Exposure Therapy, Radical Transformation, And Embracing Reality

The following is a transcript excerpt from Dr JOrdan B Peterson’s conversation with Douglas Murray and Jonathan Pageau on the crucifixion of Christ as an archetypal story. You can listen to or watch Listen to the entire podcast on DailyWire+

Podcast time: 42:29

It definitely appears to me that the story of the Passion is an archetypal and foretold tragic catastrophe, and I’ll explain the foretold part later. It’s an archetypal catastrophe because it melds all the worst things that could happen to a person in their life. It’s death, but it’s knowledge of certain death, associated with death. Then it’s youthful death, and it’s youthful death at the hands of the mob. And it’s youthful death at the hands of the mob despite innocence, despite the mob knowing of innocence — in front of the mother. And it’s a consequence of the relativistic nihilism of the Romans, and the tyranny and the choice of the crowd, and the betrayal of a best friend — all of that. It’s a journey through some of the most difficult things in your life. But then that’s not enough. There is the mythological cloud around the narrative because dying horribly and unjustly isn’t enough. You have to also go to hell and suffer it. This would mean that the ultimate extension to the human experience involves not just the confrontation with evil and the unjust death or innocents, but also a journey into hell.

OK, then the question would be — and this is the sticker as far as I’m concerned — ‘Isn’t it the case that in your own life that the more deeply that you’ve peered into the abyss of things, the more likely it is that a light shines through it?’ And this is sort of the ultimate question of the Resurrection: How do you revivify your faith in life? Perhaps the answer lies in: ‘By the radical acceptance of the malevolent tragedy of life.’ There’s even more to it: ‘By the radical embracing of even the hellish aspect of life.’ You never know what might happen if you do that in a radical way.

We know clinically if you find what people are avoiding and are afraid of and are disgusted by that’s blocking their pathway forward, and you get them to confront that voluntarily, they get courageous and better. It’s clearly the case, and it looks to me like the Passion representation and its mythological substrate is exposure therapy on a cosmic level. The more you examine the basic issues of life deeply, the more you become wiser and more enlightened. Then, I think I’d ask: ‘If everyone did that to the utmost, what would it be that we might be able to conquer?’ I don’t know the answer to that. Your life would be transformed. Because people write to me constantly, I see what happens. When people take some responsibility for their lives, I can see the results. They write and they speak. ‘Man, everything is way better.’ Okay, what could be better?

This idea is also found in the New Testament. There’s a section — I believe it’s in the Sermon on the Mount (it might not be) — where Christ says that heaven will not emerge and all things will not manifest themselves until everyone brings everything inside them out right there — divine possibility, let’s say. The reason the world is so broken is that we are not able to give our best. We don’t abide by the Law and the prophetic Spirit and we don’t bring everything that’s within us out into the world, and the world is lesser as a consequence of that. I do believe that we don’t bring our best out because we’re afraid and because we’re desperate and because we don’t have the courage to confront the malevolence and the suffering and the hellish aspect of life. When you look at death, you think: ‘Well, is the death more real and the hell more real, or is the Resurrection more real?’

You can listen or watch the episode to hear more of the discussion DailyWire+.

Dr Jordan B Peterson Professor emeritus and clinical psychologist at University of Toronto. He was an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard from 1993 to 1998. He is an international bestseller and author of Maps of Meaning (12 Rules For Life), Beyond Order, and 12 Rules For Life. You can now listen To or watch His lectures are very popular on DailyWire+.

The opinions expressed in this piece are solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect those of The Daily Wire.