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.
