{"id":41568,"date":"2025-04-09T18:51:03","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T01:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=41568"},"modified":"2025-04-09T18:51:03","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T01:51:03","slug":"becoming-the-tension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/becoming-the-tension\/","title":{"rendered":"Becoming the Tension"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first started reading Maps of Meaning, The Architecture of Belief by Dr. Jordan Peterson, I was overwhelmed with the density of the book. It was difficult to see where one topic ended and another began. I knew this book would require more than a quick read and I am glad that my decision to listen to several of his YouTube lectures paid off[1]<\/a>. As I listened and watched him pace, talk, go on a divergent concept then come back to his main point, I thought, the man is brilliant. This stopped the prejudgment I had picked up by the time I read the introduction. Once my mindset changed, I was able to read Maps of Meaning with a more open mind to learn what this scholar and writer had to say. One other thing that helped me read and listen was his comment that no one had to believe what he does, but he hoped that they would suspend critical judgement and seek to continue to find a best way to decide for themselves, a worthy request in my estimation[2]<\/a>. Even with these pieces, it wasn\u2019t until I got into part of Chapter 5 on The Hostile Brothers did I perceived an ah ha moment.<\/p>\n

Dr. Peterson was discussing the value of life, awareness of death, and the limitations of existence[3]<\/a>. Throughout the book he referred to the need to bring order to chaos that comes with the unknown and many transitions of life. As someone moves from the known to the unknown, the knowledge available becomes limited, precisely because the person does not have the capacity to know all before it is experienced. Ideally, according to Peterson, the person could carefully plan how to get to the future state, then carry it out flawlessly[4]<\/a>. Yet it doesn\u2019t always work that way. In a short talk he gave he asked the question \u201cAre you optimally situated between order and chaos. He holds that the brain can tell if a person is balanced within those two basic elements. The interesting part for me was when he spoke about the dopamine hit that the brain gets when novelty is introduced to it. It was a different application of dopamine that I had considered previously but it made sense. The hope that the novelty will bring something exciting or new keeps a person moving in the direction of the possible[5]<\/a>. While the brain is somewhere between novelty and stability, \u00a0sometimes things don\u2019t go as planned and errors occur causing instability for the person. This can lead to major errors and the need to regroup to think and adjust. What was important is that the domain of the known and the domain of the unknown permanently coexist with humans. How they are regarded rather than if they exist leads to the tension between safety and danger. Those realities determine how someone behaves and attempts to navigate life with them. Hence my ah ha moment with Dr. Peterson took root. He wrote in terms of a line, which needs a beginning and an end to define it. So too, in order to experience value in life, there needs to be both good and evil. The tension between the two brings worth. More clearly, it isn\u2019t possible to define good without the existence of evil[6]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What surprised me was his recommendation to learn from and follow the teachings of Jesus. The example he started with that made most sense to me was from John18:23; Christ said, Be ye therefore perfect, as you Father in heaven is perfect. He understood perfection by defining what it is not: greed, desire for constant material gain, or infliction of suffering just to suffer. Ultimately, in a sense he seemed to preach the Gospel without fully seeming to profess Jesus as Lord. His recommendations came from Matthew 22: 37\u201339, Love God with all their hearts, mind and actions; treating their fellow humans as if they were in fact treating themselves[7]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As I consider how Maps of Meaning might impact how I live and lead, my mind goes to our present day. It seems as though there is always a lot of evil in the world. So maybe as a Christian leader Dr. Peterson\u2019s concept of the defining tension of a line is the opposite ends of it. So, I wonder, maybe the hope for our neighborhoods, states, countries and world is for Christians to become the catalyst for the tension. If we live our lives prayerfully seeking to follow the command of Jesus in Matthew 22:37-39 as fully as humanly possible could we be the antithesis of evil that would shed light into the world of another way to be human? The difficulty of course is twofold. First, all human, Christians included, are sinful so our examples won\u2019t be perfect. Our desire and discipline to remain in relationship with Jesus will help temper that. Second, it is possible that the evil is so embedded that only by the grace of God will the light of Jesus even be recognized by those who seek to harm others for their own gain, no matter where in the world that is or what form the evil takes.<\/p>\n

Whether Dr. Peterson is a Christian or not, he has stirred me to action and for that I thank God for his research and writing, and for Dr. Clark for recommending him. I invite all who are interested to join me in the journey to follow Jesus and quietly shine His light into our dark world.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> YouTube, \u201cLecture: 2017 Maps of Meaning01: context and Background\u201d, 2:31:26<\/p>\n

YouTube.com\/watch?v=18Xc2_FtpHI. Accessed April 7, 2025.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Jordan B. Peterson, Maps of Meaning, The Architecture of Belief, <\/em>(New York, NY, Routledge, 1999), xx-xxi.<\/u><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Peterson, 454.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Peterson, 19.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long, The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race (Dallas, TX, BenBella Books, Inc., 2019),48-49.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Peterson, 455.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Peterson, 455.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first started reading Maps of Meaning, The Architecture of Belief by Dr. Jordan Peterson, I was overwhelmed with the density of the book. It was difficult to see where one topic ended and another began. I knew this book would require more than a quick read and I am glad that my decision […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3442],"class_list":["post-41568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-peterson-dlgp03","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41569,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41568\/revisions\/41569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}