Dear friend,
I believe it is
time for me to give you an update on my reading of Jordan Peterson. As you
know, I am making my way through his latest book, We Who Wrestle with God. I
must say, I have been pleasantly surprised by some of the things in this book
thus far, though yesterday I read a rather ridiculous passage in the fifth chapter.
There, Peterson is talking about the story of David and Goliath, and after
quoting the story as told in 1 Samuel 17:48-51, Peterson asks us to think about
the moral of the story. And do you know what he says the moral is? Per Peterson,
the moral is, “The true hero is he who defeats the giant tyrant of the state.”
(pg. 215) How does Peterson arrive at this conclusion? He doesn’t. He just
declares it. Literally, he cites the passage of David killing Goliath, and then
he says, oh yeah, this is about the tyrannical state.
While I
appreciate much of what Peterson has to say in this book, the number of times he
throws one of these “just so” declarations into the book is getting really
annoying. Almost always, these fiat declarations are directed at politics, and
invariably Peterson must shoehorn his own political views into the
interpretation. It’s getting frustrating, both because his politics is rather
predictable, and because he almost always gives these “just so” interpretations
at the expense of actual engagement with the Biblical text.
You see, the
story of David and Goliath has political implications, and if you read the book
if 1 Samuel, you will be able to tell what those political implications are. But
Peterson skips the actual reading. I mean, the central theme of 1 Samuel is God’s
desire for the Israelites to place their faith in him and to oppose worldly
monarchy. It’s literally
about the Israelites choosing to follow worldly politics over God. And Peterson
never mentions this.
In 1 Samuel, God tells the
people, through his prophet Samuel, that a king will not be good to them. He
warns them that if they receive a king, they will become slaves.
These will be the ways of the king
who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his
chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and
he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties,
and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements
of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will
take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the
best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his
servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and
give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your menservants
and maidservants, and the best of your cattle and your asses, and put them
to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his
slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you
have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that
day. (1 Samuel 8:11-18)
The people of
Israel do not listen to God and continue to demand a king. Indeed, they expressly want a king so that they can be "like all the other nations." (1 Samuel 8:20) God relents and
gives them their first king, Saul. Saul, throughout the book of 1 Samuel, is
portrayed in a fairly poor light. He consistently disappoints God. At one point, he
performs priestly duties himself in the place of the Prophet Samuel, violating
Levitical laws. (1 Samuel 13) But the thing that really disappoints God is Saul’s
refusal to kill all the Amalekites and their animals, despite God’s command to
kill them all. Saul spares Agag, the king of the Amalekites, and he spares the
choice livestock from destruction to be used for animal sacrifice later. (1
Samuel 15) God is quite peeved by Saul’s disobedience, and swears that he will
usurp Saul as king, and he therefore anoints David as the new king.
It is important
to remember that the story of David and Goliath is in chapter 18 of 1 Samuel. David
is anointed king by the prophet Samuel two chapters earlier in chapter 16.
The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, seeing I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” . . . Then Samuel took the horn of oil,
and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the Spirit of
the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. And Samuel
rose up, and went to Ramah. Now the Spirit of
the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from
the Lord tormented him. (1 Samuel 16: 1, 13-14)
Peterson is 100% correct to point out the story of David and Goliath is about “the giant tyrant of the state.” The story is embedded in the context of God’s displeasure with the Israelites’ decision to become like all other nations in their governance, and God’s subsequent displeasure with their first king, Saul. When David slays Goliath, he is already anointed by God as the new king, and it is Saul who is cursed with an evil spirit. David is thus the anointed king who must lead the people of Israel, despite the fact that Saul still sits on the Throne. This raises the question: who exactly is the tyrant of the state? It is not Goliath, as Peterson supposes. It is Saul.
How does David
lead his people when Saul still sits on the throne? The answer is through his
trust in God, his heroism, and his fearless fight against the enemies of Israel.
David’s weapon, a sling, is extremely weak in one-on-one combat, yet he uses it
to slay the giant. This strength despite weakness is metaphorical of David’s
position as a leader who has no throne. There is a form of leadership that transcends position and power, and David exhibits this leadership. One lesson of David and Goliath is that there
are modes of leadership that exist even from a weak political position. David,
the anointed king, rescues Israel from the Philistines in the guise of a shepherd.
Absolutely none
of the above is found in Peterson’s analysis. Indeed, Peterson gives no
analysis. He simply proclaims that Goliath is the “giant tyrant of the state.”
Peterson then states that Goliath is just like the monster Humbaba from the
Epic of Gilgamesh, or the Jotunheim king Thrym from Norse mythology, or the minotaur
from Greek mythology. Is it a big monster? Yes. OK, that means it represents
the state. This level of analysis is not really analysis at all. It is just Peterson
declaring his opinion by fiat.
One actually can
read the Bible to glean political lessons. You can actually see the people of
Israel choosing politics (choosing a king) over God. Of course, such a lesson might
not be expedient for an author like Peterson who predominantly appeals to an increasingly
political faction of modern Christians. He has to, instead, equate the enormity
of monsters with the enormity of the state, and thereby pretend to critique the
boogeyman of statism without actually
engaging in the critique present in the book of 1 Samuel. This is one of the
main problems with Jungian psychology in general. It pretends that all figures
are in some way archetypes to be understood at the level of collective consciousness
as opposed to actual figures narrated in the story.
This is one of
the things I simply do not like about Peterson. He is so wrapped up in imagery
and the interpretation of symbols (Jungian that he is) that he does not
actually engage with the text. The vast majority of We Who Wrestle with God is
like this. Peterson uses the imagery of the Biblical stories to present his own
“just so” symbolic interpretation. In the meantime, he can ignore the actual
story the Biblical writers narrated. Because if he actually paid attention to
the story, he would know that Goliath is not the tyrannical state God opposes.
Saul is. And that makes all the difference. Goliath is not David's enemy. It is Saul who attempts to kill David multiple times in 1 Samuel 19. Goliath is just a giant, but Saul is a tyrant.
The worst part about this is, Peterson could use the Biblical text to make darn near the same point he ends up making, but he either can't or he won't.
Now that I am
well into this book, I can confidently say We Who Wrestle with God is not a
book about the Bible. It is just a book of Peterson’s interpretation of images.