Author(s): A. Believer (Contribution by)

Spirituality/New Age

The New York Times calls Jordan B. Peterson "The most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now." In a debate with Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson states: "Most new ideas are stupid and dangerous but… a subset of them are so vital that if we don't incorporate them, we're all going to die. That's the bloody existential condition." (https://youtu.be/GEf6X-FueMo?t-3164) Despite being so influential, no one has yet recognized that Jordan Peterson's conception of Christ constitutes just such a new and vital idea. What is at stake is the "idea of the divine individual". This idea "took thousands of years to fully develop, and is still constantly threatened by direct attack and insidious counter-movement." This idea now teeters on the brink of extinction as the effects of the "Death of God" have continued to play out over the last couple of centuries. Peterson spells out just the consequences of allowing this idea to die in this way: "Every culture maintains certain key beliefs, which are centrally important to that culture, upon which all secondary beliefs are predicated. These key beliefs cannot be easily given up, because if they are, everything falls, and the unknown once again rules. Western morality, western behavior, is for example predicated on the assumption that every individual is sacred. This belief was already extant in its nascent form, among the ancient Egyptians, and provides the very cornerstone of Judeo-Christian civilization… In the absence of this central assumption, the body of western law - formalized myth, codified morality - erodes and falls. There are no individual rights, no individual value - and the foundation of the western social (and psychological) structure dissolves." This book is a journey of creative exploration through the constellation of ideas that constitute Jordan Peterson's conception of Christ.