Listening to Jordan Peterson’s greatly anticipated conversation with Elon Musk this week was like witnessing a younger, less mature man embody an older frame while playing verbal tennis with an elder man supernaturally endowed with younger flesh.
But what would Paul of Tarsus say to them both?
The Peterson-Musk box-office conversation, flitting around various chilling realities of our imploding world, would have been greatly improved had Peterson been more composed, more reclined and more sensitive to allow Musk to answer his questions. When hosting someone in conversation, (as he did with Nigel Farage a couple of weeks ago), Peterson needs to speak much less than the interviewee and give more extended space for their thoughts to air rather than constantly interjecting his own in response.
Because of this, while fascinating in parts, it was a near two-hour discussion that was punctuated with awkwardness that at times bordered on the embarrassing.
However, my purpose in this video today is not so much to dissect and analyse the content of Peterson and Musk’s conversation but rather to highlight the danger of so-called ‘cultural christianity’ as the shadow of eternity (not so much war) increasingly looms large over us.
Beyond gross sexual immorality and perversion, the Corinthian trouble was in their discussing philosophy, their theorising and speculating, guessing, conjecture and the brazen and subtle skewing of truth — the very same problem displayed again this week in the influence of Jordan Peterson.
This is increasingly the problem in a world in which a form of biblical knowledge, (claiming to result in saving wisdom as a pseudo relationship with God), and notional, conceptual gestures to the Name of Jesus Christ, is becoming increasingly vogue. This is especially true concerning men, like Peterson, who think they understand the Bible when in fact they prove that they do not.
Matters of First Importance
Fourteen chapters before our text, (1 Corinthians 15:1-5), the radically floored Paul of Tarsus addressed the Corinthian chaos of divisions, celebrity hysteria, matters of food, demons and conscience, schisms and a form of godliness that denied the power of God. Now at the end of his letter, Paul wrote to the church about the adultery of concentrating on lesser things to the expense of the matters of “first importance”, (15:3). As with the Galatians, some of the bewitched Corinthians had forgotten the gospel and the resurrection; they had not resolved to ‘know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified’, (1 Corinthians 2:2).
However, it is the gospel of Jesus Christ alone which is the power of God unto salvation, the only message that has power to genuinely bring a person to conversion in Christ and, by faith and grace alone, to provide the only escape from the sheer terror of our personal precipices above hell.
Listening to Jordan Peterson speculating and even disciple others about ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ as part of an admixture of geopolitics and psychology is counter to the only way of salvation, Jesus Christ. He is not merely an ethical/moral exemplar of ideas and idealistic philosophies. HE IS THE PERSONIFICATION OF THE ONLY GOSPEL OF SALVATION, OF STRENGTH-IN WEAKNESS, LIFE-IN-DEATH.
Indeed, all else is anti-Christ.
This human tendency to stray and become bewitched by digital media and space exploration and vast wealth is precisely why Paul wrote to the church in Corinth — to remind them of the gospel that he had preached to them, (15:1), and that some of them had forgotten. They had received it once (15:1) but needed reminding.
So too do you and so too do I.
Arminians would take 15:2 as a proof text that salvation is an eternal gift that you can lose but Paul is not saying that. He is holding a spotlight on the question as to whether or not the claim of “Jesus is Lord!” was genuine in the first place, and it wasn’t if it isn’t.
THIS IS THE QUESTION FOR PETERSON AND PETERSONIANS — is the claim of understanding the gospel and the matters of first importance truly genuine?
I honestly don’t think so.
Peterson weeps when mentally unwell people run up to the stage where he is speaking from, but he also weeps in the presence of wealth and grandeur and gifted men. That doesn’t prove anything. Peterson writes of parenting in a way that betrays the teaching of Paul and of Christ about holy matrimony and covenant and produces a following of out-spoken men whose regurgitation of his ignorant claims are the only echoey substance to their own immature lives.
But all true religion is marital which means if you get marriage wrong — if you get husbands and wives and children wrong — you get the gospel wrong. It is not true religion. It is demonic; it is anti-Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:1-5 says to these ‘pop gurus’ and their followers, (AND TO ALL WHO WOULD CLAIM HIS LORDSHIP), that you don’t understand anything if you do not understand the matters of first importance — THAT CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCRIPTURES, THAT HE WAS BURIED, THAT HE WAS RAISED ON THE THIRD DAY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCRIPTURES, AND THAT HE APPEARED TO CEPHAS, THEN TO THE TWELVE vv 3-5). … and MORE THAN THAT, if you don’t demonstrate that these matters of first importance are just that to you personally: OF FIRST IMPORTANCE.
Peterson speaks of Jesus’ sermon on the mount and the stories of the Bible, we who wrestle with God, but minimises the significance of the cross and the resurrection by providing these matters of first importance with merely cursory reference.
But it was required of Paul that he must forsake all of his colossal learning and oratory skill and intellectualism, (that would dwarf the “greats” of today), in order to be faithful to “Christ and Him crucified”.
Does Christ dominate Jordan? Does Christ rule him? Does Christ control Russell Brand? SHOULDN’T IT BE OBVIOUS? CAN IT BE CONTAINED OR PACKAGED FOR THE CELEBRITY?
You must not teach about Christianity until you know what Christianity is.
Imagine Paul having two-hour conversations with the celebrity greats in Greece or Egypt or Syria or Rome and not having this singularity of focus of the matters of first importance. Imagine him straying into philosophy, into theorising, into conjecture and intellectual exchanges…to Babel…imagine the hell of that!
NO! Even to the extent that others thought he was proclaiming a new god named Anastasia, (resurrection) Paul resolved to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Anything other than this most important matter of ‘first importance’ is harlotry, whoredom and false so-called cultural christianity…and it is extremely similar to much of the Church’s current witness — culturally sensitive and even culturally informed.
Could you mistake Jordan or Russell’s proclamations as being of a new god called Resurrection?
Men, please, by all means, listen to those about politics or psychology or technology who understand and know what they are speaking about, BUT please only listen about matters of eternity to those who manifestly prove that they understand them. And, for those of you who are truly in Christ, don’t be so sensitive so as to avoid fights and social media bar-brawls and robust exchanges; don’t be so squeamish so as to avoid the losing of face with fools who claim that they know Christ and His word but who, by their words, prove that they do not.
Have you received Jesus Christ? Do you stand in Him?
Has Jesus Christ become your Lord? Does He rule you? Is every element of your life on the table of sacrifice? Does the love of Christ compel you to share the gospel and to accept no imitations? Do you know peace with God? Have you received the work of the cross as your personal cleansing, forgiveness and justification?
Do you know that you belong to Him? Would you stake your life on it?
Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences.
(2 Corinthians 5:11).
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