I guess the first place the start exploring why good people need Jesus is with this question: Are there any good people?

I know when we look around we see good people. Kind, loving, beautiful people. And we can ask, "Do these people need Jesus?" Maybe not.

But whenever I've asked these people, these kind, loving, beautiful people, if they consider themselves kind, loving and beautiful they tend to demur. On the outside we tend to look pretty shiny. But inside? Inside I think most of us admit to hiding some pretty dark things. We carry lingering resentments, hostile thoughts, bubbling rage, flashes of hate, petty grudges, and closets of shame. 

To be clear, I'm not suggesting we're all seething cauldrons of depravity and wickedness. I think most people are pretty decent. But this notion that any of us is a "good person" seems doubtful to me. And I think Exhibit A in this regard his how the best people we know tend to be quickest to reject the designation that they are a good person. No doubt, such a denial is likely a sign of their goodness, a mark of humility, but I also think the best people tend to be the most honest and truthful. 

All that to say, all of us need the Lord. Even those of us who get designated as "good people," believer and non-believer alike. We know things about ourselves hidden from the eyes of others.

Plus, the bar here is pretty high. When we describe people as "kind, loving and decent" the moral standard here is actually not as significant as we think it is. For example, the label "kind, loving and decent" tends to be pretty tribal. That is to say, you are "kind, loving and decent" to the right kind of people. For example, a progressive Christian might say that their atheist friend is more "kind, loving and decent" than evangelicals who are condemning of gay persons. Fair enough, but how do these same atheist friends feel about those Trump-supporting evangelicals themselves? Suddenly, that kindness and love goes missing, often replaced with anger and hate. And if not hate, then indifference or suspicion. We don't wish evil on those people, but I'm not inviting them to my dinner party.

So when we hear people say, "I know atheists who are more loving than Christians," that statement tends to be pretty narrow and politically circumscribed. You are not, in point of fact, talking about unconditional and universal love and kindness. 

When God is the standard of being "a good person" the bar is set pretty high. I think about these words of Jesus all the time: 

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. (Luke 6.35)

If being "a good person" is being kind to the ungrateful and the evil I don't know many good people. And yet, I do think these people have existed. We call them saints. And most of them, as best I can tell, have been people who believed in God, or at least in some inviolate and sacred value system that called them to and sustained their heroic sacrifices. When love gets hard and real you need more than a reputation among your friends that you listen well over coffee and throw lovely dinner parties.

Yes, it is true, many of us are, legitimately, decent people. But we know in our hearts, even the best of us, that we aren't as good as we appear to be. Our kindnesses can become narrow and specific. And there are many people we struggle to love.

I have some reservations about doing a series on why good people need Jesus. But this issue comes up so often with my college students that I feel it necessary to talk about.

Specifically, in Hunting Magic Eels I make the argument that the single greatest challenge facing the church in the West is the moralization of faith. That is to say, the whole point of faith, religion, God, and the church--the whole smash--is to be a kind, loving, and decent person. 

In many ways, you could argue that "the Great Moralization" of the West--that we all want to be kind, loving, and decent people--was the singular and particular achievement of Christianity. See Tom Holland's book Dominion for a historian making this argument. 

And yet, this moralization has become a challenge for Christianity as well. As I point out in Hunting Magic Eels, when being a kind, loving, and decent person becomes the goal of faith it also quickly becomes clear that you can be a kind, loving, and decent person without God, faith, religion, or the church. In fact, with so many notorious examples of Christians not behaving as kind, loving, and decent people it can seem that God just makes people worse. It's a double-whammy. God is both irrelevant and toxic. Best than to jettison the religious baggage to focus--in a secular, irreligious, and humanistic way--on simply being kind, loving and decent. This is a less treacherous and more straightforward path to reaching the desired goal. 

As I said, this development, the moralization of faith, is the single greatest challenge facing the church. I deal with it all the time in my context as a college professor. For example, I recently had a conversation with a college student, a Bible and Ministry major, who was struggling with their faith and calling. Why? This exact issue. As the student shared, "I have good friends who are atheists who are amazing people. They are more loving than most of the Christians I know." And this observation--that some atheists are more loving than some Christians--was calling everything into question. Clearly, this is a shaky and unsustainable way of thinking about God and faith. And yet, it's the way an entire generation of young Christians now look at the situation. Being a good person is the entire point, and it's obvious you don't need God to do that. 

Now, I do want to quickly interject something here. A small point. The observation "I know atheists who are more loving than Christians" is widely shared and repeated. You hear it all the time. And it carries a lot of rhetorical force. It wins a lot of arguments. And yet, it's a weird and highly selective argument. For example, I could just as easily say, "I know Christians who are more loving than atheists." This is also demonstrably true. That is to say, if you pick a loving atheist of your acquaintance and compare them to the worst Christian you know, it's hard to know what such a comparison is saying. Because you could do any number of comparisons to draw different conclusions. There are loving atheists and loving Christians. There are awful atheists and awful Christians. I'm not sure what making selective comparisons between any pair of persons drawn from these groups is supposed to tell us. 

Still, it raises the question that if an atheist is found in the kind, loving, and decent bucket do they need God, faith, and the church? Or is being kind, loving, and decent enough?

I think a lot of us, especially progressive Christians, would say being good is good enough. Let's leave the good people alone. Especially given all the bad apples in our own group. As it says in 1 Peter 4.17, let the judgment of God begin first with the household of God. Let's pick the beam out of our own eye before picking at a speck in the eye of an atheist. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5.12, what business is it of ours to judge the world? Our job, says Paul, is to judge those on the inside of the church. This is very good advice.

Plus, as I noted above, if modern goodness, in the West, is the product of the Christian revolution then every good person is following the path of Jesus. Every time a person cares for a neighbor or extends kindness on the street that's the leaven of Christ working secretly in the world. 

And yet, given all the questions I get from my college students, I also think it's worth thinking a little bit about how even good people might need the Lord.

Let me share a quote from Dallas Willard's classic book Renovation of the Heart:

So the problem of spiritual transformation (the normal lack thereof) among those who identify themselves as Christians today is not that it is impossible or that effectual means to it are not available. The problem is that it is not intended. People do not see it and its value and decide to carry through with it. They do not decide to do the things Jesus did and said.

For too many churches and Christians the way of Jesus is not intended. 

I've spent countless hours with churches talking about all sorts of mission and formation initiatives. And the questions are all generally the same, "How do we do X?" My answer over the years has converged upon a single word: Intentionality. You must intend and decide to do this thing. You can't wish or want or plan or discuss or talk or vision. You must intend. 

The same goes for our personal lives. If we want, say, to grow in the fruit of the Spirit--from kindness to patience--desire is not enough. We must intend. There's a huge difference between wanting to be like Jesus and intending to be like Jesus.

This is my annual reminder during Lent sharing how impactful the Stations of the Cross have been in my spiritual walk. 

As I've shared here and in my books, I grew up a member of the Churches of Christ, but in the 6th grade began to attend a Catholic middle school. Blessed Sacrament was my first exposure to Catholicism, and while I didn't appreciate it much at the time, my introduction to the Stations of the Cross during Lent left a lasting impression. To this day, praying the Stations of the Cross is a part of my annual Lenten observance. 

That said, recommending the Stations to fellow Protestants can be challenging given that some of the stations in the traditional observance aren't found in the Bible. The traditional Stations of the Cross are these:

1. Jesus is condemned to death 
2. Jesus carries his cross 
3. Jesus falls the first time 
4. Jesus meets his mother 
5. Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross 
6. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus 
7. Jesus falls the second time 
8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem 
9. Jesus falls the third time 
10. Jesus' clothes are taken away 
11. Jesus is nailed to the cross 
12. Jesus dies on the cross 
13. Jesus is taken down from the cross
14. Jesus is laid in the tomb

Obviously, as a Protestant kid I was puzzled about Station Six. Who was Veronica?

According to Catholic tradition, Veronica was a pious woman of Jerusalem who was moved with pity upon seeing Jesus carrying his cross to Golgotha. As Jesus passed Veronica wiped his face. A miracle occurred in that an impression of Jesus's face was left upon the cloth called "The Veil of Veronica." 

As a Protestant, that story was new to me. As were Stations Three, Seven and Nine. I was unaware that Jesus fell, precisely, three times on his way to the cross.

As you might expect, these extra-biblical Stations can make some Protestants hesitant to observe or use the Stations of the Cross during Lent. However, in 1991 John Paul II introduced what is called the Scriptural or Biblical Stations of the Cross. These fourteen Stations are each tied to a part of the Passion narrative in the gospels. Protestants using the Stations during Lent might be more comfortable with these, the Scriptural Stations of the Cross:

1. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-41)
2. Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested (Mark 14:43-46)
3. Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin (Luke 22:66-71)
4. Jesus is denied by Peter (Matthew 26:69-75)
5. Jesus is judged by Pilate (Mark 15:1-5, 15)
6. Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns (John 19:1-3)
7. Jesus takes up his cross (John 19:6, 15-17)
8. Jesus is helped by Simon to carry his cross (Mark 15:21)
9. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem (Luke 23:27-31)
10. Jesus is crucified (Luke 23:33-34)
11. Jesus promises his kingdom to the repentant thief (Luke 23:39-43)
12. Jesus entrusts Mary and John to each other (John 19:25-27)
13. Jesus dies on the cross (Luke 23:44-46)
14. Jesus is laid in the tomb (Matthew 27:57-60)

If you want to pray the Stations resources abound online, from written resources to prayer apps to Youtube videos to podcasts. Often these resources share a meditation or reflection associated with each station. A good place to start is Bishop Robert Barron's meditation (links to Youtube, mp3 file, and PDF text here, link to the podcast version here). 

But you can also pray the stations contemplatively, reading each station and spending time in silence as you journey with Jesus from the garden to the tomb.

Having described the symbolism associated with the Great Mother, on page 176 of Maps of Meaning Jordan Peterson turns to consider "The Divine Son" described as "the Knower" involved in "the Exploratory Process." In an earlier post I described this archetype as "the Explorer," but in this section Peterson explicitly unpacks this archetype as the Hero, which then bleeds into the "the Divine Son" and "Savior" archetypes.

If you've been following along, you know the role of the Hero: confront and order the Chaos. As Peterson writes in this section, "The mythology of the hero, in toto, depicts the development and establishment of a personality capable of facing the most extreme conditions of existence...Chaos breeds novelty, promising and threatening; the hero leaves his community, voluntarily, to face this chaos. His exploratory/creative act quells the threat embedded in chaos, and frees what is promising from its grip." Again, slay the dragon. All this should be review for those following this series. 

Peterson then goes on, pushing further, to link the Hero archetype with the Savior archetype. This makes sense, as heroes are often heroes because they save us from danger. Peterson writes, "The hero is narrative representation of the individual eternally willing to take creative action...It is declarative representations of the pattern of behavior characteristic of the hero that eventually comes to approximate the story of the savior. Behind every particular (that is, historical) adventurer, explorer, creator, revolutionary and peacemaker lurks the image of the 'son of god,' who sets his impeccable character against tyranny and the unknown. The achetypic or ultimate example of the savior is the world redeemer, the Messiah--world-creating and -redeeming hero, social revolutionary and great reconciliator."

Okay, theologically some alarm bells are going off here.

First, let me say this. There is absolutely no doubt that in Biblical imagery, narrative, and drama Christ's victory--as archetypal Divine Son, Savior, and Messiah--over Sin, Death, Satan, and the Principalities and Powers is described in the heroic motifs highlighted by Peterson. So on the surface, I have no quibble with viewing Jesus through a Jungian hero archetype.

But that said, one has to treat this archetype with great care in relation to Christian theology, and given Peterson's lack of theological depth--and that's no slam, as Peterson isn't a Christian and is a psychologist rather than a theologian--he often handles Christology superficially. To come to the point quickly, Christ wins his victory--slays the dragon--through kenotic love, through cruciformity. And that cruciformity stands as a subversive sign of contraction over against any vision of "slaying the dragon" that privileges power, competition, or dominance. Christ wins through love, giving his life away. Christ slays the dragon by getting on his knees and washing feet. The concern here is that, if we lose track of the cross, Peterson's vision of the Christ-Hero as "adventurer, explorer, creator, revolutionary," as one "who sets his impeccable character against tyranny," can become dangerously imbalanced, and even anti-Christ/ian. 

And this isn't an idle concern. We saw, for example, a similar imbalance affect the Christology of Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church, his leaning too far into agentic motifs to create a "muscular" Jesus attractive to young men who enjoy MMA and the UFC. As Driscoll famously declared, "I cannot worship a guy I can beat up." Even though, you know, Jesus gets beat up on Good Friday. It's a peculiar and puzzling thing, watching Christian pastors forget the death of Jesus.

But, to be very clear, I'm not comparing Peterson to Driscoll, though both, I'll remind everyone, do appeal to young men. My concern here today is Christological, that a purely Jungian approach to Jesus will consistently fail to reckon with the deeply subversive message that sits at the heart of the Christian faith. The cross cannot be fully understood from "the outside," as one archetype among archetypes. The cross is the Crisis of Jungian psychology, the Contradiction of all mythology, and the Subversion of the hero archetype. When Christ confronts the Chaos, in allowing the dragon to slay him, he interrupts and negates everything you thought you knew about dragons and how they might be killed. 

I'm not very sophisticated person when it comes to aesthetic choices. My tastes aren't very considered or cultured, whatever that might mean. I just like what I like and don't care much what others think. When it comes to culture my advice is Lutheran: Sin boldly. Like what you like.

Were one to ask me my opinion about the greatest Christian albums of all time, my top four albums would be, in no particular order, Only Visiting This Planet (Apple Music, Spotify) by Larry Norman, Slow Train Coming by Bob Dylan (Apple Music, Spotify), Amazing Grace (Apple Music, Spotify) by Aretha Franklin, and Live at Folsom Prison (Apple Music, Spotify) by Johnny Cash. 

Yes, of course, Folsom is a bit of a genre stretch, but as the author Trains, Jesus, and Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash I'd argue with you over a beer that Folsom was prison ministry for Johnny Cash as evidenced in the altar call of "Greystone Chapel."

Those albums duly noted, I'd like to make a suggestion for your Lenten listening. An album I've come to absolutely love is David Ramirez's Backslider (Apple Music, Spotify). I've loved Ramirez's work for some time. He's not a gospel or Christian artist, but his simple takes on classic Christian hymns, from song content to musical style, just hits me in my theological and aesthetic sweetspot. It's my absolute favorite Christian album right now, and if you're looking for some music this Lenten season give Backslider a listen. Here's a taste:

In Hunting Magic Eels I point to Acts 14 as a fascinating moment in the unfolding narrative the book recounts. 

Up until this point in the story the gospel had been proclaimed to Jewish or God-fearing Gentile audiences. Before Acts 14, the sermons of Peter, Stephen, or Paul could assume that the audience knew the stories of the Old Testament. The sermons could reference Abraham, Moses, and David. And how the story of Jesus was the fulfillment of God's promises to Israel. 

But in Acts 14, Paul and Barnabas find themselves in Lystra. And after healing a lame man, they face a wholly pagan audience who have rushed to them thinking they are Zeus and Hermes, the gods themselves come down from Mount Olympus. 

Facing this audience, Paul confronted an unprecedented challenge. How do you present the gospel to a people who have heard nothing about Abraham, Moses or David? How do you present the gospel to a people who know nothing about the Ten Plagues or the Ten Commandments? How do you present the gospel to a people who know nothing about Israel's Messiah? 

And yet, Paul knows that his audience has seen God before. How could they not have seen God? As Paul will declare in Acts 17 on Mars Hill, in God we live, move and have our being. So God is both close and knowable, but somehow also unseen and unknown.  

In Hunting Magic Eels, borrowing from Andrew Root, I describe this as an example of "attention blindness." God is here and visible, even right in front of us, but our attention is directed elsewhere. So we miss parts, even very obvious parts, of reality.

And so, how does Paul direct the attention of the citizens of Lystra to the God standing right in front of them? Especially if he can't talk about the stories of the Old Testament?

Well, in stopping their sacrifice to share the very first sermon with a pagan audience, here is how Paul directs their attention to the presence of God:

“Friends, why are you doing this? We too are only human, like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them. In the past, he let all nations go their own way. Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.”

Notice what Paul says: God has not left himself without a witness. God has been speaking this entire time. And then notice what Paul names as the speech of God. What counts as God's witness? These things:

• Nature
• Weather, seasons, and the harvest
• Good food
• Joy

Unable to point to Moses, Abraham or David, Paul points to the stars and the oceans. He points to autumn leaves and harvest time. Paul points to good meals with family and friends. And lastly, Paul points toward joy. And I just love that. 

This is the speech of God. This is the witness of God.

May we have the hears to hear and the eyes to see.

“As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of the rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here. Well, you can read and see what you think.” 

― Wendell Berry, from Jayber Crow

This is what I've come to understand about prayer.

Prayer is like breathing. Prayer is metaphysical respiration. Release and receiving. Escaping the trap of your subjectivity into an experience of gratitude and gift. Renunciation and grace.

If you refuse to pray, it's like going through the day holding your breath. You become trapped within yourself, like a stagnant pond. To keep the waters clear you need inflow and outflow. 

But when you look at the world, everyone is holding their breath. 

All the world is suffocating.

In Jordan Peterson's lectures on Genesis he spends a talk on the Sacrifice of Isaac. Peterson's discussion of sacrifice in that lecture, and in Maps of Meaning, is a nice illustration of how Peterson is able to turn negatives into positives in speaking about the Bible in a post-Christian world.

What do I mean, "turn a negative into a positive"? Well, it's no news to anyone that the story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac is one of the most scandalous stories in the Bible to modern audiences. We just don't have the cultural capacities to deal with the story on its own terms. The text is a nightmare to preach as the request of God is so beyond the pale that audiences can't get past it to hear any "point" the pastor might try to squeeze out of the story.

But with Peterson's Jungian, mythological approach to Scripture the story of Abraham and Isaac takes on a powerful, intimate resonance. What once scandalized now becomes a moment of personal reckoning.

In Maps of Meaning Peterson describes how neurosis is often the product of unhealthy, excessive, and rigid attachments. Because of these attachments we often fail to move into newness and opportunity. We fail to meet the challenges of life with flexibility. Primarily because some things must be "let go" or "sacrificed" in order to move forward. Fearing to face this loss and grief, and clinging to the safety and predictability of the past, we neurotically cling to psychic lifeboats that can no longer save us and have outgrown their usefulness. Symbolically, we remain "children," playing it safe, and fail to move heroically into the risks of "adulthood." We have to be willing to "sacrifice" to keep moving into an ever-changing future. 

In short, the quest of the hero into the unknown demands a sacrifice to the gods. As Peterson says, "The intimate relationship between clinging to the past, rejection of heroism, and denial of the unknown" is a recurring theme in myth because "the spirit forever willing to risk personal (more abstractly, intrapsychic) destruction to grain redemptive knowledge might be considered the archetypal representative of the adaptive process as such." (Emphasis is Peterson's.) Simply, life demands sacrifice and risk. As Peterson recounts a story from his clinical practice: "I was trying to help a man I knew, who was undergoing a psychological crisis. His attachment to the unnecessary and superfluous was putting his future in serious danger, but he would not admit this. I wanted to warn him that he would eventually pay a great price for his short-sightedness. He ignored the story, however, at least in the short term--with predictable results."

Returning now to Genesis. Seen from a Jungian perspective, God asks Abraham to sacrifice what he "loves best." Abraham, the Jungian hero, is willing to make the sacrifice to move into an unknown, promised future. And because of this willingness, an ability to let go of the past and prior attachments, newness and blessing are allowed to break forth. Read literally, modern readers struggle with the story, but read mythologically--What past do you need to let go of to move into the future? What unhealthy attachment are you clinging to that needs to be sacrificed for you to receive new life? What grief do you need to face or risk do you need to take to step into psychological maturity?--the story becomes personally powerful and convicting. 

Now, is everyone going to be pleased with this sort of psychologized reading of the sacrifice of Isaac? Of course not. But let me suggest that Peterson's approach does get the story a hearing that otherwise wouldn't be heard at all. And not just any hearing, a very respectful hearing, a hearing that cuts right to the heart of your fears and pathologies. Recall the purpose of this series. Why will modern audiences listen to Peterson lecture for hours about the Bible but can't sit through a sermon at church? One answer, I think, is illustrated in how Peterson handles the story of Abraham and Isaac, how the notion of "sacrifice" becomes a meditation upon our personal hero quest to face the pain and insecurities of life. 

Does that mean we have to forever remain with this sort of reading? No. But recall St. Paul's admonition about spiritual development and the food proper to each phase of life, from baby food to a ribeye steak. Peterson can get a skeptical modern audience reading the Bible, sparking an interest. That's a good start, in my opinion, setting us on a path for deeper spiritual reflection as we encounter Holy Scripture. For reading the Bible is its own sort of hero quest as we move from childhood into adulthood as readers of the Word. 

Last post in this series comparing trends within American evangelicalism and the German Christians of Nazi Germany. 

Again, to say this clearly once more, I'm not suggesting in this series that American evangelicals are Nazis or becoming Nazis. As I've stated, such a suggestion is morally and historically irresponsible. Let alone how complex and diverse is the evangelical movement.

But what I am suggesting in this series is that some American evangelicals are heading to a very bad place, and have already arrived there in many cases, a fact that many evangelicals themselves recognize. And if you look at the case of the German Christians you see remarkable parallels in how this situation came about: a neo-pagan drift into nationalism, conspiracy theories, and the embrace of an authoritarian leader. What's happening within American evangelicalism isn't new, we've seen this before, how a particular toxic cocktail comes to poison the church.

I'd like to conclude this series by noting three other similarities between the German Christians and trends within American evangelicalism. I could have devoted three additional posts to each of these comparisons, but that would have made this series unduly long. But mostly I felt that these three additional comparisons were just variants on the embrace of the authoritarian leader. And so, a single post devoted to three similarities between the German Christian and American evangelical embrace of authoritarian leadership. 

First, both the German Christians and many within American evangelicalism espouse and promote the recovery of a lost masculinity. Among the Nazis, the ineffectualism of the Weimar Republic was attributed to its weakness, softness, and passivity. The liberalism of the Weimar state was making Germany "feminine." What was needed, therefore, was a more "masculine" Germany: powerful, forceful, dominant, and virile. The feminine "softness" of Weimar liberalism was contrasted with a National Socialist "masculine" firmness. The Nazi propaganda machine and the Nazi youth movement worked hard to portray this recovery of German manliness. And Hitler embodied the masculine ideal.

Like the German Christians, many American evangelicals are also concerned with recovering a lost or fading masculinity. Kristin Kobes Du Mez lays out the case in her book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. And we've seen recent examples of this in Sen. Josh Hawley's new crusade about "the left" attacking men and traditional masculinity. As Hawley has said, “We need the kind of men who make republics possible." And, of course, Donald Trump embodies this type of man: Strong, dominant, powerful, and virile. All of that to say, the parallels between American evangelicalism and the German Christians couldn't be more obvious.

Related to the embrace of a "masculine" politics and nation is a valorization of the military. That Hitler and the Nazis valorized the military prowess of Germany goes without saying. And we see this same valorization of the military among American evangelicals. One only needs to watch a bit of a "Freedom Sunday" service at First Baptist Church in Dallas to make the point.

Which brings us to a final comparison between the German Christians and American evangelicals who supported and participated in the Capital riot: the willingness to break some glass.

To be sure, comparing something like Kristallnacht ("the Night of Broken Glass") to the January 6th insurrection will offend many evangelicals and elicit a lot of whataboutism (as in, "What about Antifa and how much glass they break?"). But my point here, again, isn't to say that the Capital rioters are Nazis. Nor do I care about who breaks more glass, Anifa or evangelicals. My point about broken glass concerns, rather, a willingness to set aside democratic norms when called upon by an authoritarian leader. That is to say, on January 6th evangelicals on Capital Hill listened to the voice of Donald Trump (the voice of an authoritarian leader touting a conspiracy theory) rather than the voice of Mike Pence (the voice of democratic norms). That's the issue: Whose voice do you obey? The issue of broken glass isn't really about the glass but about the voice evangelicals were obeying when they broke the glass. And when you attend to that voice, you see the parallels between Kristallnacht and January 6th.

We've noted two similarities between some American evangelicals and the German Christians who sought to align Christianity with Nazi Germany. Both groups display/ed a neo-pagan embrace of nationalism, and each are/were given to conspiratorial thinking, beliefs that nefarious forces were controlling the media, stealing elections, destroying Christianity, and killing children.

A third similarity is how the German Christians and many within American evangelicalism have embraced an authoritarian leader to address dangers and threats to the nation.

To begin, it is important here to make a connection between the conspiratorial thinking and the embrace of an authoritarian leader. The two are intimately related, the one justifying the other.

Consider: If the media can't be trusted and political institutions have become corrupted you have to turn toward a leader who can forcefully "do battle" with the malevolent forces at work in the shadows seeking to destroy the nation. And given the dire nature of this situation, there is no time for niceties and civility. The threat demands forceful action. 

In Nazi Germany these feelings were captured by what was called "the Führer principle." According to the Führer principle, whatever the leader did or had to do to protect Germany was, by definition, the right and necessary thing to do. The Führer was the embodiment of the nation. Because of this identification, and given the fight he was involved in, the Führer was handed a blank check in how he wanted to conduct the battle. More, the Führer was the agent of God, acting under God's blessing. As Rudolf Hess said about the Führer, "Hitler is Germany and Germany is Hitler. Whatever he does is necessary. The Führer has divine blessing.”

Now consider evangelical support of Donald Trump. Trump once said during the 2016 campaign, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters. It's, like, incredible." But it isn't incredible if you consider the Führer principle and the lessons from the German Christians. According to his evangelical supporters, Trump is engaged in a life and death struggle with dark forces seeking to destroy both Christianity and America. Consequently, if Trump did shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue one of three things has to be true:

1. The shooting was fake news created by the mainstream media to get Trump removed from office. 

2. The person Trump shot needed to be shot. (Ponder how some evangelicals often muse about shooting liberals.)

3. Doesn't matter. Maybe Trump should not have shot that person, but Trump is the only one who can save us. We have to stand behind him. 

Many have been puzzled by evangelical support of Trump. Why would "family values" Christians so loyally support a two-time divorcee, who paid off porn stars, appeared in porn movies, and bragged about grabbing women by their genitals? The answer is simple: Trump is engaged in a holy war. That Trump himself isn't a good person is irrelevant, because Trump's fight is righteous. In fact, Trump's obvious crudity becomes a virtue in this fight, rather than a liability. As evangelicals have told confused liberals over and over again, "He fights for us." That's all you need to know. 

And the parallels here with the German Christians and Hitler are striking. Like Trump, Hitler wasn't a very Christian person, yet he was embraced by the German Christians. And like Trump, Hitler was loud and coarse and willing to throw some elbows. Hitler's person made many German Christians very uncomfortable, but they supported him because he was fighting for Germany and the church. Sound familiar? 

Hitler was a crude man, but he was a fighter, exactly what the times demanded. And given the threats facing the nation and the church, as they saw them, the German Christians lined up behind the Führer principle. Whatever the Führer did was necessary and blessed by God. Exactly how many evangelicals feel about Donald Trump. When evangelicals say "Jesus is my Savior and Trump is my President" that's the Führer principle. Whatever Trump does evangelicals have his back, because Trump is fighting malevolent forces--liberals, elites, the deep state--bent on the wholesale destruction of our Christian Nation. 

And so, if Trump has to shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue, that's not a problem. There will always be casualties in war.

Beyond a neo-pagan drift into nationalism, the German Christians of the Third Reich and some American evangelicals also share a second quality: both are/were conspiratorial.

As with the observation about nationalism, this observation about the role of conspiracy theories in both Nazi Germany and within sectors of American evangelicalism should be obvious.

Among the German Christians, the conspiracies were about monied, satan worshipping, Jewish elites. According to the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated but highly influential piece of antisemitic propaganda in Nazi Germany, a shadowy cabal of Jews were believed to be taking over both Germany and the world. And many of the machinations described in the Protocols describe the very contemporary worries of American evangelicals. 

For example, according to The Protocols a Jewish cabal plans to take over all media outlets. As the Protocols say, "The great force of today is the Press." And, "We shall absolutely control the Press, so that not a single announcement will ever reach the public without our control." And, "Our greatest weapon, which is already in our hands, is the Press."

Further, as described in the 17th Protocol, the goal of the cabal is for "the complete wrecking of that Christian religion." 

Lastly, the cabal also plans to manipulate elections and politics to take over the state.

As should be clear, the conspiratorial worries of the German Christians--distrust of the mainstream media, the stealing of elections, and the destruction of Christianity--now characterize many beliefs among American evangelicals. And there's one last connection worth paying attention to: the harming of children.

One of the darkest antisemitic tropes in Germany involved the "blood libel" or "ritual murder libel", beliefs which depicted Jews as killing Christian children. As you likely know, similar "blood libel" beliefs are a part of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a theory endorsed by 25% of white evangelicals, which believes that wealthy Democrat and Hollywood elites are involved in satanic, cannibalistic, pedophile sex trafficking rings. To be clear, most evangelicals find QAnon unbelievable. But the "killing of children" belief is widespread among evangelicals due to their strong views about abortion being murder. Liberals might not be drinking the blood of babies, but they are killing children in their support of abortion.

Before moving on, it should be noted here that there is a connection between QAnon and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A 2021 poll found significant overlap between beliefs in QAnon and beliefs in a global Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. This is a similar sort of overlap that I noted in my first post about nationalism and the Alt-Right. But I'd like to continue to make the clarification that I don't think American evangelicals are, in the main, antisemitic. As mentioned in the last post, I think the pro-Israel dispensationalist theology of many evangelicals keeps many of them away from overt antisemitism. That said, I don't think many evangelicals are aware that conspiracies regarding George Soros and "Hollywood elites" is implicitly trafficking in antisemitism. 

My point, however, is not to associate the conspiratorial beliefs among American evangelicals with antisemitism, even if you see it in some places. My point, rather, is to observe that the suite of conspiratorial worries found among the German Christians is similar to the suite of conspiratorial worries now characterizing segments of American evangelicalism. Trade "Jew" for "liberal" and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion becomes QAnon. Both conspiratorial systems share the same concerns, a shadowy, monied, global cabal involved in:

1. Controlling the media
2. Stealing elections
3. Destroying Christianity
4. Killing children

Again, substitute "liberals" for "Jews" and you find a striking, almost point-for-point parallel between the conspiratorial beliefs of the German Christians and beliefs now endorsed by many American evangelicals. 

My son Aidan studied in Germany last fall as a part of ACU's Study Abroad program. Aidan is a history major and while studying in Germany he took an Honors class about Bonhoeffer. 

In talking with Aidan about Bonhoeffer it struck me how similar some within the American evangelical movement have become to the German Christian movement, the group Bonhoeffer and others resisted so strongly as a part of the Confessing Church. Specifically, the German Christians, called the German Evangelical Church, were evangelicals in Germany who wanted to align the church with the aims of the National Socialist Party, fusing Christianity with the Nazi regime. 

Now, to start, I'm wary to make this comparison between the American evangelical movement and the German Christians. For a few reasons. First, American evangelicalism is diverse and complex. It's perhaps better to speak of American evangelicalisms. And yet, the most thoughtful leaders of American evangelicalism are themselves deeply worried about what is happening to their movement. So something deeply concerning is going on. This series is about that specific area of concern. 

Second, even within this most concerning part of evangelicalism I am not saying these evangelicals are Nazi or are becoming Nazis. To be sure, there are some worrying parts of evangelicalism that have mixed with neo-Nazism and the alt-right. But whatever evangelicalism is becoming in its most concerning aspects it is different from what the German Christians were. For example, I think the pro-Israel sentiment within evangelicalism will keep it away from neo-Nazism. Where the German Christians sought to "dejudify" Christianity, many American evangelicals are blowing shofars. Red, white and blue shofars, but shofars nonetheless. 

So this series isn't an argument that some evangelicals are becoming Nazis. This series is, rather, a reflection upon how Christianity becomes twisted and distorted by nationalism and politics. Because a lot of what we're seeing among evangelicals has been seen before. We saw something similar happen with the German Christians. And the parallels are striking. 

To start, let me revisit a comment I've made before on this blog. Specifically, I once described the quest for Christian nationalism among some evangelicals as paganism. 

The reason I've described nationalism as paganism has to do with the witness of the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, the gods of the nations surrounding Israel were locations of idolatry. Israel worshiped the true God where Israel's neighbors were pagans who worshipped their national gods. As it says in Psalms 96.5, "For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the LORD made the heavens." In the New Testament, these national gods, these idols, become identified with the demons. As it says in 1 Corinthians 10.20, "The sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God."

The point here is simple: worshipping a national god is paganism, a form of false worship, idolatry. 

Now, of course, neither evangelicals nor the German Christians explicitly believed that they were worshipping a god other than the God revealed in Scripture. Something more subtle is going on with nationalism. In nationalism the prospects of the nation state become sacralized by the faith of the nation, in this instance Christianity. God and country become fused. In this sense, Christian nationalism isn't paganism proper, but is a newer twist on paganism. More properly, then, Christian nationalism is an expression of neo-paganism. 

That both the German Christians and many American evangelicals fuse God with the nation state should be obvious. One can see the conflation of God and country, the cross with the swastika, in the flag of the German Christians:

In a similar way, you can see the same neo-pagan dynamic at work among American evangelicals with their red, white, and blue shofars and other sorts of flags and signs as observed among the January 6th insurrectionists:

Again, to be clear, I'm not comparing Trump to Hitler. That comparison is irresponsible and ridiculous. But what I am pointing out is that the dynamic observed among the German Christians, connecting Christ to Hitler, is also at work among many evangelicals: "Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my president."  

The neo-pagan worship of the nation state is also very clear when we observe how various patriotic displays become integrated into Christian worship. Again, this is exactly what the German Christians were trying to achieve. And similar fusions of patriotic displays with Christian worship are widely observed among evangelicals. Below, compare the Nazi symbol on a church altar:

And the American flag in an evangelical worship service:

Both of these are examples of neo-paganism.

Two things by way of conclusion. 

First, another reminder. To repeat: The point here isn't to say some evangelical Christians are or are becoming Nazis. The point is to note a parallel corruption, the neo-pagan move toward nationalism. What happened to the German Christians has happened to many within the American evangelical movement. The origins and ultimate trajectories of the German and American evangelicals are different, but they share a common neo-pagan distortion. 

Second, I claim no originality here. That sectors of evangelicalism have fallen into nationalistic idolatry (and biblically-speaking idolatry is paganism) is well trod territory. But when drawing historical comparisons between the German Christians and worrisome trends within American evangelicalism this drift into neo-paganism was the obvious place to start.

Before moving on, I want to pause this week and talk about Carl Jung, doing a bit of compare and contrast with Jordan Peterson on masculine and feminine archetypes.

Peterson's work with myth is hugely influenced by Carl Jung, but in light of last week's post I wanted to point out how Peterson and Jung handle masculine and feminine archetypes differently.

(BTW, for those who have joined this series late, Parts 1-9 of this series have been very positive about Peterson. Part 10 was my first critique, and this post continues that critique. As this series involves sharing my thoughts about Peterson, pro-Peterson and anti-Peterson readers will, I fear, have mixed reactions to any given post in light of my thoughts. But my writing, I hope, is always characterized by a hard-to-categorize independence.)

To recap, Peterson conflates Chaos, the Great Dragon archetype, with the the Unknown, the Great Mother archetype. And in last week's post I expressed a worry with Peterson's thought in how the masculine Hero archetype is asked to "order" the Chaos or "slay" the Dragon, both symbolically feminine. This framework pits the masculine against the feminine in an agonistic relationship. True, this relationship is symbolic, and the symbols are bivalent, mixtures of good and bad, but it sets up a worrisome dynamic. Symbols, as Peterson admits, encode value and direct action.

Carl Jung, by contrast, handled masculine and feminine archetypes very differently. In Jung's theory every man has a "feminine side," called the anima. And every woman has a "masculine side," called the animus. Each, the anima and animus, are archetypes in the collective unconscious.

For Jung, the anima and animus embody characteristics symbolically associated with masculine and feminine stereotypes. For men, the anima represents empathy, emotional expression, relationality and nurturance. For women, the animus represents agency, assertion, control, and dominance. During development in many cultures, men are asked to repress their anima, their feminine side. For example, when boys are told not to cry they are being asked to repress their anima. Men who overly suppress their anima become, according to Jung, psychologically unbalanced. When men repress their anima they become emotionally repressed, unable to express love, lack empathy, and are overly competitive and domineering. The man who can't express affection for his children by saying "I love you" illustrates the point. Basically, a repressed anima produces what we'd describe as "toxic masculinity." 

For women, by contrast, when they repress their animus they become overly passive, dependent, and needy. This is also an unbalanced situation. When women tap into and express their animus they become strong, assertive, self-determined, brave, capable and powerful. All the "Girl Power" and "Be Brave" memes for young women are trying to get them to express their animus. 

Now, we might quibble with why, for example, emotions are associated with the anima and assertiveness with the animus. But the upshot of Jung's analysis is very egalitarian: A whole and balanced person should fully express both the anima and animus. Healthy people express both masculine and feminine characteristics in balanced ways. We are nurturing and courageous. We are sympathetic and assertive. We can both express and control our emotions. Unhealthy people, by contrast, repress their masculine or feminine side. 

I hope this brief summary of Jung's theory illustrates the contrast with Jordan Peterson. With Peterson, the masculine has an agonistic relationship with the feminine. With Jung, this agnostic relationship doesn't exist. In fact, the only violence being done is in the act of repressing the anima and animus. For men, to illustrate the point, the anima isn't a dragon to be slayed but a "feminine side" to be embraced in order to become a whole and balanced human being.

And on a final note, from a Jungian perspective Jesus expresses the perfectly balanced person. Jesus is both affectionate and strong. Empathic and fearless. Relational and powerful. Tender and confrontational. Servant and leader. Relaxed with women and children and able to go toe to toe with any man. Able to weep over Jerusalem like a mother hen and able to receive a punch in the face with stoical reserve. Jesus, a Jungian could argue, was the perfect Incarnational blend of anima and animus.

In yesterday's post I reflected upon the sensory and perceptual aspects of faith. That made me wonder about the different sensory and perceptual metaphors used for encountering God, the kingdom, or the gospel in Scripture. 

Here's a quick sampling:

Smell:

"To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume." (2 Corinthians 2.16) 

Sound:

"To the one who has ears, let them hear." (Matthew 11.15)

Taste:

"Taste and see that the Lord is good." (Psalm 34.8)

Sight:

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.” (Ephesians 1.18)

Touch:

"That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life." (1 John 1.1)

You've likely seen the famous optical illusion, the duck versus rabbit illusion:

I wrote about this illusion a few weeks ago in a series on joy. Today I return to the illusion to make a different point. Specifically, as you look at the illusion here, go back and forth. See the duck. Then see the rabbit. Back and forth.

The point illustrated here is that perception isn't wholly due to sensory stimuli. The brain doesn't passively register "the facts." Rather, the brain shapes sensory data, much like a potter shapes clay. In cognitive psychology this is called "top-down processing," where a goal, idea, or expectation is imposed upon sensory data. In short, the brain isn't passive, but intentional, bringing expectations to the sensory experience. I can see a duck, or I can see a rabbit. Even if the sensory input is identical.

The argument I make in Hunting Magic Eels is that seeing God is a practice of attention, where you direct you gaze. This is true, but there is more. The duck versus rabbit illusion illustrates that seeing God is also an act of perception. I can see reality in many different ways, depending upon my intentions. I can intend a duck, or I can intend a rabbit. And this intention drives my perception, what I see. The argument of Hunting Magic Eels follows this line, that faith in God is less about belief and more about vision, a vision that flows from the mind's intention as it processes the stuff of life. A theist and atheist can be looking at the exact same thing but see it very, very differently. 

Yesterday I shared a brief reflection on Ephesians 1.17-18, Paul's petition that we might come to possess a "spirit of revelation," an apocalyptic spirit, a spirit that unveils hidden meaning. 

This put me in mind of a quote from Marilynne Robinson:

Ordinary things have always seems numinous to me. One Calvinist notion deeply implanted in me is that there are two sides to your encounter with the world. You don't simply perceive something that is statically present, but in fact there is a visionary quality to all experience. It means something because it is addressed to you...You can draw from perception the same way a mystic would draw from a vision.

This is a wonderful description of what I mean by an "apocalyptic spirit," a revelatory spirit. As I describe in Hunting Magic Eels, we can draw from perception the same way a mystic draws from a vision, perceiving numinous meaning and transcendent value in the everyday. You look upon the world with a sacramental vision as spiritual truths are revealed through material reality. To possess an apocalyptic spirit is to understand that there is a visionary, mystical quality to all experience. 

As Paul prays in Ephesians, may the eyes of your heart be enlightened. 

Ephesians 1.17-18 reads:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.

I've been struck by the dense imagery of the phrase "with the eyes of your your heart enlightened," where perception (vision), emotion (heart) and cognition (enlightenment) are merged. 

May the eyes of your heart be enlightened. That's quite a petition. 

I'm also struck by the visionary emphasis in this passage. The prayer is for a "spirit of wisdom and revelation."

The Greek word translated as "revelation" here is the one you likely know: apocalypse, meaning "unveiling." The prayer is that we might possess an "apocalyptic spirit," a spirit that "unveils" appearances to perceive deeper, truer meanings. A spirit that pierces illusions and brings reality into view.  

In Hunting Magic Eels when I say things like "recover sacramental wonder" I'm speaking about this prayer here in Ephesians, pointing toward this apocalyptic, revelatory, visionary spirit. 

Having set out his "metamythological cycle of the way," Peterson turns to talk about the three dramatic characters who come to both symbolize and map the various possibilities and challenges faced when acting in the world. Importantly, these symbols encode implicit moral guidance in how each, given what they represent, are to be handled.

These archetypal characters, according to Peterson, are the Great Mother, the Great Father, and the Explorer. 

(Note that Peterson doesn't really settle on a name the third character, but I'll call it the "the Explorer." Basically, this character is You--the Ego, the Self.)

The Great Mother archetype symbolizes the unknown, the Great Father symbolizes the known, and the Explorer represents the knower.

As Peterson describes it, myths display great diversity in invoking these archetypes, and the list of associated images and symbols is a bit dizzying. For example, Great Mother imagery associated with the Unknown encompasses chaos, the dragon, the dark, witches, caves, valleys, the moon, the unconscious, the uncanny, the queen, the deep, and the earth. Great Father imagery associated with the Known can include the king, the superego, the wise old man, authority, giants, the sky, daytime, territory, and culture. Finally, the Explorer is the hero, the child, consciousness, the eye, and illumination. 

Backing up, think of a map of the world, with explored and unexplored areas. The Unknown is the unexplored areas of life, the Known are the settled areas of life, and the Explorer can move around and explore this map as they choose. Myths invoking imagery about these three characters are describing the various threats and challenges faced when moving around this map. For example, moving from the Known to Unknown can be scary, but sometimes that's what you have to do. You can become too settled and comfortable behind the high castle walls in the Known, never venturing outside the gates. Myths and stories about kingdoms and castles, dragons and quests, are sharing, according to Peterson, the "behavioral wisdom of history" in how to navigate our life in facing the challenges of the Known and Unknown in our lives.

 

There is one more character, what Peterson calls "the Dragon of Chaos." The Dragon of Chaos is the surrounding and underlying primordial matrix from which the world emerges. For example, there is unknown and unexplored territory within the world, and then there is the Edge of the World. The Dragon shows up at the Edge of the World. Visually, imagine a large island surround by a sea. The island has Known and Unknown parts. The surrounding sea is the Dragon. 

Now, you might be wondering, "I thought the Unknown, the Great Mother, was the Dragon?" And here we encounter what I think is an important issue in Peterson's thought, how the Great Mother and the Dragon become conflated. We can easily see the reason for the conflation. Both Chaos and the Unknown create anxiety, and both present us with both opportunity and threat. Entering the Unknown or falling into Chaos takes us into a place of unpredictability. Thus, Peterson observes, "It is useful to regard the Great Mother as the primary agent of the serpent of chaos...The serpent of chaos can be seen lurking 'behind' the Great Mother." This is because, as I mentioned, the Dragon of Chaos and the Great Mother "commonly overlap because the 'chaos comprising the original state' is hard to distinguish from the 'chaos defined in the opposition to established order.'"

The reason this conflation is important to notice, and potentially very problematic, is in how Peterson goes on to describe how we, as the Hero, have to bring order to the Chaos. In many ways, as we've noted, this is Peterson's central, defining piece of advice: Order the chaos. It's right there in the title of his best-selling book: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Ordering chaos is the logic behind Peterson's advice to young men "to make their bed." 

I think "ordering chaos" is a very powerful insight. But I do have a concern here in how Chaos is symbolized in Peterson's scheme as feminine, as conflated with the Great Mother. You see the problem: disorder in life is encoded as feminine and the masculine hero has to take agentic action to control, defeat or dominate that source of disorder. The call to "slay the dragon" symbolically encodes sexist, misogynistic values. And you could argue that this highly agentic vision of how to "take action" in the world by "slaying the dragon" is the source of Peterson's appeal to young men.

Now, before you share your opinion about all that, a couple of caveats. 

First, Peterson is very clear that the symbols of the Great Mother and the Dragon are bivalent. They embody both good and bad. As Peterson describes, feminine symbols within myth do pose threats but also are the sources of new birth, potential, possibility, and creativity. Ask any modern witch about the divine feminine, a power conceived as being both incredibility destructive and incredibly creative, the raw potentialities of the lifeforce itself. Peterson knows this, so his characterizations of Chaos display this bipolarity. He doesn't cast Chaos as evil or uniformly destructive. So it would be wrong to make a blanket accusation that Peterson's handling of feminine motifs in myth is misogynistic across the board and lacking nuance.

Second, a message to young men calling them to more agentic action in their own lives, like making their bed, isn't a bad thing. There are many who do see a real "crisis of masculinity" in the modern world, too many young men opting out of college, playing too many video games, watching too much porn, and failing to get off their parent's couch. So my concerns above about how Peterson arranges the masculine and feminine images in his scheme isn't necessarily a comment about how helpful he has been to many young men. A strong agentic call to proactive action, in launching their lives from childhood into adulthood, is exactly what many young men are needing to hear. 

Lastly, Peterson is wanting to be descriptive with mythological symbols. For better or worse, ancient cultures gendered many of these symbols, and most of those societies were patriarchal. We might have wished they had gendered the symbols differently. But the deeper point isn't the shell of the symbol but its content. Chaos and facing the unknown are real adaptive challenges. And there's no real insight gained in thinking of those challenges as either male or female. Your bed still has to be made. You still have to walk out the door and face the unknown. It really doesn't matter if the Dragon is a boy or a girl. 

Plus, these gendered symbols can be so slippery as to be pointless. Consider The Hobbit. Bilbo Baggins lives in a hole. That hole, obvious womb imagery, is a feminine symbol. So Bilbo's Known world is the The Great Mother. And Gandalf, the Great Father as the Wise Old Man, calls Bilbo out into the Unknown. The Hobbit totally reverses Peterson's scheme. But does any of that make any difference? I don't think so. Who cares how the gendered symbols are arrayed? The point about Bilbo's settled life in his hole is not that it's feminine imagery but that his life is comfortable and safe. Any interpreter of story, drama, or myth who gets overly rigid with a gendered scheme of unpacking these symbols is going to miss the forest for the trees.

But returning to and underlining my point, if I have a criticism and concern about Jordan Peterson it's right here, how he symbolically aligns Chaos with feminine imagery and how that sets up agentic advice to "order" that Chaos. Slaying the dragon, when the dragon is feminine, encodes, even if only symbolically, a worrisome dynamic.   

Here at the start of this penitential season of Lent, I'd like to share a prayer that has been very important to me over the last year. It's from the Catholic tradition and is called "the Litany of Humility."

You may not find every petition in the litany helpful to you, depending upon your emotional state and social location. But for someone like me, who struggles with pride and possesses some power and influence in the world, this litany has proved very helpful to me.

O Jesus, meek and humble of heart,
Hear me.

From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being loved,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being extolled,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being honored,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being praised,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being preferred to others,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being consulted,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being approved,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being humiliated,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being despised,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of suffering rebukes,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being calumniated,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being forgotten,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being ridiculed,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being wronged,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being suspected,
Deliver me, O Jesus.

That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be chosen and I set aside,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be praised and I go unnoticed,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be preferred to me in everything,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

Today is Ash Wednesday, and I wanted to share an observation about importing the liturgical calendar into low-church, Protestant congregations where the liturgical calendar is a recent, exotic novelty. 

Basically, what I've noticed is a clash between how we experience time in Catholic versus Protestant spaces. Specifically, the experience of Catholic time is cyclical whereas Protestant time is linear. I'm sure some historian has worked out the origins of this contrast. If I were to hazard a guess I'd assume that the cyclical experience of time in the Catholic experience is rooted in our agrarian past, with its cycle of seasons, along with some Catholic/pagan syncretism as the church absorbed pagan celebrations and festivals associated with seasonal, lunar, and astronomical cycles. By contrast, to continue my guessing, the Protestant experience of time is associated with the rise of the Industrial Revolution, which broke with the agricultural seasons, along with Enlightenment notions of "progress," where we march forward in time toward a better future.

Maybe I'm the only one who has experienced this, but I've felt some temporal friction introducing the liturgical calendar into low-church, congregational Protestant spaces. For example, I've found some in these churches a bit confused during Advent that we are "waiting" for the birth of the Christ Child. Since the birth of Jesus happened over two-thousand years ago how, exactly, are we "waiting" for it? The event has already happened. 

I don't think this is a failure of abstraction, an inability to "get" Advent, but is, rather, a clash of temporal imaginations. It takes some explaining to describe how the liturgical season is cyclical, that we are always going back in time to stand, over and over again, at a point in the past. We aren't moving forward year after year, but always cycling backward.

A similar temporal friction happens during Lent. For low-church, congregational Protestants their personal moment of confession, repentance, and salvation is an event in their biographical past. So on Ash Wednesday it is strange to hear that you, as a sinner, stand under the curse of death with the words, "Dust you are, and to dust you shall return." And what does it means to penitentially wait for forty days for a salvation that has already occurred in your life? 

You see this tension in how many low-church, congregational Protestants shift the emphasis of Ash Wednesday and Lent away from sin and penitence. For example, you commonly hear that Ash Wednesday is about "contemplating your mortality." Well, that's not exactly correct. The words "Dust you are, and to dust you shall return" are the curse upon Adam's sin. Like Advent, Ash Wednesday is going back in time to stand condemned--again--under Sin's Curse as we walk forward toward Good Friday and Easter. In a time-traveling cycle we repeat every Lent, the cross is placed in our future rather than in our past.

Which can be temporally confusing if you've already been forgiven, to stand back under the curse "Dust you are, and to dust you shall return." I've seen low-church Protestants chaff at those words, feeling like something secure is being stripped away. But what doesn't make sense when time is linear, makes total sense when time is cyclical. This is why I've seen the words of Ash Wednesday changed in some low-church, congregational spaces, words that keep the cross in the past, thereby making the imposition of ashes fit better with linear, Protestant time. For example, I've heard the words "Jesus died for you sins" used at the imposition of ashes. Those words create less temporal friction because Jesus did, in the past, die for your sins. Words on Ash Wednesday invoking history and memory better fit Protestant time. 

Words, however, that cycle backwards in time, returning you to the Curse and which move the cross into your future, can create friction as a cyclical temporal imagination is being imposed upon a linear temporal imagination.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post asking pastors and Christian intellectuals to stop sneering at Joel Osteen, among other things we sneer at, to think contextually about Osteen's appeal to our culture. 

I want to revisit that post and share a few thoughts about what the prosperity gospel both is and isn't.

By and large, when you listen to intellectual criticisms of the prosperity gospel, the point tends to hit upon this issue: the prosperity gospel is a "problematic" vision of God's providence and action in the world. That is to say, the criticism goes, the prosperity gospel teaches that God wants to bless you, across all facets of your life, and that you merely have to "name and claim" these promises of God to receive these blessings. This is deeply "problematic," the criticism continues, because we don't actually receive all these blessings in life. Life is filled with pain and trauma. We can hope for God's promises all we want, but we still have to face cancer diagnoses, economic hardship, and broken relationships. Life is hard and God's promises are not a magic get out of jail free card. No matter how much you "name and claim" it. 

My sense is that this is the top shelf criticism. But running a close second would be the prosperity gospel focus on financial well-being as a sign of God's blessing.

Let me be very clear that I'm not a proponent of the prosperity gospel. Nor am I defending prosperity gospel pastors and their ministry empires. I'm speaking about the appeal of the prosperity gospel to the person on the street. As I recounted in my prior post, I've watched the impact of prosperity preachers like Osteen upon people and have noted that this impact, while "problematic," isn't wholly bad. Prosperity preaching intersects with and speaks to some acute human needs, and I think being a psychologist, rather than a pastor or theologian, has allowed me to see this.

Here's my starting point. Criticizing the prosperity gospel on theological grounds, pointing out how its theology of blessing is "problematic," is mostly an exercise in missing the point. Pointing out that not everyone is "blessed" 100% of the time isn't a very incisive criticism. You're missing what the prosperity gospel is doing. Criticizing the prosperity gospel on theological grounds is akin to criticizing the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders for having a poor run defense. Of course, you're totally correct, the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders are pretty awful at tackling. But that would be missing the point of what the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders are actually up to.

So, what is Joel Osteen up to? 

First, the prosperity gospel isn't a new thing. It has a rich and deep legacy in America. With the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and "the American Dream," social and economic striving was introduced into the world. The meritocracy was invented. No longer were we, as peasants and serfs, condemned to work the land generation after generation, permanently locked into a lower social strata. Now, living in a modern economy, social mobility was introduced. We could climb. Or fall. And it was now all up to us to climb, to strive, and to push. You have to make something of yourself. And if you don't, you sink, and maybe even drown. 

This striving introduced into our experience what Alain De Botton calls "status anxiety," the notion that our material position within the modern economy is a reflection of our value, worth, and moral integrity. Status anxiety is the Protestant Work Ethic in a neurotic register, the scars of shame when our material fortunes falter or stall.

Even worse, this striving never ends. To stay afloat in modern economies you have to keep swimming or you'll go under. Like a little duck on the surface of the water, our calm exteriors hide our churring little feet keeping us afloat. And this constant swimming, this never ending rat race, creates a second modern ailment: chronic exhaustion, what some have called "the weariness of the self."  

Summarizing, modern life is a life of striving to achieve some modicum of material stability, a striving haunted by anxiety, stress, strain, shame, failure, exhaustion, weariness, and depression. And this, dear readers, is the world inhabited by the prosperity gospel. 

Which is why criticizing the prosperity gospel as "bad theology" is missing the point. You're asking the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders to tackle. 

The prosperity gospel is a part of the long tradition of self-improvement in America. What is the prosperity gospel doing? I'd describe the prosperity gospel as sacralized self-improvement and sanctified self-help. Most critically, the prosperity gospel focuses upon the psychological engine of self-efficacy, the belief that you are capable and competent, that "You got this! You can do this!" The prosperity gospel sacralizes self-efficacy by bringing God into the equation: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

And let me be clear, bringing God into the self-improvement conversation isn't funny or silly. In the modern world, in our striving within the meritocracy, self-efficacy, sacralized or not, is what keeps you afloat. Lose it, and you sink.

Plus, just look out upon the American landscape--from fitness, to wellness, to corporate success, to personal fulfillment, to parenting and happiness--we're all working some angle of self-help and self-improvement. Crossfit, atomic habits, Peloton, counting my steps, mindfulness, TED talks, 7 Habits, Feng Shui, Goop, witchcraft, essential oils, yoga, best practices, business tips. On and on and on it goes. Most of this vast industry doesn't bring God into the equation, but sometimes it does. This is the world of the prosperity gospel, and everyone, even the non-religious, has their Joel Osteen, from business gurus to life coaches to the latest Amazon best-seller you've been reading. 

And again, none of this is stupid or silly. Like little ducks paddling furiously on the surface of the water, we are all exhausted swimmers about to drown in failure, shame, and exhaustion. The prosperity gospel, charitably understood, isn't about "blessing" or wealth. The prosperity gospel is about shame and exhaustion, status anxiety and the weariness of the self, the twin demons of the modern world. Understand this, and you understand Joel Osteen.