lot today from the psychologist and really popular personality,

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Jordan Peterson. Popular thinker, philosopher in some ways, I guess, and really, primarily, he's a psychologist.

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That's his academic background, his professional background. And there's a video that he put out yesterday,

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I believe, or it was early this morning on really a message that he wanted to deliver to Christians.

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And this is Christians, broadly speaking, Christendom, it's Catholics, it's

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Protestants, it's Eastern Orthodox. He also released another video. I don't know how many Christians sharing this around knew this, but he released another video a few hours later,

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I suppose, but it dropped today, called A Message to Muslims. And so I don't think we'll watch that.

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I don't know if we'll have time. But I listened to a number of Jordan Peterson things this morning just because I wanted to understand better where he's coming from.

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I have, of course, listened to a number of his interviews in the past. And there was something that he posted recently that kind of intrigued me.

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I didn't listen to the whole thing until today because I thought, you know what, if I'm gonna comment on this video that he put out for Christians, for churches,

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I should really listen to what he said on homosexuality, which was, I think, last week or so, so a week or two ago.

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And he did a whole interview with David Rubin. And I didn't get to hear the paid or the subscriber -only content that he has, but it was a long interview.

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So I got to hear whatever's freely available, 45 minutes or so, I don't know. And, but he was talking with David Rubin, and David Rubin, of course, is now considered a conservative, quote -unquote conservative, who is having children through a surrogate and has a partner that,

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I mean, I think, I believe he calls the partner a husband. He wants what he calls, in this interview with Jordan Peterson, a traditional family.

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And so I wanted to hear, well, what's Jordan Peterson's reaction to that? And Jordan Peterson really, he has this position and David Rubin seemed to agree with it that the family structure, the nuclear family, man and woman, husband, wife, mother, father, that that structure is the ideal to shoot for.

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That's what we should hold up as the example. That's what everyone should recognize as the highest form of family.

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Of course, in this particular arrangement, they're getting along. There isn't friction between mom and dad.

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They're perfectly exhibiting their roles, but because no one's perfect, then there are gonna be other arrangements as well.

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Same -sex couples would be one. Households where a divorce has taken place and there's a single mother raising kids might be another one.

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And so he kind of puts all of these deviancies, deviations,

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I should say, from the norm in a very similar category, that they're all really just, they're deviations from the norm.

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And the important thing is, as long as you recognize what the ideal is.

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So they're deviations from, really, he doesn't even say the norm. He says the ideal. They're deviations from the ideal.

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And so I listened to all that. And I've had all this jumbling around in my mind and I thought, well, what is it about Jordan Peterson that he can say some really accurate things?

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He can say, he can make some really important observations, in my opinion, that are true and that need to be said.

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And then he has a video like that where he can't see, or he doesn't seem to see, that the actual, the move towards recognizing, extending this category of marriage to same -sex couples is, in itself, the destruction of that ideal.

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And that it's not even really an ideal, it's just, it's definitional. Because once you put it into the realm of ideal, then

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I think what he's, what Jordan Peterson's thinking is, well, you can just keep Pandora's box from being open, kind of, you can hedge against that, at least, if you just make sure that marriage, heterosexual, monogamous marriage, is in this privileged position.

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The thing is, though, as he states, if everyone falls short of the ideal, then none of us have attained this privileged position.

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And if that's the case, then we're, every relationship, every arrangement is equal in the sense that it's not reaching this ideal.

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And that, and if that's true, then, and he doesn't really get into this as much, but ought there to be legal recognitions of all these inferior relationships?

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And he doesn't say they're inferior, but I'm just drawing the conclusion. How else would you think of them? Or these less than ideal relationships, these relationships that aren't ideal, why not have legal protections for all of them, too?

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Why recognize two people? Why can't it be three or four?

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Why is polygamy prevented from, because it doesn't meet the ideal? Well, neither did same -sex marriage. To me, the whole video, and I realize

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I'm talking about the video I'm not gonna be commenting on here in a minute, but the whole video that he recently put out with David Rubin is kind of, it's two guys struggling, in my mind, to try to incorporate same -sex relationships into this category of marriage, and just struggling to figure out how to make that happen for conservatives, for traditional conservatives.

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How do we incorporate this, but at the same time, hold on to traditional marriage?

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And the thing is, you really can't. That's impossible. No matter what kind of logic or rationale you use to try to do that, to carve out some place where there is at least some exception that can be made for couples, as long as they recognize that there's an ideal out there, and it's really not what they're doing, then you have to now then extend that to other couples, as well.

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Why would a, and this is something that's obviously controversial, and you get in trouble for it, but, and I should probably preface what

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I'm about to say with, I'm not saying that homosexuality and pedophilia are the same thing. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that homosexuality and bestiality are the same thing, or polygamy, or any of these other deviations.

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I'm not saying they're the same. What I'm saying is, if you get rid of a definition, or if you downplay it to the point that it doesn't really matter for legal recognition, then why can't other arrangements, other competing forms of what it means to be a family, definitions, why can't they also have that same access, and why can't they carve out that same exception?

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Why can't a polygamous family say, well, we should have legal recognition, and as long as we're recognizing what we're doing isn't the ideal, or why can't a couple that is pedophile in nature, or it's a younger teenager, let's say, with someone who's older, why can't they say, well, our arrangement, or incest, you know, why can't we say, our arrangement deserves legal protection, as long as we realize the ideal is not what we're doing, it's heterosexual, monogamous, one man, one woman type of relationship.

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So this is, and adults, obviously. So this is the thing that bothers me a little bit about Jordan Peterson.

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I just wanna state that up front, because I'm gonna be saying, I'm gonna be really supporting a lot of the things

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Jordan Peterson says in this video, but with the recognition that Jordan Peterson, that he's not coming at this in the same way that I think many of the people in this audience are gonna be coming at this.

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He's not coming at this as someone who is a Bible -believing Christian that sees scripture as final authority.

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He's not coming at this as, I think he claims to be some kind of a Protestant, if I'm not mistaken.

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I'm not sure exactly what flavor of Protestantism he is, but whatever that is, and I've also listened to other things

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Jordan Peterson's done on the Bible. He's certainly not coming at this with a grammatical historical approach to scripture, even if he looks at scripture as valuable and important, significant.

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So he says things sometimes that really, they make their way onto these really conservative

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Christian arenas where people are heralding it as Jordan Peterson's become saved, or he's

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Jordan Peterson, he's really close if he's not, and maybe he is close, I don't know. But Jordan Peterson is really giving a defense.

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I mean, some people were saying not long ago, a few months ago, that he was giving a presuppositional apologetic for Christianity when he talked about being in the

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Bible Museum. And he gives this story about how, what came to his mind is that the other great works of literature that we know in Western civilization are somehow, they owe a great deal of inspiration to the

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Bible. That really the Bible is the lingua franca. It's what everyone understood. And so when we built these other books off of scripture, our understandings and categories that came from scripture, they really owe their meaning to the

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Bible. And so he makes a statement that something along the lines of that the

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Bible is the basis for all meaning. He says something along those lines, and a lot of people were heralding that as he's presuppositional.

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He's just, he's approaching this just like Van Til would approach it. And I remember at the time when I saw that,

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I thought, that doesn't seem, it seems to me like what he's saying, and it was an important point he was making.

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It's very important, but I don't think what he was saying was that revelation is the basis for all kinds of meaning and understanding, and you really can't have those things without revelation.

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I think what he was saying was that in our Western context, with all the great works of literature that have been produced and knowledge that has been attained, all of them owe some kind of a debt to the

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Bible because the Bible was the most popular book and a lot of the analogies and categories and the language that we use, the way that the language itself,

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English, has been shaped, and perhaps other languages in the

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Western world, they have been shaped because that was the most accessible piece of literature and it was held in high esteem.

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And so they're borrowing from that when they then write. So it's not complete original creativity.

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There's creativity merged with, of course, what the Bible has said for years.

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And those are the stories that all the great literary figures would have known. And so that's the point I assumed he was making.

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And it was a very good point, but it wasn't a, without the Bible, you have absurdity, or without revelation, you have absurdity, or without Christ, you have absurdity.

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He wasn't saying that. And so all that to say, I think there are some people out there, and understandably so, who just, you see

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Jordan Peterson, see, he's got such a pulpit, if you will.

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That's a religious term, but he does, in a sense. He has a, he has a platform, but it really is a pulpit because he sometimes, he's preaching, and he is telling, he's giving instruction, moral instruction, ethical instruction, to mostly young men, but many others, about how they should live their life.

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And many people listen to him. And he's got such a big platform. I think there are Christians who hear what he's saying.

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They know it's not the woke nonsense they're getting. It's actually, in many ways, opposed to the woke nonsense they're getting.

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And he's a very bold kind of a person, at least when he has a conviction, Jordan Peterson doesn't back down from it.

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And we're hungering for that. I think there's a big dearth of people like that. Convictional Christians who are willing to hold to their convictions, say what needs to be said, speak the truth in love.

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Jordan Peterson, his personality certainly comes across this way, that he can speak the truth, he can be direct, but he can also have this gentle mannerness about him.

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He can connect with you. And people are longing for that, I think, so much, that there's really just a desire to, can't he be on our side?

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Can't he really be one of us? I mean, he's so close, isn't he? He says so many things that seem so similar.

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And so I've even had those thoughts before. I mean, like some of the things he says, I'm like, oh man, I really wish that some of the popular preachers would say these things in Christianity.

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Why can't, why can Jordan Peterson recognize this as a clinical psychologist, who's now a political commentator, a social critic?

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How come he can see this? And yet so many of the Christians that have platforms out there wouldn't be caught dead saying some of the things he says.

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Why is that? That's a question. And I don't know if I have completely an answer for it. I have some suspicions. I have ideas.

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I just don't, I don't know completely why that might be. Maybe you can put in the info section or the comment section, if you have an idea of why.

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Why does Jordan Peterson recognize some true things that we just don't really hear much in the evangelical world?

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That's a good question. It's a question that I've had because a lot of the things that Jordan Peterson says that make him popular, a lot of like the whole take responsibility, make your bed, be a man.

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He speaks to young men. This is something that Christians, it seems like especially evangelicals, their music, their style, their ideal for what a pastor is, is this very maternal figure.

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It's so, it speaks to women more than men. It's just, and Jordan Peterson is speaking to men primarily.

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And so I've had that thought too when he says some of these things that just seem so true and it seems like this, that was a good way to state it.

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Can he be on our side? Can he be one of us? Isn't he one of us? I mean, he says some things that are so close, but at the end of the day, he's not.

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He's not, as far as I can tell, at the moment I'm recording this, maybe that'll change. He's not a

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Bible believing Christian that sees the Bible as a final authority. He's not someone who has an orthodox view of the scripture.

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And I would assume that probably gets into other areas. He probably doesn't have an orthodox view of who Jesus is and all the rest.

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But at least on scripture, I know, cause I've listened to enough Jordan Peterson. I listened to his whole debate he had with Sam Harris, that Jordan Peterson is not coming at this the way an orthodox

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Christian comes at this at all. And if you listen to a lot of his material, he is appealing very often to clinical psychology studies, literature, and then behind that, and I think this is really more, unless there might be a battle going on in his mind of where the final authorities lie, but it seems to me, especially his earlier material, he does like to reference evolutionary biology quite a bit.

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That seems science, right? His scientism really, but his conception of science and what he thinks science has given us, that seems to be more of a final authority for Jordan Peterson.

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And so if that's the case, and I wasn't planning on saying all this before, but if that's the case,

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I think this is all important, what I've said, we can look at Jordan Peterson and I think we can say this about him.

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Our expectations are not as high for Jordan Peterson as they would be for someone in our own camp, who's evangelical, who's in an evangelical organization or a big church or something like that, who should know biblical orthodox teaching and morality and doesn't seem to defend those things.

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So if someone like if Alan Mueller said what Jordan Peterson said about homosexuality, I think it would be a lot worse in a way, because we would be like, this is a guy who should know better.

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This is someone whose stated beliefs contradict this. Jordan Peterson doesn't have these stated beliefs. So that's number one.

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I think when we hear Jordan Peterson say something, I think what we should be hearing is someone who's not an orthodox believer, not a

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Christian in that sense, but who is making some very right observations. And these are observations that,

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I'm gonna give credit to God here. I think God's allowing this. This is just from natural revelation.

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He's able to look at what's obvious and say, that's obvious, that's true. This is the way things ought to be.

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And that is something, really what it highlights is how missing that courage to state what's obvious, that's missing that courage in evangelical circles at the higher levels among platform evangelicals.

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They won't say the things Jordan Peterson will say, though it should even be more obvious to them. They have special revelation to rely on here.

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Jordan Peterson, I think, is just making some basic observations as someone who trusts his senses to some extent and trusts his rational working mind.

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And he can look out and see, this is the way things are designed. And I think he does see design behind it. He is theistic in that sense.

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And he is broadly speaking, not Orthodox in theology, but he's a Christian and he's part of Christendom broadly speaking.

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He has some of those assumptions. And these would be observations, I'm pretty sure if you went back like 60 or 70 years, just about everyone in Western civilization would have been able to see everything

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Jordan Peterson's saying. They might not have articulated it the same way. But it's one of the things that I've noticed when you even, maybe not as much now, but in the last few years, if you even listen to country musicians, let's say, talk about Christianity, sometimes there's a nostalgia associated with it.

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And you think about, man, that's not how most churches are now. But there's this sense,

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Francis Schaefer talked about this sense in which the middle class often tends to retain traditions better.

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And there's, I think a lot of the people who speak to working class people, they're, and they're unaware, let's say, of what's going on at the higher levels of evangelicalism.

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Their conception of what a church is and does and what it should be and what kind of song should be sung there, traditional songs primarily, it's not being informed by what's currently being printed at the

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Gospel Coalition. It's being informed by their experience as a child going to church. And what their parents, more so probably their parents' experience of going to church, even if they're secular.

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And so they've retained, in some senses, a more traditional outlook on what a church is, a conception of what a church is than the very people who are running the churches today.

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It's very interesting to me. And Jordan Peterson seems to have that as well. He's just kind of like, why are the churches going after social justice?

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It doesn't make sense. That's not what a church is. And so let's play, let's go through this. And hopefully some of these introductory thoughts were helpful for you all.

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I'll try to cut this in the audio. I'll make a distinction on the YouTube channel at least between what

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I just said and then the analysis here. Some people have, one person has made it clear they don't care for me talking a lot before I get to the point.

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They want me to just get to the point. And so we're gonna get to the point. If there is a point that I wanna make,

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I think there is in this video. Let's play this. I'll minimize myself here.

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And let's play this and go through it step -by -step here. So this is

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Jordan Peterson on the 13th of July is when I'm looking at this. And here's what he has to say.

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It is of course completely presumptuous of me to dare to write and broadcast a video entitled

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Message to the Christian Churches, but I'm gonna do it anyway because I have something to say and because that something needs to be said.

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I've been speaking to and watching and listening to audiences all over the Western world for the past four years in person and in virtual form and have learned a few things in consequence.

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It all started in some sense with the lectures I did on Genesis in 2017.

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My family and I took a risk and rented out a theater in Toronto on the off chance that there might be an audience for what might be described as a psychological approach to our ancient stories and -

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I just wanna stop it right there. This is very common for Jordan Peterson. When you hear him talk about the Bible, he's not interested in necessarily the veracity of it as far as it being literal truth.

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He's more interested in this kind of higher level of truth. He thinks that there's a psychological benefit to these stories, the legends, myths, but they convey something true about human beings.

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And so that's one of the things that I hear a lot that makes me think that's his motivator.

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That's also his final authority is psychology. That's, I think, and that might be changing, that's possible but I think still that's how he looks at things.

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And so just keep that in mind as you listen to Jordan Peterson here. It doesn't take away from the truth of what he says.

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It just means he doesn't approach things the same way I think an Orthodox Christian would approach things, yet he still makes these points that are so good sometimes.

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Lo and behold, and miracle of miracles, there was. I completed 15 or so lectures walking through the first biblical book, sold out the theater, and attracted surprisingly millions of viewers,

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Christians, Jews, Muslims, and atheists. And most of the people who attended live and the majority of those who watched online were young men.

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That is not a phenomenon that can be easily accounted for, but let me try.

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I'm gonna stop right here. It's interesting to me that he had all this interest in what he was doing.

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And think about it this way. If people were really interested in what Genesis taught, aren't there tons of resources out there?

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I mean, I know just in being in the evangelical world, there's tons of books you could have gotten on Genesis, right? So what were all these people, including

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Muslims and Jews and atheists, what are they really looking for when they listen to Jordan Peterson talk about it? That's a question

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I think we all need to ask. Is it possible for a Christian pastor to tap into this?

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And I think Jordan Peterson is gonna make the case that yes, there is something here that basically the churches are leaving men out.

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And I think he's spot on with this. But if you had someone like a

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John MacArthur, let's say, who has, I'm sure, done series on Genesis, if he were to do what Jordan Peterson's doing, run out of stadium, talk about Genesis, would all those people show up to listen?

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Well, probably not. And there's probably a multiplicity of factors. One would be

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Jordan Peterson already had a platform and Jordan Peterson was already, he's a dad -like figure to many guys.

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They already had a sense of trust that was built with him before he even attempted to do a study of what the

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Genesis says. So I think there's that attraction to Jordan Peterson. His personality is also, he just seems very believable.

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He's pleasant to listen to. I think that's part of it. And authenticity is a big part of that too.

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He's not someone who you listen to and he's like a Joel Osteen and just wants to give you the warm fuzzies. He deals with reality as it is.

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He can relate to your life, but it's not just because he's relating to the good parts of your life. He's actually telling you your life actually is a struggle.

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Your life, there's forces of darkness at work. You need to conquer them. You need to master the evil that's with inside you.

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And so there's some authenticity to that as well that Jordan Peterson has. So I think combination of all these factors probably produced the big audience that he had to listen to him talk about Genesis.

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The other thing is, and I don't know, I mean, I'm spitballing here, but when he talks about Genesis, he talks about it from an angle that it's not normally, it's not normally talked about.

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So he's approaching it and he's finding psychological things to point out.

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He's finding things that are interesting, of interest for, or perhaps applicable for people who maybe don't even believe the

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Bible. And so he's approaching it the way that someone, someone could even approach maybe a

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Lord of the Rings or something like that. Although that hasn't had the effect that the Bible's had, but it's, this is an ancient myth.

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And so what kinds of higher truth, what kinds of truth in this that isn't literally jumping out to us from the story, but is more symbolic and more representative of how humans behave psychologically?

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You know, what kind of truth like that can we glean from this? And so maybe Jordan Peterson has something to add that hasn't been added before.

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Maybe he has a way of looking at this that no one else has, and maybe that will help me with my problems. I think that's part of the reason why a lot of people listen to him.

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So I don't think that everything Jordan Peterson has done can be recreated necessarily by a

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Christian pastor, all other things being equal. Now, of course, with the power of the Holy Spirit, of course, anything's possible.

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You can have a much bigger audience than Jordan Peterson. But I think that all things being equal,

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I don't think it was interest in Genesis as much as it was interest in what Jordan Peterson was gonna tell people about Genesis that attracted these people.

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And that gets into what he's about to say next. That gets into young men and Peterson's message to young men.

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And is there a relationship between what the Bible says and what young men need to hear? There absolutely is.

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Now in the West, because of the weight of historical guilt that is upon us, a variant of the sense of original sin in a very real sense, and because of a very real attempt by those possessed by what might be described as unhelpful ideas to weaponize that guilt, our young people face a demoralization that is perhaps unparalleled.

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This is particularly true of young men. Gentlemen, welcome to the project.

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We got an ad. There's a lot of ads in this. Project is a 75. Anything that devastates young men will eventually do the same to young women.

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And that in this era of anti -natalism and equally reprehensible nihilism is precisely the point.

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When they are children, boys are hectored for their toy preferences, which often include toy weapons such as guns, and their more boisterous playing style, as boys require active rough and tumble play, even more than girls for whom it is also a necessity.

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When in grade school, boys are admonished, shamed, and controlled in a very similar manner by those who think that play is unnecessary, particularly if it's competitive, and who value a docile, harmless obedience above all, shades of Dolores Umbridge.

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Following all that, because that's not enough, even when pursued assiduously for total demoralization, is the inculcation of an extremely damaging ideology, which essentially consists of three accusations.

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Number one, human culture, particularly in the West, is best construed as an oppressive patriarchy, motivated by the desire, willingness, and ability to use power, defined as the compulsion of others against their will, to attain what are purely selfish and self -serving ends.

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This is true at every level of analysis. Marriage is akin to slavery, friendship to exploitation, political disagreement to war, and business arrangements to deception and theft.

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And this is true, not only of the current social arrangements that characterize our culture, particularly in the

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West, but also the fundamental reality of history itself. Accusation number two, human activity, particularly that undertaken in the

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West, is fundamentally a planet -de -spoiling enterprise. The human race is a threat to the ecological utopia that existed before us, and that could hypothetically exist in our absence.

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We might well be construed even as a cancer that threatens the very viability of the complex systems that make up the ecosystem of the

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Earth that shelters and supports us. We are facing a Malthusian catastrophe of overpopulation and biosphere degradation, and we have to place extreme limits on our wants, even our needs, so that survival itself, even in a much reduced form, can be guaranteed.

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Accusation number three, the prime contributor both to the tyranny that makes up the oppressive patriarchy and structures all of our social interactions, past and present, and the unforgivable despoiling of our beloved

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Mother Earth, is damnable male ambition, competitive and dominating, power -mad, selfish, exploitative, raping, and pillaging.

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You might think that I'm overstating the case. Think again, sunshine.

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We in the West are - I think part of the appeal is when he says things like that.

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Think again, sunshine. He's saying this is the reality, and he's willing to stick by it, and he's very direct in the way he communicates.

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He's very sure of himself that boys need that playtime that's rough and tumble, and when they don't get it, when that's, when others judge them for it and condemn boys for it or prevent them from having it, that this is an attack on men to some extent, and then blaming them for all these problems is an attack on them, and what they're really looking for is some kind of a higher purpose.

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They're looking for meaning. They're looking for somewhere where they can fit in, and of course, the

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Genesis story is, that's the foundation of meaning. That's where you find out the purpose of man, and so I think that's why he brought that up is that this is why so many men wanted to listen because they're looking for something.

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I think he's absolutely right with this, absolutely. I think this is so fundamental, and I think the thing that attracts people, one of the other things to Jordan Peterson is that that directness and that being sure of himself, all of this comes through a trial of fire.

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I mean, he was in trouble with his university. I believe the University of Toronto, something like that, and he wouldn't use the preferred pronouns, got in trouble for it, and he stood by his convictions, and this isn't someone who did all the ladder climbing.

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I mean, he got to a certain point in his life, but he's not someone who's just willing to maintain all the relationships in his life at the sacrifice of truth.

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He's not willing to try to climb another rung on the ladder if it'll get him a better gig in the university system or something like that in academia if it means sacrificing the truth and what he knows to be true, and he didn't have this platform when he decided to take that risk.

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I didn't have this podcast. It's much smaller than Jordan Peterson's, but I didn't have this podcast when

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I decided to talk about what was happening at Southeastern, at least not the way the podcast is now.

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I mean, I took a risk, and I knew I was being shut out of the SBC forever because I know how the SBC works, and it works like a mafia, and evangelicalism in general has a bit of this.

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You have to, you can't say negative things about other people. You have to go along with the narrative that is currently being employed, and Jordan Peterson's not one who did that in academia, and I think that gives him credibility, like real credibility with people, and they wanna listen to what he has to say, and they're looking for meaning, especially young men.

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They want examples of courage. They wanna know that it's okay to be competitive, and they want something that shows them why are they designed the way that they are.

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Why do they have the interests and the behaviors that they exhibit, and what makes sense of them?

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Where do they fit as a puzzle piece in the puzzle? Where can they call home, in a sense?

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And Jordan Peterson, in a sense, gives them explanations. I don't think they're all right.

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I think some of the evolutionary explanations he gives, I think are there, but it's like a mythology that he's using.

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It's like something, it's his own way of giving you a story to make sense of where you're at, just like other, even animistic religions have all these stories that try to give you a sense of purpose, and they're not getting anything from the secular world.

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They don't fit into the secular world today. They don't fit into modern academia, or even the church, even.

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There's really not a place for guys that much. They are designed in a certain way, but it's like the church, and really any institution, doesn't, we don't need those qualities.

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Aggression, woof, we don't need that. Instead of looking at men honestly and saying, well, there's a place for aggression sometimes, actually.

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God designed it this way. You're supposed to be protective. You're supposed to be a defender of the things that are true and good, and your family, and so, and society.

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And so this is, I think, a lot of it. And Jordan Peterson is doing, he's filling a role, fulfilling a role that should have been fulfilled by a number of institutions, but churches most especially, and yet they're failing at this.

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And that's part of the reason he's making this video. All out assault at the deepest levels on what that old joker

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Jacques Derrida deemed the phallogocentric conceptual structure of civilization itself, apart.

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That's a society centered on the encouraging, adventurous, masculine spirit, and that privileges that hated word of all things, the divine logos.

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And what should we worship and celebrate properly other than that, deconstructionists?

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The words of that mass murderer, Karl Marx? And it is precisely those young men who are deeply conscientious, capable of guilt and regret, who have come to believe in pain, that every deep impulse that moves them out into the world for the adventure of their life, even that impulse drawing them to women, is nothing but the manifestation of a spirit that is essentially satanic in nature.

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This is not only wrong, theologically, morally, psychologically, practically, and scientifically, it is literally anti -true.

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It's not a mere misstatement about the nature of reality, a minor conceptual error, but something that literally could not be farther from the truth.

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And something that distant from the truth comes from a place that cannot be distinguished from hell.

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The Christian church is there to remind people, young men included, and perhaps even first and foremost, that they have a woman to find, a garden to walk in, a family to nurture, an ark to build, a land to conquer, a ladder to heaven to build, and the utter terrible catastrophe of life to face stalwartly in truth, devoted to love and without fear, invite the young men back.

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Say literally to those young men, you are welcome here.

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If no one else wants what you have to offer, we do. We wanna call you to the highest purpose of your life.

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We want your time and energy and effort and your will and your goodwill. We wanna work with you to make things better, to produce life more abundant for you and for your wife and children and for your community and your country and the world.

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And we have our problems in the Christian church. We are more abundant, sometimes far too often corrupt, and sometimes deeply so.

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We are outdated as are all institutions with their roots in the dead, but still often wise past.

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So join us. We'll help fix you up, and you can help fix us up.

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And together, we'll aim up. And here's a message to those young men skeptical about such things.

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What else do you have? You can abandon the churches in your cynicism and disbelief.

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You can say to yourself, narcissistically and solipsistically, the church does not express what

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I believe properly. Who cares what you believe?

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Why is this about you? Do you even want it to be about you? What if it was about others?

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What if it was about your duty to the past and to the broader community that surrounds you in the present?

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What if it was incumbent upon you and vital to your health and willingness even to live to rescue your dead father from the belly of the beast?

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Where he has always resided and to restore him to life. Once again to the churches,

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Protestant, you're the worst at the moment. Catholic, Orthodox, invite young men, put up a billboard.

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Say, young men are welcome here. Print some flyers and put them in a box by the billboard.

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Signal the existence of those flyers with an arrow, with the words, more information about attending here.

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Tell those who have never been in a church exactly what to do, how to dress, when to show up, who to contact, and most importantly, what they can do.

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Ask more, not less of those you are inviting. Ask more of them than anyone ever has.

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Remind them who they are. In the deepest sense and help them become that.

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Your churches for God's sake, quit fighting for social justice. Quit saving the bloody planet.

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Attend to some souls. That's what you're supposed to do. That's your holy duty.

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Do it now before it's too late. The hour is nigh.

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All right, so that is the extent of the video there.

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And you can see Jordan Peterson really tapping into the sense of significance that men ought to have, but they don't have, it's missing.

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And the church can provide this. And I think he's making actually a right point there that if there was ever a time, and obviously there's not a person in human history at any time who's never not needed

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God. Everyone needs God. Everyone, there's always a time. But you would think that the things that are missing the most right now from our secularized humanistic society would be most found within the confines of the church.

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The church being an institution of heaven, not an institution rooted in making this world a better place, but preparing people for the life to come.

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And that's, I think, what's missing. That's the notion Jordan Peterson has, that, well, of course, that's what church is about, right?

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That's what people 50 or 60 years ago would have pretty much universally thought, for the most part, at least, is that that's what church is there for.

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It's not about this life, it's about the next life. And of course, there's a connection between the two.

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But with our social gospel and now social justice gospel that many churches have adopted, it's now more about the here and now.

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You have some churches that have gone this more seeker -sensitive, individualized route, where it's about you and your best life now and your best marriage and make sure that you have the best job and that you enjoy the great life that you have.

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But then you have a lot of churches that they haven't gone that route. Instead, they've gone the route of, well, it's about making the world a better place, the entire world, and that's it.

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That's the purpose of the church. Not a Christian's duty, even, solely.

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It's the church's duty as an institution to do this, and that's their primary function. And then that's what

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I think, that's one of the things that doesn't separate the church from the world and make the church unique.

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I mean, think about it this way. All the institutions in society, whether it's entertainment, politics, law, anything you can think of, the arts,

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I mean, it's so many of them, they're not focused on the transcendent. They're focused on the here and now. That's focused on the temporary world that we inhabit.

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And so if everything's focused on the temporal world and what happens down here, and none of them are focused on the eternal realm, and then the church decides, well,

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I don't wanna stand out. I'm gonna be like all these other places. Well, the church has just lost its significance. The one thing that made it different, the main thing that made it different from these other institutions now is completely gone.

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It's not about eternal life anymore. There is no eternal life anymore. It's not important if there is. And now the church has made itself irrelevant in the quest to find irrelevance.

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That's the ironic part of all this. And a lot of young men are alienated from the church.

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I mean, I don't have stats in front of me. I know that they exist out there. They're showing that it's consistently women, especially in evangelical settings, that are the ones that are going to church and consuming evangelical blogs and literature and music and entertainment, and that it's women primarily, it's not men.

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And why is that? It wasn't always this way. Why is it that men are alienated?

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And there's probably a number of reasons, but I can't help but thinking what Jordan Peterson's talking about here is one of the reasons.

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There's not a place for them there. So there is a purpose.

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There is, and it is about preparing for the next life. And men can make this world a better place, but they can also pursue things that have value in the next life.

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They can pursue, they can obviously discipleship, holiness, pursuing that.

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But there's a place for them in the church as well in defending the faith, a faith that is attacked today constantly.

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They can defend the true and valuable things that we've been bequeathed by Christianity, Christian culture, and more specifically, the

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Bible's teaching. This is a time for men, a time to be defenders, there's a time to be even aggressive in some of the cultural battles that are taking place right now.

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And the church can not just, I think, give inspiration for that for individual's lives, but the church can be a refuge.

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It can be a place where you actually do fit in as a man, as a young man, and you actually are part of something more, something beyond yourself.

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And that's, I think, what Jordan Peterson keeps tapping into. Why did you think it was about you?

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It's not about you. That's attractive for a lot of guys out there right now because they've been told their whole life it is about them.

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They always got a trophy and it's empty at the end of the day. And so anyway, I recommend this video because I think

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Jordan Peterson's tapping into something that not a lot of pastors seem to understand, but it's very important.

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And I think, I'm not under any illusion, obviously, that Jordan Peterson is an

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Orthodox believer. I think some of the ideas that he's brought to us even in the last few weeks about homosexuality have not been helpful.

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But I think that, and wrong, some of them, to be quite frank, evil. Any kind of quest to normalize that relationship is evil.

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But I think that he's correctly diagnosing some cultural things that he can see with his own two eyes and think through that aren't even on the radar of so many

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Christian leaders, and they should be. They should be on the radar. If you're a pastor, maybe examine that.

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What is the makeup of your congregation? I've noticed this myself as I've traveled. And I go to churches, generally solid churches have strong male figures.

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It just seems that way, more so, that I can think of a few churches off the top of my head that just had some really just strong male figures there.

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And that is so key. It changes the whole dynamic of the church. And it makes it more of a secure place. It is, it's just more healthy.

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It's more thriving when you have that. It doesn't mean that that's the key to every hole.

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That's not. It's just, I think, I think it's one factor.

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It's one ingredient. And it's oftentimes missing from churches that have compromised.

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And I don't think that's a mistake or just a coincidence. So anyway, hope that was helpful for you in some way.

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I would, hey, if you're a pastor, maybe I would actually consider doing that. Put a sign up, you know, that Jordan, like Jordan Peterson was recommending there.

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Hey, some welcoming young men in that they do need a sense of purpose. They have been left behind by the rest of the secular humanistic world.

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And they need to be in the church. That's where they're going to learn how to be a true man.

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And that's where they're going to learn to manage their passions and put their efforts into things that are productive and valuable.