Summary: We Who Wrestle With God, by Jordan Peterson
A chapter by chapter review of the ideas in Dr. Peterson’s latest book.
Introduction
I decided to summarize Dr. Jordan Peterson’s We Who Wrestle With God more than review as a means to help people know what they are getting into with this book. It also helps me concretize my ideas and understanding, which is the main reason I write in the first place. Reviewing it would first assume I understand it.
Wrestling with God is akin to understanding God. Like in The Matrix, Neo is tested by Seraph through fighting. Seraph does not believe you can truly know someone unless you fight them. That’s what it means to wrestle with God: to see what He is made of and figure it out by pulling and tugging on Him. This pulling and tugging is a humble journey into the stories of the Bible.
Each chapter of Dr. Peterson’s book discusses the spirit of God revealed in the story covered. You could replace the word “spirit” with “essence” if you wanted to be less supernatural. I provide a line on what that essence is and talk a little bit about how it is portrayed for each story.
The most interesting idea I formed is that most people believe in the God of the Bible, regardless of their proclamations about what they think or believe.
If you believe that humans see potential and are driven to develop that potential into orderly good, that delaying gratification is helpful, that your conscience warns you of upcoming trouble you should attend to, that freedom comes with responsibility, and that pridefulness leads to many troubled roads, then you believe in the spirit of God portrayed in the Bible.
People may call it something different but at least they agree in principle that the spirit or essence of the Biblical God is the true nature of reality.
In the Beginning
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” — Genesis 1;1–2
— In the creation story, the spirit or essence of God, is something that sees potential in chaos and transforms it into order.
“God is what has encountered us when new possibilities emerge and take shape.”
The darkness and fluidity of the water is seen as the unknown potential and He transforms that unrealized potential into a type of order.
Potential is the key word to understand here and has completely transformed how I think of humanity as a whole. This is the thing that differentiates humans as being made in the image of God.
For example, in my garden I often plant lettuce. Having a tightly secured, fenced in area, is crucial for this plant to grow because I have tons of rabbits in my yard. The rabbits will destroy the sprouts as soon as their little green heads pop up. It’s so annoying. But rabbits, unlike humans, have no concept of potential and time itself.
I know that it would be a waste for me to munch on those tasty little sprouts because waiting just a week or two will give me a massive abundance of lettuce that I can pick and allow to grow continually for weeks on end. The rabbits, deer, or any other omnivores in my town will not hesitate to destroy any potential. All they do is instinctually please their immediate carnal drives. I however see sprouts and seeds not as what they literally are in the moment, but what they could be. I see potential and not just actuality.
That’s how we are different, and that is how God is described in this first chapter.
It’s important to understand this basic concept to move forward and to understand the Biblical God, and humanity. Everything we value as humans we value because we see its potential.
It’s why the marshmallow test is so predictive of future success. It’s why we intuitively understand why a parent places a ‘Baby on Board’ sticker on their car even when we already assume some human is already in that car driving it.
Seeing the potential in chaos and seeking to transform that potential into an order that is good is the spirit with which God sees and acts upon the world.
The concept of micro and macrocosm is also important to understand.
“God as the creative spirit that calls order into being from chaos and possibility, and man and woman as a microcosm of that spirit, similar or even identical in essence, charged with forever reiterating the creative process.”
This is the link specified in the idea that we are made in His image. Human beings are a micro example of the nature of the cosmos as a whole. That essence is identical to God’s creative process. He sees potential in chaos and creates order and we can and are charged with doing the same.
From nothing but waters of the deep is created heavens and earth, then land to separate the water, and everything else follows. Man imitates this process when he is called upon to name the animals, giving an order to what has been created.
Microcosm to macrocosm: the pattern the cosmos follows is the same that we can and should follow.
God is the spirit that transforms chaos into order. God is that which recognizes potential and conducts the process to realize that potential into actuality.
Adam, Eve, Pride, Self-Consciousness, and the Fall
“Genesis 2…extends the characterization of God, presenting Him as the spirit that warns agains overreach — against the cardinal sin of pride.”
— God is the spirit that warns against pride which can lead to a fall.
It reminds me of a story I heard about someone who summarized the Bible in one sentence: “You are not God.” If anything, that posture will keep you from being prideful if you truly believe it.
But that means not simply believing as in mouthing the words like some kind of proclamation, but believing in the sense that it shapes your actions. It shapes your understanding of the reality of the world. A lot of true belief is the posture we take towards reality, towards the world. And if we approach the world as if there are things above and beyond our capabilities to understand, it puts us in a posture that opens us up to learning.
This is the humility that comes from the fear of God.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” — Proverbs 9:10
I see fear in this sense as respect and understanding. It’s like the dynamic that exists between children and their fathers: My father loves and encourages me. He is that which shields me and protects me from the dangers of the world I have no true concept of. If I step out of line, he will put me back on the right path with aggressiveness. Not out of sheer anger, but because he wants the best for me. Because not straightening me out will allow me to continue down a path to hell.
Adam and Eve have this type of father and they are warned not to stray from the path, but they both do in their own ways and then pay the consequences for it. I read it not as much of a punishment, but as a consequence for their actions. If we had no consequence for action, bad or good, we would have no action. There would be no value in it.
“It is [the] great sin of pride to question that which on everything necessarily depends. Do not touch what must necessarily remain sacred. Otherwise, the center cannot hold, and things fall apart.”
The serpent tempts Eve and her pride makes her believe that she can take even the serpent to her breast and love it as well. It’s the pride in her ability to include everything through nurturing and empathizing. Both nurturing and empathizing are positive traits but they have their limits. They do not apply to serpents.
“‘Could the gates not open for them, too?’ That is a fine question, when it is motivated by a compassion that is truly discerning, judicious, and discriminating, but something utterly inappropriate when it is asked for no other reason than to falsely and deceptively elevate the perceived moral status of the questioner.”
Eve’s sin is the narcissism of compassion. Adam then pridefully assumes he can impress Eve his by ability to subvert reality and completely rename and reorder the nature of reality.
Men achieve status in order to attract women and if a woman asks a man to ignore the very nature of reality and the rules of their father, his pride can tempt him to do just that.
Their pride creates self-consciousness which results in suffering, and if you’re familiar with Jordan Peterson at all, you know that there is little statistical difference between self-consciousness and suffering.
God is the spirit that warns against pride which can lead to a fall. When we ignore the rules of reality, they will not ignore us in return. We cannot reason or rationalize our way out of reality. We have our limits.
Cain, Abel, and Sacrifice
Now that Adam and Eve are self-conscious, aware of their own mortality and the existence of time, maybe the most important question of our existence arises: How and to what should we sacrifice?
— In the story of Cain and Abel, God is the spirit to which we should focus our maximum sacrifice.
Animals unaware of themselves and their own mortality don’t have the capacity to think about what to do. They just instinctually do what they are driven to do. Like the asshole rabbits in my garden.
Humans know. We know that there is a future. We know we will die. We know that we have choices of what we can and should do. Every time we make a choice to do one thing over another, the things we do not choose to do are sacrificed in order to do those things we choose to do. Now we have to create a framework around why we choose one thing over another. A framework for what to sacrifice and to what end.
That’s what work is.
“Human beings are the only creatures that have ever come to understand how to subjugate now to later, routinely — as part of our mode of being — and are certainly the only creatures who determined how to ritualize, imaginatively understand, and then semantically represent that pattern of subjugation, work, and sacrifice.”
Humans know how to delay gratification. And we know that delaying gratification leads to better things. But humans don’t generally articulate values in such a specific manner, especially not in the ancient world. They use symbols and stories to convey those truths through behavioral patterns.
The story of Cain and Abel describes that behavioral pattern of sacrifice by juxtaposing two options: sufficient sacrifice and insufficient sacrifice.
Cain brought a sacrifice that grew from the ground but Abel brought the first of his flock. For reasons not specified, God accepts Abel’s sacrifice but rejects Cains. Cain becomes angry and God tells him that if he sacrificed something of greater worth that he would do better, and reminded Cain that Cain knew better.
“Instead of noting his error, rectifying his ways, and improving the quality of his sacrifices — Cain instead opens the door to something that both justifies and amplifies his rebellion and resentment.”
Cain then had a choice: do better or become bitter and angry.
He not only became bitter and angry, he murdered Abel. So not only did he not shape up, but he lashed out against the very nature of reality, lashed out against the ideal (Abel), and lashed out against God himself. The consequence of this sin was he lived the rest of his life in suffering and his ancestors did as well, adopting his posture towards God and reality itself. His ancestors are the ones who ended up creating weapons of war and building the Tower of Babel.
The lesson being that proper sacrifice, the proper delaying of gratification, will lead us towards the good while the opposite will hurt us and those who come after us.
The proper sacrifice towards the proper aim is the only way towards the good: towards God.
Noah: God as the Call to Prepare
— In the story of Noah, the spirit or essence of God is the call to prepare for what is to come.
It puts the responsibility squarely on us as individuals to pay attention and be truthful towards that ‘still small voice’ that tells us when the storms are coming, and to sacrifice the whims of the present in order to work towards being prepared.
All of the previous lessons are included in this one but are combined and told from a different angle. One of the great things about these stories is that they are build from each other and create a coherent vision of what God is by displaying different spirits that are all tied together.
In the flood story, it starts out by recognizing that Noah is a good man in his time, or for his generation.
“Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.” — Genesis 6:9
This characterization of Noah is important to call out because it recognizes the arc of progress that is evident not only among societies as a whole, but among individuals. Today we might say, “Noah was pretty good for his time.”, recognizing that compared to us, and our modern expectations, he may not be judged the same. But compared to his time, his struggles, his context and contemporaries, he was good and tried to be better by “walking with God.”
This is a lesson we often forget today even within the decades of one’s own life. Cancel culture has made that irritably obvious. Not even within the life of one person are we allowed progress.
Also important to note of this characterization of Noah is that he was a good man who descended from good men. Abel, who sacrificed properly to God and was murdered by Cain, was ‘replaced’ by Seth. Seth walked with God in the same way that Abel did and Noah was a descendant of Seth. The people Noah lived among were descendants of Cain. So the pattern of the spirit with which people live inhabits them and their ancestors and we see this pattern extend throughout the Bible.
From Adam to Abel and Seth, to David and Christ himself, all of whom are said to be of the same lineage, the pattern of behavior that characterizes good and walking with God is repeated throughout multiple generations and narratives.
The story of Noah has multiple interesting lessons in it, but the spirit of preparation is its overarching lesson. There is a specific divergence in two possible roads: God tells Noah that there is a flood coming and that he should prepare. Noah could take that seriously and prepare, or he could wait and see. Noah prepares.
Despite the people amongst him making fun of his faith and prediction and thus his action to prepare, Noah carries on and builds an ark far from the water. He abandons any prideful assumptions he has about the world and listens to God, his conscience, and gets ready.
Noah bets on God and his bet pays off.
As most of us know, the flood of course comes. Noah’s faith in the spirit of preparation afford him and his family survival and those descendants of Cain are wiped from the face of the earth. Whatever voices they heard were ignored. Their pride told them that they knew better. They could figure it out on their own. They didn’t need faith because they had their reason. And there was no reason to build a boat on dry land.
Storms are always coming and they don’t wait for us to prepare nor are they relegated to the coast. Noah abandoned his pride and listened to the voice of conscience, saving his family and all successive generations.
The Tower of Babel: God versus Tyranny and Pride
The theme of the descendants of Cain causing trouble continues with the Tower of Babel.
— In the story of Babel, God is that which warns against the pride that leads humans to supplant any transcendent being with themselves. It’s pride in a new story and on a societal level.
Noah’s son, Ham, the one who disrespected his father by teasing him about being drunk and naked, then brought in his brothers to call attention to his vulnerable father, was the ancestor of Nimrod. Nimrod was the founder of Babylon. The descendant of the son who does not respect the father becomes the founder of a city that pridefully worships human intellect through technology, abandoning tradition and the spirit of the father.
The lineage and patterns repeat. And again, pride and hubris lead to catastrophe.
“God, in the story of the Tower of Babel, is the transcendent being who is the absolute antithesis of presumptuous authority….He is the Being who eternally warns: ‘Do not replace Me with the worship of your own pride and power — because all hell is bound to break loose if you do.’”
There are a couple of common themes that keep rising up even as the specifics of the stories are vastly different. Another reason why knowing these stories is so valuable. The root of the same problems is very similar if not exactly the same even as time passes and the specifics change. If you can recognize the patterns, you can understand how things will play out in a broad sense even in your own lifetime.
In all of the stories so far, pride has played a major part in transgressions. Eve pridefully believes she can incorporate the serpent, Adam pridefully thinks he can rename the serpent to impress Eve, Cain’s pride is injured and leads to murder, and Noah abandons his pride in order to survive.
Now the descendants of Cain, in a spiritual sense, pridefully think they can master the world through their technology.
“And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” Genesis 11:3
Dr. Peterson points out that in one sense, their aim to create a city and bring people together is admirable. But the aim, the uniting principle must be towards God and not for the vanity of those building the towers. This is their prideful mistake. And in another sense, stopping them could be saving them.
“And the lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” Genesis 11:5
This is easier to see in modern times when our civilizations now have the power to destroy all civilization. The idea that “nothing will be restrained from them” is now a reality. Humans getting together and using their ability to see potential in chaos and bring order to it, when not aligned properly with what’s best at the top of their value hierarchy, can use that God-like ability to destroy it all.
In this story, God decides to not allow this and stops them in their tracks by “confounding their language”.
The idea of confounding language has been used to explain the development of multiple languages throughout the world, but anyone who knows anything about language knows that this is not true. However, I don’t think anyone who takes the story seriously and tries to honestly understand it truly believes that. A modern example can help.
Dr. Peterson points out that sexual differentiation occurred on earth between 1.2 and 1.5 billion years ago, thousands of millions of years before nervous systems developed. That means the sexual categories of perception are older than our abilities to perceive. That is why sexual differences are universally used as binary metaphorical categories. Nothing shapes our perceptions more than the categories of male female.
Confounding language is happening right now.
Pretending that male and female are terms we are not able to define breaks down the most fundamental of our perceptual categories, confounding language. Once these categories are in question, the way we perceive the world is up for grabs. Human beings slow or stop progress towards the good when they cannot communicate, and breaking down the most fundamental of categories does just that.
The consequences of putting technology at the top of your hierarchy because of prideful conceit can lead to a confusion in perceptual categories through language which then causes a breakdown of communication and a fall of that society.
Abraham: God as Spirited Call to Adventure
An old man of seventy-five or so years is instructed by God to leave the comfort of his parents’ tent and embark on the adventure of his life. His decision to follow that advice and move into the world, away from the comforts of the known, leads him to war, deception, and the pain of sacrificing his only son. But in return he is given the responsibility and privilege of being the father of a nation of people who will identify and lead humanity into the promised land.
— In the story of Abraham, God is the “voice of inspired adventure.”
“Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” — Genesis 12:1–3
It can be tempting to stay in a comfortable situation. Many of us in the Western world know this all to well. That’s why leadership books like The Comfort Crisis make sense. If we weren’t so comfortable, there would be no need to remind us that there is utility in being uncomfortable.
The most impactful interpretation of this spirit of adventure is that it is reflected at every level of development throughout our lives.
“Thus the Word of God in the story of Abram is deemed identical with the innate proclivity of a baby to take his or her first steps; to extend the hand of friendship and play courageously and hospitably with strangers, in a playground; …to stand up against the bullies of the hallway and the alley in favor of those who are younger or weaker and more vulnerable; and to desire and risk establishing a relationship with a member of the opposite sex and become reliable, loving husbands and wives and truly adult fathers and mothers themselves.”
Each step forward in development requires a type of faith in the unknown results of taking those steps. Nobody knows what exactly is going to happen in the short term, and especially not in the long term. But we need to make decisions. So what framework should we use in making those decisions?
A posture towards reality that seeks out not the comfort of the present but the adventure of the unknown will yield the best results.
We don’t know what truly will happen, but it will be better than freezing in time and not developing at all. Choosing to get out of your parents’ tent and experience the suffering of life while pointed in the right direction will result in the best outcome possible.
Moses I: God as Dreadful Spirit of Freedom
What is God in the story of Exodus? And why does Dr. Peterson refer to it as dreadful? What is so dreadful about freedom?
— God is the spirit and burden of freedom that includes responsibility.
Freedom is not the ability to seek hedonic pleasures but the ability to take responsibility for yourself. This is most specifically described in the Exodus story when Moses tells Pharaoh to “let his people go”. But there is a rejoinder to that statement. It is not simply a demand for freedom.
And the LORD spake unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Let my people go, that they may serve me. — Exodus 8:1
In this case, it is the freedom to go out into the desert and serve a higher power. A power greater than Pharaoh. A power that demands the voluntary sacrifices of each individual, not the tyranny of one man.
In Booker T. Washington’s story of emancipation, his autobiography Up From Slavery, he describes the transition from slavery to freedom. He was just a boy when an important man read what he later figured was the Emancipation Proclamation, to his family, informing them that they were no longer slaves. They immediately celebrated and cried tears of joy.
Those tears of joy very quickly turned to a state of melancholy. In Booker’s words, “In a few hours the great questions with which the Anglo-Saxon race had been grappling for centuries had been thrown upon these people to be solved.” They quickly realized that freedom is a burden of responsibility.
The Israelites felt the exact same thing as they escaped tyranny into the desert, not knowing what to do next. They even opined for the previous state of tyranny over the new freedom. For some at times, responsible freedom is a burden they would gladly abandon for the security of a tyranny.
The spirit or essence of God in this first portion of Exodus is the call to seek out responsibility by throwing off the chains of tyranny imposed on us by others and by ourselves, on ourselves. Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand.
Moses II: Hedonism and Infantile Temptation
It takes strength to adopt the responsibility that comes with freedom. The Israelites have for so long lived as slaves with no responsibility, that they are easily tempted be immediate gratification. They are learning how to survive in the desert, facing trouble, and immediately turn away from God the first chance they get.
— God is the spirit that encourages a rejection of your whims for something greater. He is the spirit that encourages the delay of immediate gratification for a higher purpose.
Moses ascends the mountain to talk with God. While he is away, his older brother and assigned partner, Aaron, is in charge. In the absence of Moses, the proxy of God, the people plead with Aaron to help them make a golden calf to worship and sacrifice to. They gather all of the gold and metals they left Egypt with and he does so.
“Aaron as political leader falls prey to the temptation and accedes to the impulsive demands of his people as soon as the voice of the divine Himself (in the form of Moses) falls silent.”
This is the danger of populism “in the absence of any true correspondence with an intrinsically structured overarching reality or a priori cosmic order.” People in their whims will quickly abandon any tradition for immediate gratification of instinctual needs. It may seem sensical and actually be helpful in the short term, but the long term consequences of this posture and action are always dreadful.
It harkens back to the previous themes. Humans by definition see potential in the actual and turn that potential into order that is good. To do that, they must delay gratification and abandon any pride that makes them think they can get away with subverting the natural order of things. The Israelites abandon both of these principles, and there are consequences.
This is the scene when Moses comes down the mountain, and destroys the Ten Commandments by smashing them on the ground. He then incinerates the golden calf and tosses the ashes into the water, making the Israelites drink it and digest what they have done.
Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. — Exodus 32:25
This verse and situation really spoke to me. It made me think of the current situation in the West more broadly as so many abandon the traditions of our ancestors and weaken our principles. That is the moment when our enemies perk up, and gather at our borders. People don’t realize that the bit of security we have is built on ideas we put into action. Abandoning those ideas will eventually weaken the actuality of our security and prosperity, leaving us open to destruction from within and without our borders.
“The staff of tradition, planted in the ground, around which everything necessarily rotates, has been uprooted from its necessarily central position — replaced by the immature hell of hedonistic anarchism.”
Now, how did Moses deal with this problem? Well, they killed everyone who was not faithful to God. Ouch…
As harsh as this is, it outlines an important lesson:
“First, the danger of the descent of a wayward people into the collective immaturity of the hedonistic and self-absorbed mob; and second…the calling forth of the tyrannical spirit by that mob…whose cardinal sin is…to use compulsion and force when invitation and discussion might suffice.”
Stay on the straight and narrow, or else your society will be threatened by the loud minority and the tyranny of authoritarianism will be called forth to stop it.
Jonah and the Eternal Abyss
— The spirit or essence of God as the voice of conscience that calls us to faithfully speak the truth in the face of overwhelming urges not to do so.
This narrative in particular, like the depths to which Jonah is taken by the fish, is deep beyond comprehension. Like I mentioned up front, it takes a careful reading of every line and every word in order to understand the implicit messages within Biblical text, and Dr. Peterson goes deep on this one.
Every single twist and turn of this story has a deep meaning, and he still reminds us that there is no bottom to it. That’s again what makes these stories so powerful. They always have something more to teach us about the nature of humanity and the cosmos within which we reside.
Jonah is likely nobody particularly special. The story gives no indication that he had any prior importance, but still, if and when the voice of God (maybe conscience) speaks to you, you had better listen.
God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, a city of his enemies, and tell them to straighten up and straighten up fast before God destroys them. No big deal. Just help the people you hate and remember, they hate you too. Also, you are just one guy and they are a whole city, so sure thing, they will of course heed your call and look in the mirror, realizing they need to fix themselves.
That’s how it always goes when you correct people.
Because Jonah runs away from his responsibility, he ends up on a ship that faces a storm, finally admits his fault to the crew, gets thrown overboard, swallowed by a massive fish, spends three days in its gullet, prays to God for forgiveness, gets spit out on the beach, goes to Nineveh, does his duty, they straighten up and fly right, and Jonah is pissed.
Got it? Good.
Now, there are tons of specific messages within the story, for example: Jonah is sleeping on the ship during the storm while the crew is battening down the hatches or whatever people on ships do. (That was embarrassing to say out loud being a Navy veteran but I was in the desert with Marines so I have no clue what you people do on ships.)
This is symbolic of being asleep at the wheel while the voice of conscience is telling you to do something you are responsible for. Jonah is unconscious to the problems that our conscience points us towards. The whole story is full of this type of symbolic narrative and Dr. Peterson dives deep into many of them.
It’s helpful to understand them and start to see them represented the same way in literature, stories, movies, and the rest of the Biblical narratives across the board. Knowing that helps tie everything together. And I mean everything in life, not just the Bible and this narrative.
The main lesson we learn from Jonah is to listen to the voice of conscience. Ignoring it will only cause long term trouble even if it creates short-term relief.
Conclusion
One of the things I was looking for in reading and understanding the spirit of God in each story, was one succinct spirit or essence that ties all of them together — one thing or spirit that we can say is God. All of those spirits would need to be nestled underneath and directly related to that overarching spirit.
I didn’t get that from this book or the conclusion. And maybe that is not what I should be looking for but that’s what I assumed. However, I do think that there is in some sense something that is portrayed early on that everything else falls underneath.
The characterization of the cosmos, God, and humanity in Genesis is foundational to everything else that comes from it. If the cosmos is characterized as potential, and God is that which creates order from it, and we are created in that image, then that’s all you need to know. All the other lessons come from that foundational realization.
Humility comes from understanding your place in that structure.
A lack of pride supplanted with humility comes from understanding your place in that structure.
Understanding that conscience is the voice of that structure which comes from within, based on that cosmic structure, comes from that understanding.
In some sense, all a person needs to do is read Genesis and intuit the rational consequences of that framework in order to choose the correct path. If someone believes that human beings are creatures who can see potential for good in the chaos of the unknown, and are responsible for creating good order from that chaos, then believe that enough to take that action, they are following all of the subsequent lessons. The narrative stories in the Bible are then following the logical conclusions of that structure.
That’s one of the things that makes Dr. Peterson’s explanations of these narratives so helpful. They are not all random stories about good and bad people. They all tie together and are built upon one single framework. It also makes them easier to believe in the sense that they are true.
Regardless of how long a person can live in the belly of a fish, or if Abraham’s wife Sarah gave birth as an elderly woman, the lessons and expositions about the nature of humanity and the cosmos are true.
To understand them from the language of our ancient ancestors who thought very differently about the world takes some effort. But to understand what they were telling us first requires that you want to understand. And you only want to understand something if you see value in understanding it.
Then, and only then, will you want to wrestle with it. And that’s what it takes to understand these stories. But you will not regret it because the wisdom is unlimited in its depth.