Dr. Jordan Peterson’s fifteen minutes of fame are pretty much up, I suspect, but since he got almost three years of limelight and a
book that has sold in the neighborhood of three million copies out of his
notoriety, he’s probably not complaining.
For the three readers who have never heard of him, the professor
drew international attention in late 2016 for his critique of political
correctness, something almost unheard of on Canadian university campuses. He
has not looked back since.
Credit Where Credit is Due
Regardless of whether the man is ultimately able to live up to his own hype, and regardless of whether he is ever able to nail down obscure concepts like
“belief”, “resurrection” and “Jesus”, Peterson ought to get lasting credit for this gem:
“I don’t recognize another person’s right to decide what words I’m going to use. I’m not willing to mouth words that I think have been created for ideological purposes.”
I certainly won’t forget it. Using someone else’s loaded
terminology is a bad idea. Peterson grasped that, and he distilled it nicely
for us.
Don’t Use Their Words
Joshua had something similar in view, I believe, when
he charged the nation of Israel and its leaders not to turn aside from the Law
of Moses to the right or to the left, and specifically with respect to what the
Law said about foreign deities:
“[Y]ou may not ... make mention of the names of their gods or swear by them or serve them or bow down to them.”
It was not simply that it was wrong to invoke the names of
foreign gods when you took a formal public oath, or wrong to make offerings to
them, or wrong to set the standards of an Israelite household by their putative
precepts. That would have been plenty, and we can see perfectly logical reasons
to forbid such things. But in addition, Joshua tells God’s people not even to make mention of the names of the gods worshiped
by the nations; not to validate them by allowing them to become part of one’s
common daily speech; not to give them the slightest credibility.
He said, in effect, “Don’t use their words.” Joshua was on
to something there.
No ‘There’ There
You see, Ba’al and Asherah were not like the God of the
Hebrews who had made their new homes in Canaan. They were not real deities.
They were traditional fictions credited with various imaginary powers over
humanity. Their blessing was sought, and offerings were made to placate or
otherwise incent them, but there was no ‘there’ there; nothing of substance to
which one might appeal in time of crisis. They served as a mask for supernatural
evil. As the apostle Paul put it:
“[W]hat pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God.”
In short, the gods of the nations were the functional and cultural
equivalent of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, assuming those fictional constructs
ate children instead of bringing them cash and presents. Therefore to place such
caricatures of deity — or even to appear to place them — on the same
level as the God of Israel was not only misleading and confusing, it was profoundly
disrespectful to YHWH, to whom they bore no resemblance at all.
Loaded Terminology
Our society is constantly being bombarded with loaded terminology. Propaganda is the lingua franca. Words that have been coined or repurposed to dictate the boundaries of public discourse are everywhere, and Christians are wise to learn to recognize and avoid them.
Why? Because when we use the language of ideologues, we are
allowing them to tell us how to think, what we should believe and what we
should pass on to our children. Moreover, we are replacing valid biblical
terminology and concepts with the language of liars. Not to put too fine a point
on it, we are taking the knee to false gods.
For example, the “borderless planet” is a false god. Scripture teaches that
God confused the languages of men at Babel, then he
made the nations and fixed the borders of the peoples. “Peoples” means
kindred or tribe, men and women related by blood, not just shared ideas. God did these things for good reasons, and all efforts to undo them are in direct opposition to God. Globalism can no more bring peace to the world than
450 prophets of Baal could make it rain.
More False Gods
Unless we are talking legal theory, the notion that “all men are created equal” is also a false god. You find equality nowhere in scripture, except in the case of the Lord Jesus, who
“did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.” If Jesus did not prize it and seek it, and instead took the form of a servant, we ought to do likewise. In the Christian world, “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves.” Merely declaring the weak conceptually equal will not get the job done.
Mandating equality by law is bound to be precisely as effective as law has
proved itself in all other areas, which is to say horribly insufficient.
Personal gender expression is another false god. “Male and female [God] created them,” not a buffet of individual preferences. Attempts to resist what God has created
are the source of tremendous unhappiness, and Christians do not do
any favors for men and women struggling with the idea of submitting their wills
to God when we follow the world’s lead by distinguishing gender expression from
biological sex. Rather, we allow ideology to reign over reality.
And Even More ...
The “right to choose” is a false god. There are certain
things nobody has the right to choose, and murdering a child is one of them. Human self-determination was never intended to be enthroned. It is merely a means
to an end.
Gaia is a false god. Man was given the responsibility to care for the earth by God himself, but the moment environmentalists start
talking about promoting abortion in the Third World (thanks, Bernie Sanders), fast-food
cannibalism, and preserving the ecosphere at the cost of
the lives of its human inhabitants, we know the tail is wagging the dog. This
world was made for man, not man for the world. To lose sight of that is a form of idolatry.
Saying It Clearly
Jordan Peterson was right in 2016, even if he may have
clarified (and somewhat softened) his position since: We do ourselves, our
families and our neighbors no favors by using words that have been coined and
repurposed for ideological purposes. When we uncritically adopt the language of
unbelievers, we deceive ourselves and others, do unintentional homage to
pseudo-deities, and are allowing our speech, thinking and conduct to be
determined by someone other than Christ. We are granting to fictions powers
they do not deserve.
That’s disloyalty at best, idolatry at worst. When Joshua
told the people of Israel not even to make mention of the names of false gods,
he was not being fussy, petty or parochial. He rightly understood that the
language we permit ourselves to use determines how we think and what we will
tolerate, and it sets the default assumptions of future generations.
Highly appropriate and good analysis. Unfortunately that's precisely where the problem comes in. It seems few are gifted to understand, or are willing to make the effort to understand, somewhat more complex and demanding ideas. Hence, the loudest, often most obnoxious, and only marginally honest, will carry the day in the public sphere. This then gets us where we are currently especially if it is combined with what people perceive to be the most convenient and least demanding route to take in their lives. Frustrating, isn't it? Frustrating because only you seem to know how to logically and properly load a dishwasher for best utilization and most people seem to either not care or simply can't do it. So we'll have to wait until people finally get disgusted with being served on dirty dishes. But we won't know when that will happen.
ReplyDeleteFrustrating, isn't it?
DeleteWas it Aristotle who said, "There are people whom one cannot instruct"? I think he was probably right.