LET’S THINK…

My friend, Jordan Peterson, wrote this a year ago. It is a challenge in part to what I spoke in my last broadcast and that is why I am sharing it. I like Jordan’s thinking but wonder if his views on the modern nation-state are not as well-formed as it needs to be. He rejects the conceptual framework of “left vs. right” and says it is “collectivism (or groups) pitted against you standing in “individualism.”

Without a doubt, Peterson puts his finger on the essential difference between Judeo-Christian or Western Civilization and let us say Islam and Marxism. It all comes down to the sovereign individual’s God-given rights, rights that are protected from the state or by the tyranny of groups in the state. Peterson equates the left properly with lynch linguists who use sex, race, and gender to string you up and silence you. Where he is mistaken is he equates the side opposite “leftist extremists” as people on the right whom he views as flag-waving nationalists. This is where Peterson, in my perspective, falls under the liberal influence of Canada and academia and misses something, namely, God’s view of nations.

A Biblical worldview sees nations as part of God’s design, remember the promise to Abraham? “I have made you a father of many nations.” Or Jesus commission “Go make disciples of nations?” Loving a nation may be the highest form of thanks possible for the freedom and blessing God has provided through His providential hand over the affairs of people seeking a place where they could worship God freely. And THAT is the American story from the perspective of settlers fleeing England and European religious intolerance.

Nations are quickly demonstrating ominous disregard toward religious liberty and Christianity in particular. Where you say? Europe, America, India, China and nearly all Muslim nations. Sheep nations are mentioned once in the Bible. Jesus said they are defined by how the nation treated his “brethren.” His disciples. As His disciples live to serve Him this can only mean that some states will be worse than others in this regard – hence sheep and goat nations. The issue of religious liberty is increasingly the defining issue between a sheep and a goat.

This religious issue is the ultimate goal of the contest as far as the devil is concerned. Few see it, but for Christians, it ought to be obvious. This is the last domino in a sequence of falling pillars of Western Civilization.

HERE IS PETERSON…
We generally conceptualize the political system as left vs. right. That conceptual scheme has its utility, but I don’t think it’s sufficient at the moment. What I see happening is also well characterized as collectivism vs. individualism. That’s the struggle. And, within the domain of the collectivists, there are people on the left and people on the right. There are the radical leftists, who are playing identity politics (typically, now, associated with race, or sexual proclivity, or sex, or “gender”), and there are the radical right-wingers, who are playing identity politics of a different sort (generally nationalist). But they’re both in the collectivist sphere. That’s the threat, as far as I’m concerned.

You can’t defeat the collectivists on the left, by becoming a collectivist on the right, and the same is true, in reverse. If you’re in the collectivist game, regardless of the locale on the right-left dimension, then you’re part of the problem, essentially. If the game is rotten, then you don’t want to win the game: you want to play a better game. It’s best to resist the collectivist threat by strengthening yourself as an individual. It’s best to understand that the idea that sovereignty inheres in the individual is the most fundamental idea of functional cultures.

If you accept that idea, and you build your personality on it, and you build your family on it—that is, you treat all your family members like they’re responsible sovereign individuals—then your family thrives. If you build a society that’s predicated on the idea that the people who make up the society are responsible sovereign individuals, then the society works. It becomes productive and peaceful, at least compared to societies that are set up according to other principles. Although inequality will still exist (and it’s essentially ineradicable, although very dangerous if it becomes extreme), the absolute and the typical level of wealth grows, and the horrors of absolute privation recede.

LANCE – So Peterson says you can’t defeat a collectivist group on the left by being a collectivist group on the right, but I think he is mistaken. If a group intends to storm the cockpit of the plane, you do a better job of hindering them if you work together with other sovereign passengers. That’s why elections are so important and why I regret that ministers have been so incompetent in talking about these things. Elections don’t stop the madness but they keep it from metastasizing.

I’m writing this because the devil is better organized and better funded than we are and he is intent on taking this nation out and resetting the clock to do what he intended to do with Hillary in 2016. Is Donald Trump a 4-year stay of execution or an act of divine intervention to recover ground? Is the spiritual awakening we seek not connected to a great reformation of our institutions – the seven mountains? The intelligence community is trying to take out Trump as we speak. Academia and college are pumping out the 70 million voting millennials that were educated by Marxists. What do we do there?

Sorry that this is a longer blog. I’m simply looking for a deeper discussion and making sure we’ve thought things out before we go to the swing states and tour. One part of me won’t let go of this vision – I see us as a great army not yet unified. I see the body of Christ rising up and standing in unity, and this unity will unleash glory and power the likes of which we have not seen up till this moment of history.