Last post in this series. 

If you've gotten anything out of this series I hope it's pushed you to ask questions about the content of the gospel. In your estimation, what is "Good News" in the gospel? What's "good" in the gospel? And of particular interest in this series: What is "news" in the gospel? What is given to us in the gospel that is something we don't already possess? Or could possess independently of the gospel? Those are the sorts of questions this series has been interested in. 

For example, atheists can share your same political views. So those views don't really need the gospel. And if the message "God loves you" provides us with inner peace and tranquility, what if you possess that peace and tranquility by other means? Again, what would come as news to you in these situations?

I've shared some answers to that question over the last three posts. Summarizing, I said the gospel shares soteriological (Part 4), ontological (Part 5), and eschatological (Part 6) news. In this final post I'll suggest the gospel shares pneumatological news. 

By pneumatology I mean news about the Holy Spirit. 

The gospel proclaims the presence and power of God in our lives through the indwelling gift of the Holy Spirit. The actual spiritual union we experience with God in the Holy Spirit goes well beyond a declaration that God loves you. Again, love is an affection, a feeling. And while feelings are important, something more is available to us in the Holy Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit God is with us and empowers us. Presence and power. These gifts are available to all who believe the Good News.

To be sure, Christians display a lot of diversity about what sort of "power" we have access to through the Spirit. But for this post, we can keep it simple and stick to what all Christians believe, that the Holy Spirit gives us a strength to carry the burdens of our lives that we would not otherwise possess on our own. The gospel is more than a message of God's affection. The gospel is the offer to share in God's very own life.

If the gospel is ontological news, what is the import of that vision of reality?

As described in the last post, the announcement of Jesus' resurrection brought a new world into view. A fatalistic ontology of death was replaced with an ontology of life. Reality was revealed to be an open rather than a closed system. As I've described it before, the resurrection is a "crack in the cosmos," a crack that reveals reality and possibility "beyond" our prior bounded and finite expectations. As I describe in Hunting Magic Eels, in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien the resurrection comes to us as eucatastrophe. 

The practical import of this ontological news is a metaphysics of hope. 

So, when we perform the subtraction entertained in this series, the gospel minus God's love along with your values, morality and politics, one of the critical things left over is hope. 

The gospel isn't just news that God loves you. And the gospel is more than political action. The gospel, as ontological news, is a rejection of nihilism. Your life matters. Heroic actions of goodness matter. And they matter most especially when all is dark, despairing, and desperate. 

In fact, one of the problems I've been writing about a lot over the last few years is that it is hard to sustain our values without some ontological support. One of the problems post-Christian people face is inheriting the emotion of hope from our Christian past while rejecting the ontological news of the gospel. We're trying to be hopeful nihilists, basing hope upon an ontology of death. That's not sustainable. 

You can't sustain the emotion hope when, at a deeper level, you have no hope. 

If you read the book of Acts, the gospel proclamation, the News, was simple and straightforward: Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected from the dead.

So, if you perform the subtraction entertained in Parts 1 and 2 of this series, subtracting out from the gospel God's love and our values, morality, and politics, that's something pretty big left over: the resurrection of Jesus. That is, most definitely, some news. 

But what is the import of this news? I'd like to break an answer down into two related parts, a bit today and a bit tomorrow.

My apologies for getting nerdy with the lingo here, but the first thing I'd like to say regarding the news of Jesus' resurrection is that it's news about ontology. 

What, exactly, is the nature of reality? That might seem to be a pretty abstract philosophical question, with little practical import for your day to day life. But a lot depends upon the world you think you are living in. Reality is an arena of action, and it matters what you think is possible or impossible in that arena. Your beliefs about reality determine how you play the game of life.

So before we get into anything particularly Biblical and religious-sounding about Jesus' resurrection, the first thing to say is that the empty tomb is ontological news, information about the nature of reality. 

What sort of news? 

I like how the philosopher John Haught makes a contrast between an ontology of death versus an ontology of life. In a purely materialistic view of the cosmos life is accidental and fleeting. Mindlessness was our cosmic Alpha and mindlessness will be our cosmic Omega in the eventual heat death of the universe. We travel from death to death. That's the nature of reality, that's the game you are playing. Death is the god, the Ultimate Truth, of your life and all that exists.

The resurrection of Jesus announces a different reality, an ontology of life. The empty tomb announces that Life is Alpha and Omega, our beginning and end. And not just Life, but Love. This, and not death, is our Ultimate Truth. And that is a very different sort of game to play.

All that to say, in the gospel announcement of Jesus' resurrection an ontological claim is being made. News is being shared about the nature of reality and the shape of the world you are living in. 

What is possible? What is impossible? What can we hope for and dream? Does anything, ultimately, matter? Do my small, tiny actions this day participate in some larger story or drama?

All those questions depend upon ontology, the sort of world you think you are living in, the game you are attempting to play. And the gospel comes to those questions with ontological news.

I'm back home with my copy of Maps of Meaning!

Reading through the final pages of the last chapter, where Peterson deepens his discussion of alchemy, I didn't find anything that Peterson hadn't pretty much said before. This is the point I shared before, when I first introduced Peterson's reflections on alchemy, how for Peterson alchemy is an alternative way of thinking about the hero archetype. The alchemist seeks to turn base medal into gold using the Philosopher's Stone. Alchemy, thus, is a metaphor for coping, for ordering the chaos. We take the raw material of life and transform it into something valuable. When life hands you lemons it's time to make some lemonade.

Which bring us to the final pages of the book. 

In offering some summary conclusions at the end of the book, Peterson shares a key idea of his, an idea he often returns to, concerning the relationship between behavior and a hierarchy of value. Peterson observes:

The simplest and most basic day-to-day human activities, invariably goal-directed, are necessarily predicated upon conscious or tradition-bound acceptance of a value hierarchy, defining the desired future in positive contrast to the insufficient present. To live, from a human perspective, is to act in light of what is valued, what is desired, what should be...Collapse of faith in the value hierarchy--or, more dangerously, collapse of faith in the idea of such hierarchies--brings about severe depression, intrapsychic chaos and re-emergence of existential anxiety.

Here at the end Peterson is returning to ideas he shared earlier in the book. Human behavior is goal-directed. And these goals presume value judgments. More, these values are arranged hierarchically as we choose higher goods over lesser goods. The Kingdom of God, mythologically speaking, represents the highest, greatest good. Consequently, even the simplest action, like making your bed, is moving you toward the Kingdom of God.  

To deny the Kingdom of God, to reject the hierarchy of values, pulls the rug out from under the human psyche. Without value goal-directed motivation evaporates. The psychic engine shuts down. We grow listless and depressed. We experience existential anxiety. The bed goes unmade. Chaos encroaches.

This insight is why, I think, Peterson cannot shake Christianity. Simply stated, the mind needs God to operate properly, if only implicitly. If you act at all you are moving toward a good, a good you have ranked higher than other goods. You are always moving toward "better." This is why Peterson is so hard on materialism. Materialism cannot provide the mind with the values it needs to function well.

This idea, that the mind is naturally drawn toward transcendental value, is very old. Read Plato, Augustine, Dante or Aquinas. What's interesting about Jordan Peterson is that he reaches this conclusion as a modern psychologist making clinical observations about how nihilism adversely affects mental health.

It's only fair that I tell you what I think is "left over" from the equation I shared in Part 2. If you subtract out the message that God loves you, along with your values, morality, and politics, what is left over?

In my view, four things are left over. I'll share these in this and the next three posts.

The first thing that I think is left over is a vision of salvation as rescue. 

The trouble with the "God loves you" and "Love Wins" formulations is that they boil down to "salvation as affection." 

As I pointed out in the last post, "salvation as affection" is the problem at the heart of progressive Christianity's theology of the gospel. Because these same progressive Christians care massively, as they should, about social justice. And that commitment makes them see the world, as they should, in highly moralized terms. Oppression and injustice stand under the judgment of God, and the children of darkness are facing some eschatological hazard. Just read the Old Testament prophets.

Trouble is, the Love Wins message from many progressive Christians--salvation as God's affection--has eschewed any notion that anyone faces any eschatological hazard. Expunging any hint of "sinners in the hands of an angry God" from the gospel proclamation is progressive Christianity 101. 

Phrased differently, salvation as affection reduces the gospel to a therapeutic, feel good message of affirmation. Which is great, but if sin and evil really exist, which the progressive Christian has to admit given their social justice concerns, the gospel is more than affection and affirmation. The gospel is rescue. 

Basically, yes, God loves the world. Agreed. That's totally true. But the world is also stuck. And that's what is missing from salvation as affection, any admission that we're stuck and in need of help. It's right there in John 3.16. For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son. God's love graciously initiates a rescue operation. Look also at Ephesians 2.4-5:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.

We were stuck, dead. And because of God's great love he made us alive with Christ, rescuing us from deadness. The gospel isn't a story about God's feelings toward us. The gospel is the story of God's actions toward us. The gospel is the story of the rescue operation. 

(Of course, that's stated too sharply to make the point. The gospel is the story of both God's love and rescue.)

And if that's true, if the gospel is a story of a rescue operation, then the gospel presumes that we needed rescuing. We share the gospel because people are stuck.

So that's my first answer to the question about what is left over. If you subtract out God's affections from the gospel message, along with your values, morality and politics, what is left over? What's left over is the story of God's rescue operation. The story of how you are stuck and how God has come to set you free.   

In the last two posts I pushed us, like I pushed my Bible class at church, to ponder the content of the gospel apart from a message of God's affection for us along with our values, morality, and politics. You may have resisted or been annoyed by this exercise, but I think it's highlighting something important. Do we have anything to say to the world? In case of politics, for example, are we just repeating things people already believe? And in the case of God's love, particularly in the case of non-believers, are we saying anything that anyone would care about?

Most of this thought experiment has been aimed at moderate to progressive Christians, the group that has tended to reduce the gospel to the following formula: Gospel = Love Wins + Social Justice. But before going on to say something about what the gospel might mean beyond that formula, a post today about the paradox at the heart of the gospel according to progressive Christianity.

Specifically, there's a tension between Love Wins and social justice. Those two things aren't so easily joined. 

The big-hearted welcome you hear from progressive Christianity tends to focus mainly upon those who've previously been marginalized and excluded. Which is all to the good. The trouble, however, is that the welcome of "God loves you" is being circumscribed by the call to social justice. It's a love being extended to the margins and the oppressed. Which is, again, exactly right. But what happens when you're dealing with, say, someone who is more "problematic," as they say in the biz. Does God love white, cisgendered men? Does God love Trump supporters? Does God love patriarchal evangelicals? Does God love transphobic people? Does God love QAnon believers?

We could push to even harder places. Does God love, for example, White supremacists, abusers and oppressors? 

I hope you can see the tension in the equation Gospel = Love Wins + Social Justice. Just how contingent is God's love for those in a despised, problematic class in the eyes of social justice warriors?

My deeper point, however, isn't to point out a hypocrisy among progressive Christians, how you can't proclaim that "Love Wins" while being a hater. Christians on the right are struggling with their own hates here as well. The deeper point is that something critical is missing from the Gospel = Love Wins + Social Justice equation. How do you square "God loves you unconditionally" with real locations of sin, harm, and evil? Following from the last post, consider again how the gospel proclamation "God loves you" would sound, say, to a White supremacist. The progressive Christian proclaims the "God loves you, just the way you are" message to the world. And the White supremacist responds, "Cool. Thank you very much." Recall the point from the last post, how the "God is love" message is really the message "You don't have a God problem." Which is good news for the White supremacist! They are okay with God.

And it's at this point where the progressive Christian squints and says, "Hold on. I actually do think you have a God problem. God loves you, yes, but you can't remain a White supremacist. You have to repent."

To which the White supremacist responds, "I'm confused. You said God loves me unconditionally. So what's up with this repent business? Are you saying I'm in some sort of jeopardy with God? You sound like an evangelical, making me worry about Judgement Day."

Here the paradox of progressive Christianity comes into view. Specifically, progressive Christians want to say "God loves everyone, unconditionally" while at the same time condemning oppression and injustice. It seems that something needs to be added to the message "God loves you." To be clear, God does love us, and we are called to love each other. Even our enemies. The issue is, rather, if we can ever come to stand in a location of eschatological hazard. But for many progressive Christians, the message that God loves you has been radically decoupled from any vision of the wrath of God, judgment day, or hell. And without that connection, it's unclear how they reconcile the paradox at the heart of their gospel equation.  

Stated simply, if injustice and oppression are evil some people might actually have a God problem. Yet this is the very problem progressive Christians claim doesn't exist because God loves you like Mister Rogers, just the way you are.

So, I asked our Bible class the question, "What is left over if you subtracted your values, morality and politics from the gospel?"

I expect my conservative to moderate Christian readers are scratching their heads over why such a question might be hard for some. Beyond our values and politics there is so much good news in the gospel. Things like the forgiveness of our sins and the gift of eternal life. 

Trouble is, for a lot of moderate to progressive Christians, those blessings aren't anything they much believe in anymore. Which is exactly why I had my class pursue this thought experiment, to expose how, for many of us, the gospel has been reduced to social justice. Social justice is a wonderful thing but, as I pointed out in the last post, a person doesn't need the gospel to pursue social justice.

All that said, many progressive Christians do have a possible answer to the question, "What is the gospel minus your politics?" And that answer is this: "God loves you."

That God unconditionally loves you seems like an obvious winner when it comes to defining the gospel. And the message of "Love Wins" is pretty much the main sermon you hear from progressive Christians. You are loved. You are included. You have a place here at the table. 

Knowing this, in my Bible class I sharpened the subtraction from last post:

I asked the class, "If you subtract 'God loves you', along with your values, morality and politics from the gospel, what is left over? If anything?"

Now, I know, this is an absolutely crazy thought experiment. But I'm trying to make a point, so stay with me. 

Many progressive Christians were once conservative and fundamentalist Christians. They are ex-evangelicals. And raised as they were in more conservative Christian spaces, where the wrath and judgment of God featured prominently, it surely was "good news" to discover a God of unconditional love and radical grace. 

The point should be clear: If you once believed that God was wrathful and judgmental, hearing that God is a God of love is an experience of Good News. And because of this experience, many progressive Christians assume that the message "God loves you" just is the gospel. Which is a common temptation, mistaking the biographical for the universal. 

But "God loves you" cannot be the whole story when it comes to the gospel. Let me illustrate why.

Imagine this conversation. You're a progressive Christian visiting with a co-worker who doesn't believe in God. You want to share the gospel with this co-worker. So you say, "A lot of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians will tell you that you're a sinner. That you stand under the judgment of God. That you're facing eternal punishment in hell. But I'm here to tell you the 'Good News': Those Christians are wrong! God loves you, just the way you are. You are loved!" Hearing this, your co-worker shrugs and says, "Happy to know I have nothing to worry about from your imaginary friend." 

Basically, why would a non-believer care that God loves them? Telling people that God loves them is, practically speaking, telling people that they don't need to care about God at all. 

Let me say this clearly if you're still not seeing the point. In evangelicalism, the gospel proclamation begins with this premise: Everyone Has a God Problem. This "God problem" is described as sin, judgment and eternal punishment. Rejecting that view, progressive Christians proclaim that God loves you, just as you are. Thus, the progressive gospel becomes the opposite of the evangelical message: No One Has a God Problem. Which, if you ponder it, is a really weird sermon to preach to an unbelieving world. "Hello world! Gather round! I have some Good News for you! Here it is: No one here today has a God problem. Don't let the evangelicals scare you! You have absolutely nothing to worry about! All is good between you and God. Have a nice day!" I ask you, why would anyone care about this gospel, that they don't have a problem they never cared about in the first place?

The message "You don't have a God problem" (aka, "God loves you") is only a relief to people walking around terrified that they have a God problem. Many progressive Christians were once these sort of people. And while it is wonderful that so many progressive Christians have been relieved of this worry, the gospel isn't just "Good News" for a small subset of formerly scared, conservative Christians. Which means the gospel has to be larger than the message "God loves you." And if that's true, then what is over there in the most righthand box? Subtract out "God loves you" and your values, morality and politics. What's left over?

In the Sunday morning adult Bible class I help lead at church, I had the class contemplate a subtraction. 

The question I wanted us to explore was this: "What is the gospel?" 

There are many moderate to progressive Christians who are struggling with that question. Specifically, once you turn your back on atonement theories like penal substitutionary atonement, that the gospel is an announcement of salvation from judgment and sin, a void is created where once "good news" existed. To illustrate this, I led the class through the following exercise.

"Imagine the gospel," I started, "Then subtract from the gospel your values, morals and political views. After that subtraction, what would be left over?" I wrote this equation on the board:

I hope you can see the point of this mental exercise. For many of us, the gospel "just is" a religious expression of my value system and how that manifests itself ethically and politically. Because of the gospel I believe that every human being is person of worth and dignity. Because of the gospel I fight for social justice. Because of the gospel I treat people with kindness and love. Because of the gospel I'm a political activist working for social change. 

And if that is all the gospel is--your values, morality and politics--then once you subtract all that out there is nothing left over in that righthand box. 

In Hunting Magic Eels I make the argument that the moralization and politicization of faith is the greatest threat to faith in the modern world. The equation above illustrates the point. If we perform the subtraction above and find nothing left over on the right, or at least nothing very interesting or compelling, then Christianity has been reduced to having the proper values, ethics, and political views. And if that's the case, if the whole point is being a good person and voting well, then the gospel becomes superfluous and unnecessary. The gospel isn't needed to hold the proper set of values and political views. 

How did we end up in this situation? 

Well, for many moderate to progressive Christians, the gospel functions as our reason for holding certain values and political views. I said it above. Because of the gospel I believe in gender egalitarianism. Because of the gospel I fight for social justice. Because of the gospel I'm accepting of LGBTQ folks. All of which makes perfect sense. The gospel does inform and justify our values, ethics, and politics. But when the gospel becomes a "reason" then the gospel becomes instrumentalized, made into a tool, a means for a political end. When the gospel becomes a tool, a means toward a political end, then the gospel is placed in a subordinate position in relation to that political goal. The political outcome is the most important thing. How you get there is irrelevant. You can reach these same values and political goals from many possible paths--Christian, humanistic, atheistic, pagan, and on and on.

That is how the gospel gets reduced to values, ethics, and politics. And that is how the gospel becomes irrelevant. 

So look at the equation above and ask yourself. If I subtracted from the gospel my values, morality, and politics, what, if anything, would be left over? What would be in that righthand box? 

More, would what remained in that righthand box be something compelling and amazing? Something more energizing, pressing, and relevant than our current political debates? Would anyone call what was left over in that righthand box "Good News"?

Feel free to answer, but before you do I'm not quite done. Tomorrow, as I did for my Bible class, I'm going to make the equation above even more difficult. 

Last Friday in this holding pattern until I can get back home to my copy of Maps of Meaning.

I recorded a podcast this week with my friend Luke Norsworthy about this series. Not sure when that podcast will land, so keep an eye on Newsworthy with Norsworthy wherever you subscribe to your podcasts. 

Speaking of podcasts, let me point you to two podcasts I participated in that also showed up this week.

I was on the Bonafide podcast, the final episode of the season, with my friend and former pastor Jonathan Storment. On the podcast Jonathan has been interviewing friends of his who had deconverted and left the Christian faith. In the final episode, Jonathan and I reflect back over those conversations and issues related to faith, doubt, and deconstruction.

On Jackson Taylor's REconstruction podcast I joined him to discuss prayer. Jackson's podcast is actually a videocast on YouTube, so for those who like videos you can watch that conversation. Jackson's podcast is also devoted to the issues of deconstruction and reconstruction, sharing some of Jackson's journey from faith to atheism and now back to faith.

Back to my conversation with Luke, I ended our conversation about Jordan Peterson by sharing that one of the reasons I wanted to do this series was to model a more charitable and generous way of talking on social media. As I shared with Luke, I guessed that readers of this blog had one of two reactions when I announced I was devoting Fridays to Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning. Many fans of Peterson were thrilled that I was giving attention to Peterson. On the other hand, haters of Peterson lamented the choice.

I knew the choice would bifurcate my readers, but I was interested in the challenge of blogging about such a controversial figure. And truth be told, dear readers, I was also interested in how you would handle the challenge. Interested and concerned. I feared that the comments on Fridays would fill up with bile, as the pro-Peterson and anti-Peterson forces would go at each other, week after week.

And that...hasn't happened. So, I want to say Thank You. You are a healthy group of people. I assume when you disagree with me strongly, as surely you must do on occasion, you do the sensible thing and just move on with your day. You have better things to do than fight with me. Exactly! That is precisely how I respond to reading things I don't like online. I have a job and a life and lots of stuff I love to do. My hours are precious, and I want to spend them wisely and joyfully. You seem to agree.

But I also hope that some of your response has been due to how I have been handling the challenge of Fridays. I wanted to show that a person can talk online about someone like Jordan Peterson without lighting their hair on fire. I think I've been both generous and critical of Peterson. Despite what everyone says is impossible, you can do both on social media. And readerships can be healthy and mature.

I think we've accomplished something quite rare here on Fridays.

For that, I'm grateful.

Karl Barth once approvingly cited this quote from Franz Overbeck:

"Theology can no longer be based on anything but daring."

The quote speaks not only to theology but also to faith in a post-Christian world. Faith is an act of daring in a world of normative doubt and skepticism. 

I've shared this before on the blog, how my spiritual, biblical, and theological reading habits had to change to pull me out of my long season of deconstruction. Ten years ago, books about deconstruction were filling the shelves of Christian bookstores. Doubt was all the rage, the cool thing to embrace. And for many of us, doubt remains a vital spiritual resource. Doubt is a practice of humility, and it creates spaces for generosity, curiosity, hospitality and conversation. It's nice to talk to people who don't know all the answers.

But a steady diet of doubt and deconstruction can have unhealthy consequences. Which is why we're seeing a lot of books right now about the need for reconstruction. My Hunting Magic Eels is a part of that group of titles. 

Returning to the Barth and Overbeck's quote, one of the things that was helpful to me turning from deconstruction to reconstruction was listening to more daring, bold, confident, and unapologetic Christian voices. And my own writing voice, here and in books, has made that same turn, from qualified and skeptical to bolder and more confident.

Have my doubts, therefore, evaporated? Yes and no. No in the sense that I'm still pretty epistemically humble. I recognize, like Kierkegaard, that faith will always involve a leap and that, for many, they can't or won't make that jump. If you don't believe I don't think you're unintelligent. I get where you are coming from. I see your point. 

But also yes in that, during my years of deconstruction, I felt I kept folding my hand. I would throw some chips on the table to ante up, always wanting to be a part of the game, always desiring to be a part of any conversation going on about God, faith, or the Bible. But when the betting started, I always folded my hand. And after many years of this, it came to the point were I started to ask myself, "You're sitting at the table, always anteing up, hand after hand, but are you ever going to play?" It wasn't that I was playing it safe. I just wasn't playing at all.

And so, I started to push some chips in. Eventually going all in. Because faith, I came to see, can no longer be based on anything but daring. 

I recently finished reading George M. Marsden's excellent biography of Jonathan Edwards. Highly recommended. Edwards is often described as one of America's greatest theologians, if not our greatest theologian, but since Edwards was both a Puritan and a staunch Calvinist, two things that don't hold great allure for me, I'd never given him much of my attention.

In reading about Edwards' life as a pastor in Calvinist New England, one of the things that struck me was how anxious and uncertain Calvinists were back then. And can still be even today.

This was surprising to me because, if Calvinism has an appeal, that appeal comes from being a theology of grace, assurance, and security. Since election and salvation is wholly the work of God, and because Calvinism preaches the perseverance of the saints, God's elect stand on secure, unassailable ground. The elect have assurance of salvation.

On paper, that's how Calvinism is supposed to work. As a message of God's sovereign power and grace, Calvinism provides its adherents with one of the most comforting soteriological visions on offer. You can do absolutely nothing to save or help yourself, all is the work of God, and because of God's mercy and grace we have absolute confidence that we will stand vindicated at the judgment. Nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Again, on paper that is how Calvinism is supposed to work. But pastorally speaking, practically speaking, that's not how Calvinism is experienced. At least that's not how it was experienced by the Calvinists in Jonathan Edwards' New England. Instead of being filled with comfort and assurance, the Puritans were a very anxious, worried bunch.

There were two related problems, two recurrent locations of anxiety. 

The first had to do with the doctrine of election. On paper, if you were one of God's elect you were golden. Grace and salvation were yours. But the pastoral problem was in discerning if you were one of God's elect. How could one tell? The standard answer was that the elect would show the effects of sanctifying grace in their lives. That makes sense. But the trouble with this, as everyone knows, is that sin can be a pretty stubborn thing. It's hard to maintain a consistent and improving moral witness across the lifespan. Our moral progress isn't consistently up and to the right. We all experience seasons of moral struggle and regression. And as the Calvinists of New England experienced these seasons of struggle it raised questions about their election. If they were still struggling mightily with sin wouldn't that suggest that they were not one of the elect?

You can see the conflict here, between a bulletproof theological system and the raw experiences of life. As a logical system, Calvinism has a compelling crystalline beauty. Calvin, let's recall, was a lawyer. Many rationalistic types, if you've ever chatted with a staunch Calvinist, find this analytical system captivating. Like a complex puzzle, Calvinism is a vast logical structure to be explored. So down they go, into this dogmatic, analytical rabbit hole. But the realities of life, especially our interior lives, are messy, complicated, and ambiguous. And as the Puritans peered into their souls they just could never get a clean look or a clear answer about their status as one of the elect. Theology was clear, but life was murky.

A related problem had to do with religious revivals. Not every Puritan approved of revivals, but Jonathan Edwards did. In fact, Edwards first achieved international notoriety with his book 

A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, recounting, as the title says, the religious revival that took place in Edwards' church and town in 1734. In A Faithful Narrative Edwards shares how practically the entire town of North Hampton became converted and displayed various fruits of God's grace.

Trouble was, the revival didn't last. They never do. A few years after the publication of A Faithful Narrative many in North Hampton had reverted back to their old ways. This raised snarly theological and pastoral questions. Had the revival been fake? If so, how could anyone tell if a revival was authentic or not? Every revival looked authentic when it was happening. The North Hampton revival sure looked legit when Edwards penned A Faithful Narrative. But few revivals have staying power. In hindsight, revivals looked more and more like flashes in the pan, temporary outbreaks of religious enthusiasm, making it hard to say if any of the experienced "conversions" had been real or not. 

This problem of discernment proved so distressing to Edwards that he responded by writing what many consider to be his greatest work, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, which attempts to set out pastoral criteria for how to discern true from false conversions. 

The problem with revivals was the same problem noted earlier about the difficulty of determining one's own status as elect. Revivals feature ecstatic conversation experiences and dramatic testimonials, but after the peak experience has passed the moral journey to follow is long, hard and uneven. And that rocky road caused the Calvinists of New England to question if the revival had been legitimate or not. We see similar problems with revivals in our time and place. 

I don't have a big point to make about all this, just these observations. In reading Marsden's excellent biography of Edwards, I got to live inside the heads of Calvinists and Puritans. And what I observed was strange and surprising. Advertising itself as a theology of God's sovereign election and grace, Calvinism should have produced peace and assurance. But among the New England Puritans, Calvinism produced a lot of worry and anxiety. 

Sometimes, when you use fancy words, people can miss the simplicity of your point. To be sure, technical terminology can be useful, allowing you to describe things precisely. But jargon can interfere with communication.

Since the publication of Hunting Magic Eels I've used the phrase "sacramental ontology" a great deal with audiences. I take care to define the term. And I think the term is useful. But I do worry that the words "sacramental ontology" make what I'm talking about seem more difficult than it is.

In light of those concerns, my Mom recently told me to check out Larry Fleet's song "That's Where I Find God." Mom shared that the song reminded her of my book. And listening to the song I heartedly agreed, thinking to myself, "This is a country song about a sacramental ontology. Sacramental ontology for good 'ol boys." See what you think. Here's the lyrics and the video:

The night I hit rock bottom, sittin' on an old barstool
He paid my tab and put me in a cab, when he didn't have to
But he could see I was hurtin', oh, I wish I'd got his name
'Cause I didn't feel worth savin', but he saved me just the same

The day out on the water when the fish just wouldn't bite
I put my pole down, I floated around, it was just so quiet
And I could hear my old man sayin' "Son, just be still
'Cause you can't find peace like this in a bottle or a pill"

From a bar stool to that Evinrude
Sunday mornin' in a church pew
In a deer stand or a hay field
An interstate back to Nashville
In a Chevrolet with the windows down
Me and Him just ridin' around
Sometimes, whether I'm lookin' for Him or not
That's where I find God

Sometimes late at night, I lie there and listen
To the sound of her heart beatin'
And the song the crickets are singin'
I don't know what they're sayin'
But it sounds like a hymn to me
Naw, I ain't too good at prayin'
But thanks for everything

From a bar stool, to that Evinrude
Sunday mornin' in a church pew
In a deer stand or a hay field
An interstate back to Nashville
In a Chevrolet with the windows down
Me and Him just ridin' around
Sometimes, whether I'm lookin' for Him or not
And that's where I find God

As a practitioner of the Little Way of Thérèse of Lisieux (see Stranger God for that story), I've found this "Liturgy for a Fleeting Irritation" from the wonderful resource  Every Moment Holy to be very powerful:

I bring to you Lord, my momentary irritation,
that you might reveal the buried seed of it—not
in the words or actions of another person, but
in the withered and hypocritical expectations
of my own small heart. Uproot from this
impoverished soil all arrogance and insecurity that
would prompt me to dismiss or distain others,
judging them with a less generous measure than
I reckon when judging myself.
Prune away the tangled growth
of my own unjustified irritations, Jesus,
and graft to my heart instead your humility,
your compassion,
your patience,
your kindness,
That I might bear good fruit in keeping
with your grace.
Amen.

Just a reminder from last week's post that I'm away from my copy of Maps of Meaning, so we're in a bit of a holding pattern. This week I'd like to revisit Jordan Peterson's "Message to the Christian Churches" which I wrote about two weeks ago. 

I'd like to talk some more about this particular passage in Peterson's address:

“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.”

You'll recall I had some critical things to say about the lines "a land to conquer" and "a ladder to heaven to build." I left alone the other lines, lines like "a woman to find" and "a family to nurture."

Why did I pass over those lines? Well, in online spaces trying to say anything productive about gender and sexuality is like grabbing the third rail. The "third rail" being defined by one online idiom dictionary as "an issue or topic that is so controversial that it would immediately damage or destroy one's political career or credibility." But here goes...

It's almost impossible to say anything about gender or sexuality without your words being pulled to one side or the other in the culture wars. And for a person like me, this isn't solely a worry about "cancel culture." As someone who finds themself "in-between" progressives and conservatives--though not really "in-between" but just plain different--I worry about the right as well as the left mishearing what I'm trying to say or do. But I'm going to try here to say something at the risk of grabbing the third rail and this blowing up in my face.

In think the church is having a problem talking about gender and sexuality because of the dual meanings of the word "normative," and how those dual meanings create misunderstandings and slippery usage. Specifically, on the one hand, "normative" can mean the statistical norm, as in the "average." On the other hand, normative can mean a standard of behavior, as in the ethical and moral norms guiding right conduct. 

Now, of course, these things can bleed into each other. Statistical norms tend to create moral norms. What the majority of folks do or think tends to create the expectation that this is how you ought to act or think. But as we know, there's no logical connection here. Something can be the statistical norm and not be the ethical norm. The majority can be wrong. The minority can be right. 

In a different but related way, in social psychology there's a distinction between descriptive norms and prescriptive norms. Descriptive norms are what people actually do, and prescriptive norms are what people ought to do. These can be different. For our purposes regarding the slippery meaning of the word "norm," something can be descriptively "normal" (i.e., what most people are doing) but not ethically warranted. Normal is no guarantor of rightness. Consider pornography. Descriptively, pornography usage is "normal." Most people consume pornography. But does that mean pornography usage is ethical? We can debate that. But the debate highlights the differences in what we mean by "normal" and "norm."

Okay, back to Jordan Peterson's lines "a woman to find" and "a family to nurture." Recall, Peterson's message to the Christian churches concerns the ability of the church to appeal to the hearts and minds of young men.

Now, statistically speaking, as a descriptive norm, Peterson is correct. Most surveys have around 7% of the population identifying as LGBTQ. That means 90-95% of the population is cisgender and heterosexual. That's not surprising given the facts of human reproduction and its central role as the engine of biological evolution. And what that means, while hard for progressives to hear, is that Jordan Peterson is correct. Most young men--around 90-95%--do want "a woman to find" and "a family to nurture." And to sharpen the point, any church unwilling to say this out loud to 90-95% of the population is going to struggle from a messaging perspective. As the LGBTQ community has taught us, in quite profound ways, sexuality sits at the heart of human identity and selfhood. So it stands to reason that a church that cannot clearly speak into the deepest and most profound issues affecting 90-95% of the population will quickly face demographic headwinds. Statistically speaking, Peterson's message "a woman to find" and "a family to nurture" is a winning message. It's a message that will resonate with 90-95% of the population. The numbers are wholly on Peterson's side. 

And yet!

And yet, Peterson's lines "a woman to find" and "a family to nurture" likely were not heard statistically and descriptively. Those lines were likely heard prescriptively and morally. That is, the lines "a woman to find" and "a family to nurture," given Peterson's involvement in the culture wars, especially regarding transgender persons, are shots being fired in the culture wars. Those lines were "red meat" for conservatives and traditionalists. 

Which brings me to my point, as I inch closer to the third rail...

I'll say it plainly again: the descriptive does not logically imply the prescriptive. Most people in these debates don't monitor that logical distinction, but I think the church needs to if it wants to speak truthfully, impactfully, and inclusively about sex and gender in the modern world. 

Simply put, if a church wants to be pastorally relevant to the majority of young men it needs to recognize that 90-95% of young men actually do want "a woman to find" and "a family to nurture." Descriptively and statistically speaking, this is true. And yet, most progressive churches can't find their pastoral voice for this 90-95% as a recognition of that statistical norm is very prone to be interpreted as exclusionary and "heteronormative." And yet, heterosexuality is "normative," descriptively and statistically speaking. But again, that doesn't imply moral or ethical normativity. Notice how the meaning of "heteronormative" is sloshing back and forth. 

To try to state this simply and clearly, the church needs to respond to real demographic trends if it wants to have a significant evangelistic and pastoral impact upon the world. But responding impactfully to large demographic groups doesn't necessarily imply making ethical or moral judgments of minority populations.

Of course, it totally sucks to be in the statistical minority. (And you can blame Mother Nature for this as much as the Bible. And if you're an atheist you have to lay all the blame on Mother Nature.) Minority stress is a real thing that affects mental health. Consequently, we should do everything we can to mitigate this stress. We need to say, over and over, that not every young man wants "a woman to find" or "a family to nurture." But at the same time we should also take care, in caring for the minority, to not ignore the desires and pastoral needs of the 90-95%.

That, in a nutshell, is the question I'm asking. Are we forced, even doomed, into making a choice here? 

Must we so exclusively and aggressively focus on the 90-95% that the 5-10% feel marginalized, ignored, and excluded? Must we use a statistical norm to morally stigmatize the minority? 

Or must we so center the 5-10%, in light of legitimate fears about minority stress and stigma, that we never say anything directly and compellingly to the 90-95%? Must we message ourselves into a demographic death spiral? 

Do we have to choose here? Or can we pastorally recognize the needs and desires of both the majority and the minority? Cannot both be done? 

Here's what I think. I think a church that privileges the 90-95% over the 5-10% can win the numbers game. Many evangelical churches are going with this strategy. But at the cost of diversity, love and inclusion. By the same token, I think that the progressive churches who can't talk directly and compellingly to the hearts of 90-95% of the population are messaging themselves into extinction, to say nothing about ignoring the pastoral needs of the majority of people they are called to love in the world. In my opinion, the church should speak in compelling ways, evangelically and pastorally, to the entire world, to both the 90-95% and the 5-10%. That such churches are rare may imply that what I'm asking is impossible, especially in such a polarized world. But I think rare means hard rather than impossible.  

That conservatives will be upset with this post, because I don't morally stigmatize the 5-10%, is to be expected. That progressives will be upset with this post, because my calling for recognition of the pastoral needs of the 90-95% will entrench heteronormativity, is to be expected. Maybe I've grabbed the third rail here. But I have this deep and crazy conviction that the church is called to love all of God's children, both the 90-95% and the 5-10%. 

To love all of God's children. It might be just that hard and simple. 

In our Adult Faith class at church we've been going through the book of Acts. On my week to teach I had Acts 5.12-42.

Before reading that text, I backed up and had the class read Luke 9.23-27:

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

“Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”

I asked the class this question: "What would have this sounded like--this call to 'take up you cross and follow me'--to the people standing there that day listening to Jesus?"

We've so moralized this text that I don't think we appreciate what Jesus was asking. Crosses littered the landscape. People carrying crosses on the way to crucifixion were driven through city streets. The roads leading into cities were lined with bodies hanging on crosses.

The cross was a tool of Imperial terror and control. Its shadow of fear fell over every aspect of colonial life in the outposts of the Roman Empire. Crucifixion was a bully demanding obedience and compliance.

And in the face of that threat and terror Jesus says, "take up your cross and follow me." It was a call to radical fearlessness for a people living under the shadow of Imperial torture.

And yet, the day Jesus said these words no one knew about Easter Sunday. Without the resurrection the fearless call to "take up your cross and follow me" would have sounded suicidal. But with Jesus raised from the the dead the Imperial threat had lost its grip upon the political imagination of Jesus' followers. They had been emancipated from fear. Just as Jesus had been in the face of Pilate's threats. And the outcome of this liberation was twofold. First, no threat of violence could sway or deter the followers of Jesus. They had became fearless. They now existed outside the bounds of Imperial control. Without fear they had become unmanageable. Second, they had joy. In the face of beatings, torture and imprisonment the followers of Jesus would sing.

Basically, the politics of the resurrection explains the very odd behavior of the apostles in Acts 5. Selected portions of the text:

The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon’s Colonnade. No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people. Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number...

Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail...

The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.”

Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings!..."

They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.

The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.

This is the political impact of the resurrection, a people wholly willing to take up their cross and follow Jesus, to death if necessary. Such a people cannot be intimidated. Not threat of physical violence could sway or stop them. They are free to obey God rather than man, no matter the cost. They sang in the face of torture. And out of that fearless political imagination a new world would be born. 

In the book Seeing with the Eyes of the Heart: Cultivating a Sacramental Imagination in an Age of Pornography Elizabeth T. Groppe makes a contrast between "the sacramental gaze" and "the pornographic gaze." 

Drawing from the rich tradition of Orthodox iconography, Groppe places vision at the center of Christian practice and spiritual formation. The Christian life is a journey of sight, coming to behold the beatific vision. As Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13, the journey of love is coming to see God more and more clearly until we gaze upon each other "face to face." We make this journey, in the words of Ephesians, by learning to see "with the eyes of the heart."

This vision is "sacramental" as we come to behold invisible, spiritual truths shining though material reality. Proper Christian vision participates in a "sacramental ontology," where we see a world "charged with the grandeur of God."

This emphasis upon a proper seeing of the material world is most obvious in the Orthodox tradition of iconography, where material objects (icons) are considered to be "windows" into deeper spiritual realities. Similarly, the "sacramental gaze" considers every material object to be a window into the divine. This includes human bodies, even naked human bodies. 

To "make a covenant with my eyes," in this view, is practicing a sacramental gaze when it comes to human bodies. Opposed to this sacramental gaze is the pornographic gaze. The pornographic gaze is greedy, consumptive, and objectifying. The pornographic gaze is iconoclastic perception, a form of perceptual violence, as it rips the sacred from the material. In the thought of Martin Buber, the pornographic gaze creates an objectifying and deadening I-It relation with the world.  By contrast, the sacramental gaze beholds an I-Thou relation, a meeting with a holy other. The sacramental gaze creates a sacred encounter. To see with the eyes of the heart incarnates a relation of love. 

In short, the call to resist pornography isn't to practice a grim puritanism. Nor is it a shame-filled rejection of the gift of human sexuality and eroticism. The imperative to "make a covenant with my eyes" is, rather, learning to envision the world correctly, rejecting an I-It relation for an I-Thou relation, as we gaze at each other. In rejecting the pornographic gaze in favor of the sacramental gaze, we come to see the world with the eyes of our heart.

Among conservative Christians, at least among those who love church history, Augustine stands as a giant. But among more progressive Christians, Augustine's image is more troubled. Augustine is "problematic," as they say.

Much of "the problem" with Augustine has to do with Augustine's relationship with sex. As readers of The Confessions know, the central struggle in Augustine's conversion was more about sex than belief. Could he give up sex? That was his huge struggle. And very late in life, in his debate with Julian, Augustine argues that sexual desire is inherently disordered.

Obviously, Augustine's views don't sit well with modern, progressive views about sex. Augustine seems to represent, and is perhaps the origin and source, of all that is repressed, guilt-ridden, and puritanical in Christian views about sex.

And yet, many have noticed that there is a very Augustinian vibe that runs through much of modern life regarding sex. Specifically, men are expected to display the Augustinian virtue of continence, the ability to show self-restraint in controlling sexual impulses.

Consider two examples. 

First, it is widely considered to be a propagation of "rape myths," beliefs that shift blame for sexual assault from perpetrators onto victims, to describe men as being unable control their sexual impulses. Even when sexually aroused, the expectation in our liberated sexual world is that men should display Augustinian control. Respecting consent in the grip of passion, prior to and even in the midst of intercourse itself, demands the virtue of continence. 

A second example concerns the interest of this series. Consider the cultural debates about modesty. Must women dress modestly to prevent men from having lustful thoughts? Historically, in conservative Christian circles, the burden was placed upon women. Women had to dress modestly in order to protect men from sexual temptation. But over the last generation, this discourse has changed, especially in progressive Christian spaces. The burden has shifted onto men. Women should be allowed to dress however they want, and it is up to men to control their own thoughts. Again, the demand here from progressives is Augustinian, a demand for sexual self-control and self-restraint. No matter how women dress, men must make "a covenant with their eyes" in managing their sexual desires when looking at women in public spaces.

My point in these illustrations isn't to take sides in any of these debates, but to simply note a surprising, and even ironic, convergence of our liberated sexual ethic upon the Augustinian virtue of continence. Augustine is regularly made a whipping boy among progressives, a vision of all that is wrong with how Christians view sex. And yet, some Augustinian virtues sit at the very heart of many progressive expectations surrounding sex, from consent to modesty.

But that, however, raises a hug, huge question for the modern world. If the modern sexual ethic demands Augustinian restraint, just where is this virtue being formed in our culture? Because you can't expect virtue without formation. That is a truism. And if this virtue isn't being formed, then whence comes this demand and expectation?

In my daily Bible reading I was in the book of Job and was interrupted by a line from Job 31.1. In defending his righteousness before God Job says this:

“I made a covenant with my eyes
not to look lustfully at a young woman."

"I made a covenant with my eyes." What a profound statement in an age of pornography. 

When I was growing up, I didn't really have to make a covenant with my eyes. Pornography was primarily a print medium, magazines like Playboy and Penthouse. A young teenager couldn't buy those magazines. So there was a barrier of social embarrassment and shame in trying to purchase these magazines. And for a teenager like me, someone trying to be a good Christian, that barrier was enough to keep me clear from a consistent exposure to pornography. To be clear, however, I was exposed. Friends at school had access to the magazines because of fathers, older brothers, or because they lacked the embarrassment I felt in attempting to buy a magazine. So pictures were shared among friends. And I kept some of those pictures when offered to me. I recall the very embarrassing day when my father found some of these pictures hidden in my room.

Still, in an age of print my exposure to pornography was sporadic, limited and furtive. And then came the iPhone...

There's not a single Christian parent that I know who isn't absolutely terrified to give their young sons an iPhone. And the statistics say you should be just as worried about your daughters. Some estimates have the porn business making 15 billion dollars a year. But that number doesn't remotely capture the free access to pornography through sites like PornHub. Some estimates say that 20% of mobile (phone) searches on the Internet are porn-related. Imagine that, one out of every five Google searches is for pornography. And the rates of men who watch porn at least once a week is around 90%. 

All that to say, we're living in a very different world from the one I grew up in. The message "make a covenant with your eyes" couldn't be more timely and important.

What interested me in the line from Job was the frame of vision. As regular readers know, and as I talk about in Hunting Magic Eels, the issue of perception is something I've been thinking about a great deal when it comes to faith. So I was struck by the perceptional issues in what it might mean to "make a covenant with your eyes." How is our perception being affected living in an age of pornography? And how might we resist these effects?

Guess what? 

I'm on vacation with my family and forgot to bring along my copy of Maps of Meaning. So this Friday and the next two I'm unable to push us further into the book. 

Given that situation, I thought this week we could pause and take stock. Many new readers have joined this blog or the Substack newsletter since the start of this series, and so might have missed some important moments. Plus, thirty-three installments into this series even the most devoted of readers might have missed a post or two, or would like a reminder about the territory we've covered. With that in mind, a little recap and review.

To start, why am I doing this series about such a controversial and polarizing figure? A person, in fact, who gets more controversial and polarizing by the day!

As I shared at the start of this series, my interest in Jordan Peterson is narrow and twofold. First, along with many others, I was stunned at how successful Peterson's lectures about the Bible were received, especially by young men, many of whom had been attracted to skepticism and atheism. Peterson was able to get a post-Christian world to sit up and take the Bible seriously. That success should interest a church wanting to be involved with evangelism. 

My second interest in Jordan Peterson is his appeal to young men, many of whom seem lost. This is a demographic the church struggles with, so getting some insight into Peterson's attractiveness among young men could help the church with some crucial demographic discernment. 

Those are my two, narrow interests in Jordan Peterson. Trouble is, there's a lot more going on with Peterson that turns people off and causes people to question my giving him any attention at all. Can you bracket out those controversies to look narrowly at specific parts of Peterson's work? I have tried to do so in this series. You can judge how successfully. 

Looking back, then, over thirty-two weeks of posts, what have we observed? Let me try to summarize by sharing the positives and the negatives I've taken from Peterson's book Maps of Meaning, his magnum opus. 

Overall, there are four things I've really appreciated about Jordan Peterson's work.

First, his moral and existential urgency. As I shared early in this series, Peterson is playing a high stakes game. He's trying to save your soul. That passion and pathos makes him a compelling, even electrifying, figure to many. And I think the church can learn from this. By and large, the church has turned away from hellfire and brimstone preaching. We don't dangle audiences over the pit of hell anymore. Which is a shame, because you know who does this all the time? Jordan Peterson. Here's a public intellectual who talks about hell, damnation, evil, and Satan all the time. These aren't normal topics among academics, public intellectuals, or pundits. And yet, millions of people have listened to Peterson's lectures on the Bible. And I think a huge part of the appeal is the hellfire and damnation aspect. 

So, how does Peterson get away with this in a way Biblical fundamentalists cannot? This is the second thing to appreciate about Peterson, his Jungian approach to Scripture. Peterson isn't talking about a literal hell, he's talking about psychological and relational hell. Existential hell. Hell on earth. As we've learned in this series, Peterson reads the Bible mythologically, using it to convey timeless truths and wisdom about the human experience and predicament. And given Peterson's evolutionary twist, we ignore these myths are our peril. Blow off a myth and you're walking off an adaptive cliff. Myths have been forged in the fires of human adaptation and they contain the distilled wisdom of the ages. Myths are a lifeboat. Myths are a compass. And the Great Myth of the West is the Holy Bible. So if you blow off the Bible you're pretty much headed for hell. Not a literal hell, but a hell of your own making. 

Which brings us to a third positive about Jordan Peterson. According to Peterson, values are encoded in our actions. Behaviors are beliefs. Everyone in the West is functionally Christian because everyone in the West is operating, implicitly and behaviorally, according to the Judeo-Christian myth. The Bible is our cultural operating system. 

Basically, Peterson has been able to sidestep tired theological and apologetical debates with non-believers by observing the values implicitly at work in our behavior and psychology. No one lives like a nihilist. People act "as if" the Bible is true.

A final positive thing we've observed about Jordan Peterson is how his "order the chaos" and "slay the dragon" message appeals to young men. People need to feel like their lives have a heroic aspect, and Peterson's work with the Jungian hero archetype has found a resonance with many, not just with young men, but perhaps young men especially. Many of us need dragons to slay, and the church should think about how that impulse can be redemptively evoked and directed, rather than shamed or squashed.

If these have been some of the positive things we've found in Maps of Meaning, what have been the negatives? I've raised two concerns repeatedly in this series.

First, Peterson tends to gender Chaos as feminine. Thus, the imperatives to "order the chaos" or "slay the dragon" can traffic in implicit misogyny. This is especially worrisome given Peterson's fans among the alt-right. In this series I also made a contrast between Jordan Peterson and how Carl Jung thought about the Anima and Animus archetypes. Specifically, where Peterson casts the relation between the Hero (masculine) and Chaos (feminine) agonistically, Jung sees the Anima (feminine) and Animus (masculine) as operating synergistically. 

To be clear, I'm not trying to damn Peterson's project here. Nor am I saying his "slay the dragon" and "order the chaos" sermons are not true. I just said above how I appreciate those messages. But I am noting a place where Peterson's message can be corrupted and co-opted by misogyny, patriarchy and toxic masculinity. This temptation and corruption needs to be monitored in discerning how Peterson's work is being received and put to use.

The second criticism I've had about Peterson is how he handles Jesus. Simply, Peterson casts Jesus as an existential hero who faces and carries, with courage and love, the unbearable suffering and pain of existence to create something redemptive and beautiful. As I've repeatedly said, this is true as far as it goes. I have no problem seeing Christ as an existential hero. My repeated objection, however, is reducing Christ to an existential hero. At the end of the day, Christ is a model of coping for Jordan Peterson. And while Christians believe we are called to follow and imitate Jesus, we believe that Jesus is much more than a heroic exemplar. Of course, if that's all the Jesus you can muster or believe in, that's cool. But Christians believe that Jesus is much more. For example, as I've pointed out in this series, the cross of Christ is the epistemological crisis of the world. No human theory stands in judgment of the cross. The cross, rather, calls into question all human theories, including the theories of Carl Jung and Jordan Peterson. 

This, then, is a summary of what I consider to be the strengths and weaknesses of Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning given my particular concerns. 

As for what we'll do for the next two Fridays while I'm away from my copy of the book, we'll just have to see. I'll give it a think. Have a blessed weekend.

When I wrote this series (three months ago) it ended yesterday. Originally, I simply described the spiritual formation problem I call the "chicken and the egg" and shared four examples of the problem I've encountered in working with churches. 

But now that the series has appeared I have wondered about if I should say something about how a church might tackle these sorts of problems. What do you think? End with something helpful? I agree! So, a final solution-focused post.

To start, let's be clear that there is no solution. Quality spiritual formation in churches is like searching for the Holy Grail. This is the number one problem faced by churches and we're all chasing after answers. So many books, seminary classes, and church meetings have been devoted to the issue of spiritual formation it boggles the imagination. How can we reliably and effectively form our members into mature followers of Jesus? Goodness, if I had the answer to that question I'd be a whole lot more famous and well-known than I am now. But there is no silver bullet here. We just have to keep working the problem of spiritual formation in our faith communities doggedly, faithfully, hopefully, joyfully and contextually. 

That said, how can we approach chicken and egg problems, where lacking certain virtues cause us to avoid or resist virtue-formation practices? Here are five recommendations.

First, narrate what is happening in the church. Pastors do not possess the power of spiritual formation, but they do possess the power of narration. Pastors cannot talk people into becoming wise, faithful and loving followers of Jesus. But pastors can stand at the microphone and explain what the hell is going on. And yet, to my constant astonishment, pastors routinely fail to exercise this, the only real power they have. Pastors tend to speak generically, abstractly, and Biblically about topics and issues. They rarely speak concretely and specifically about what is going on in the pews, relationally, attitudinally, and emotionally.

In psychotherapy there is a technique called "immediacy." In a counseling session a therapist uses immediacy to "focus attention on the here and now relationship of counsellor and client with helpful timing, in order to challenge defensiveness and/or heighten awareness." Let's say in the therapy session you notice the client getting defensive. Using immediacy the therapist might say, "I noticed your voice raising a bit when you said that." You draw attention to the somatic symptoms of anger or anxiety as they are happening in real time. 

This is what I'm suggesting pastors do at the microphone. Use immediacy to help narrate what is happening when you face chicken and egg problems. Consider my examples about conversations regarding race, welcoming difference, or sharing the stage with the less gifted. As people get angry, anxious or bored in these experiences draw attention to those feelings (immediacy) and help narrate the church through those experiences. Pastors, you have a single superpower--narration--use it.

Second, use the community to help each other take the next steps. Spiritual formation is often thrust upon individuals. Taking collective steps, together, can help with this. Consider Sabbath. Asking the members of the church to individually take up Sabbath practices will be uneven. Having the entire church take on Sabbath challenges helps with this. We're all in this together. And pastors, make sure you devote time to tell the story of the challenge. Remember: You have no power over formation, but all the power of narration. So tell the stories as the church moves through a formational practice. Tell the stories of consolation and desolation. Get a panel of members on the stage and let the church talk to each other. 

Third, borrowing from Mark Scandrette, think about spiritual formation experiments rather than big ministry initiatives. Targeted, short term, experiential challenges, for the entire church or a small group within the church. Do you want people to get off their iPhones more? Have everyone leave them at home once a month before coming to church. Get creative and have fun. Chip away at those chicken and egg problems. And pastors, don't forget to narrate!

Fourth, come at things sideways. Making a church sit down to "have a conversation about race" might be too much given how polarized our world is right now. But what about taking a Civil Rights history tour or pilgrimage? Or gathering to watch a documentary or movie? People's opinions change because of experiences. No one enjoys moralized finger-wagging. Trying to get people to self-identify as "fragile," for example, is both stupid and ineffective. Instead, try to curate experiences that will affect how people see the world.

Lastly, use micro-habits to bootstrap your way forward. When we face chicken and egg problems we need to do some bootstrapping, pulling a little here and then a little there. Small movements, back and forth. Psychologists call these small movements micro-habits. The best-selling book Atomic Habits is a popular introduction to the idea. You want to develop a running habit, so you start by putting your running shoes out before you go to bed. You want to spend less time on your phone so you don't charge it overnight in your bedroom. Little actions help you bootstrap your way into bigger and bigger changes. Think about moving your church forward with micro-habits. What small things can you do that will accumulate over time? Don't crash into your church, nudge it forward. 

The last thing I'd say, as the author of Hunting Magic Eels, is pray. Don't make spiritual formation a godless, disenchanted bit of behavioral technology. Pray. Pray that the power that raised Jesus from the dead will be at work in your life and the life of your church. And if you struggle with prayer, put a sticky note on your bathroom mirror to remind yourself. It's a helpful little micro-habit...

This is a point I've made before, but it's another illustration of the chicken and egg problems facing churches.

We hear a lot about how stressed, busy, rushed, maxed out, and burnt out we all are. And how all this is destroying our physical, emotional, familial and relational health. Into that stress and strain we hear the call to practice Sabbath. We need to find space and margin for rest and relationship. 

The message of Sabbath falls like rain on dry ground. Rest! That sounds so, so amazing. Everyone wants it. And yet, no one does it.

That's a really strange situation, if you ponder it. Why is something so desired a thing we never do? Medicine is at hand, yet we keep refusing to take it. Why?

As I've argued, in a world where we measure our value and worth by metrics of productivity, a certain degree of shame-resiliency is needed for Sabbath. To step into Sabbath rhythms requires stepping away from a striving for greater and greater success. But to accomplish this, you have to face your own self-esteem project, along with the social shame of letting your peer cohort advance beyond you as you stay where you are, and even back up. That's the problem. Sabbath is a zero-sum game. If you're resting, you're not working. And if you're not working, you're not advancing or succeeding. 

In short, Sabbath, as a call for spiritual formation, demands some prior virtues, like shame-resiliency. If you lack those virtues you don't make the sacrifices Sabbath demands. Rest comes with a price-tag, and most of us lack the virtues to pay that price. Chicken and egg. We can't engage in virtue-formation practices, such as Sabbath, because we lack the virtues to engage those practices.