We Who Wrestle With God, by Jordan Peterson, a Review in Pieces
Various ideas I want to share as I read this latest book
I just finished the first chapter and wanted to share something Peterson wrote about and I have often thought about:
Why is slavery wrong?
Peterson asks this as if he is truly asking his reader if they believe it to be wrong. But not only that. He also asks us ‘why’ it is wrong. I really appreciated this question because I have in the past posited the same question for similar reasons.
If we believe slavery is wrong, then how do we come to that conclusion without assuming something specifically special about the very nature of human beings that requires us to treat each other as if we exist in the manner described in Genesis. How can you justify abolition without assuming that every individual human being is created in the image of God and equality is based on nothing more than humanity?
This revolutionary idea flies in the face of fall the facts.
None of us are equal in any factual way yet we have to assume we are equal in some deeper, fundamental way in order to justify the idea that slavery is wrong. Without assuming equality in this sense, we are all unequal and previously assumed our riches, wealth, strength and power are what determined our worth.
But what does it even made to be made in the image of God?
The description of creation in Genesis gives us that picture.
“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 1:2
It is the spirit of God that hovers over the waters of the unknown and sees the potential for creation and brings potential into reality. Peterson describes the entire world as a microcosm of this process.
Every time we awake, we are faced with the unknown potential of the day and have the ability to shape it based on the potential we see and based on our aim. What is it we want the day to be like?
As we move through each day, we see not simply material objects, but we see potential and have the ability to transform the present into the future we desire.
Even the most basic perceptions of material objects are done in this manner. When I look at my morning coffee cup, I don’t see a group of plastic molecules shaped in a cylinder with a circle at the base. I see its purpose. It is a vessel for gathering and holding substances. The substance I choose is black coffee with one Splenda and an ice cube so I can drink it now and not later.
The chair I sit in is not several pieces of wood but it is an object for sitting, hence the definition of chair and why it applies to many different things made of very different materials in many different shapes. A boulder becomes a chair when I need to sit and eat my sandwich mid-hike in the woods.
The entire day is conducted in this manner. All of my tasks have a purpose and nothing I perceive escapes some type of evaluation based on its potential to being some future into the present.
That’s what makes us human.
The animals in my yard eat the sprouting lettuce I plant and never consider the potential of that sprouting lettuce to be a garden that could feed them for several months throughout the summer. They just much it to nothing as soon as they can.
This is why slavery is wrong.
We all somehow assume that each fellow human being has something worth valuing and that thing is their ability to bring order from chaos, to see potential in actuality, and to bring that possible future into the present in accordance with their aim. That future can be positive or negative based on their aims which is what makes us so powerful as individuals. We can, in a mythological sense, create heaven or hell.
Slavery is wrong because it negates the value of each individual human being and that value is akin to the spirit of God hovering over the dark waters, seeing the potential in the darkness and bringing that potential into actuality as that which is good.
Slavery is wrong only if you assume that each human is made in that image.