Judgment, Sacrifice, and Redemption

Jordan Peterson talks about an interesting idea in Christianity where the judge and the redeemer are the same thing. When I first heard him explain this concept of judgment and redemption you could have knocked me over with a feather.

The Redeemer and the Judge

Peterson says that this understanding comes from our instinct to make qualitative distinctions—“this is better than that”—between things. The difference between good and bad things is what gives us direction, the possibility of moving upward. Humans need upward movement because they are ultimately insufficient in and of themselves. They need to conceptualize something like the highest good and then strive for it.

So there isn’t any difference between conceptualizing the good and being judged. “This is better than that” is a judgment. If you’re going to conceptualize the good and move towards it, then what you have to do is separate from yourself (sacrifice) all of those things that aren’t good and leave them behind. This separating from things that aren’t good in order to move toward things that are better is the process of redemption. That’s why the redeemer and the judge are the same thing.

A Judgment of Ourselves

Unfortunately, our modern culture is rejecting the notion of qualitative distinction. Perhaps it’s the failure of so many individuals to participate in the redemptive process. Perhaps it’s that we don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings by saying that one thing is better than the other. Whatever the case, Peterson warns that “if people are, in fact, insufficient in their present condition—which seems to be the case, try finding someone who isn’t—and you deny the possibility of qualitative distinction because you want to promote a radical egalitarianism, then you remove the possibility of redemption because there’s no movement toward the good. It seems to me like it’s a catastrophe to sacrifice the good for the equal. What this would mean, as far as I can tell, is that we would all be equally unredeemed and miserable.”

Of course, denying the possibility of qualitative distinction doesn’t mean we aren’t still caught in its all-encompassing web. Denying the existence of judgment is itself a judgment. A choice that removes the possibility of moving toward the better only moves us toward the worse. We may think we have tidily reworked reality but all we have really done is damn ourselves to hell.

The thing that floors me is that Jordan Peterson is saying what I have long suspected: God is not our judge. We judge ourselves. Without our continuing participation in qualitative distinction we cannot move toward the good, and thus we cannot be redeemed. You could say that without a humble willingness to let our Conscience* teach us—to continually participate in judging God as the necessary good and us as insufficient (in need of good)—there is no redemption.

The Role of Sacrifice

Sacrifice is another word for separating from our present inadequate self so that we can move toward a better future self. Sacrifice is our response to judgment, our active movement towards the conceptualized good. This, for me, was another shocking epiphany because I haven’t quite known where to put sacrifice in God’s repertoire. I mean, arbitrary sacrifice or sacrifice to appease doesn’t seem quite like God. And doesn’t God say that obedience and mercy are better than sacrifice anyway? I had almost come to the conclusion that sacrifice was not required by God at all.

I sat, stunned, as Peterson brought me to the realization that sacrifice is archetypically embedded in human experience, in the experience of anyone who really listens and acts when their Conscience speaks. Sacrifice is the movement of damaged, insufficient creatures toward life-saving integrity and goodness. It is their prescription for healing. It is their movement away from nihilism toward meaning. It is their way out. In other words, it is—archetypically and practically—humanity’s pathway to redemption.

“Error necessitates sacrifice to correct it, and serious error necessitates serious sacrifice. To accept the truth means to sacrifice—and if you have rejected the truth for a long time, then you’ve run up a dangerously large sacrificial debt.” – Jordan Peterson

The Prerequisite of Effectual Sacrifice

Since judgment and sacrifice are inescapable human experiences, then why does God differentiate between obedience and sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:22) and between mercy and sacrifice (Hosea 6:6)? I think it is God’s way of saying that appearances can be deceiving—especially in how we see ourselves. Our decision to judge God as good and the humble attitude of obedience—obedience to our Conscience—are cohabitants that are the prerequisite of effective sacrifice. Sacrifice without this requisite is egoism, the sacrifice of Cain.

So how do we know if we are sacrificing like Abel? Sacrifice is only a pretense if it doesn’t act out the fruits of righteousness (Matthew 7:16-20). Thus, what looks like sacrifice yet lacks righteousness (or mercy in this context) isn’t sacrifice (Matthew 9:13).

“If you are willing and obedient you shall eat the good of the land, but if you refuse and rebel you shall be eaten by the sword.” Isaiah 1:19

Obedience happens before sacrifice. It is our attitude—our judgment—that enables our effectual sacrifice. So often we see obedience as fruit instead of root. We see it as all of the things we do to obey—i.e., the right behavior—rather than the attitude that allows us to do those things.

The whole process of redemption begins with an obedient attitude: a humble willingness (choice) to listen to our Conscience; a teachable spirit. Without this attitude, there is no possibility of upward movement through the process of qualitative distinction (judgment) and sacrifice (movement toward the good). Without an attitude of humility—a broken spirit and a contrite heart—we neither will nor can act with the judgment or sacrifice necessary to make God’s goal of our redemption possible. This is the crux of redemption.

“The fool is the precursor to the Savior. Why? Because you’re a fool when you start something new. So if you’re not willing to be a fool then you’ll never start anything new, and if you never start anything new then you won’t develop. And so the willingness to be a fool is the precursor to transformation.”
– Jordan Peterson

We Decide

We are the judge, not God. Our decision to engage a humble attitude is the proper judgment that rejects prideful totalitarianism**, admits our need, and aligns us with benevolent Being. It is this that separates us from the things that aren’t good in order to move toward things that are better. The process of redemption (upward movement) necessitates the sacrifice (death) of self, the sacrifice of the worst of us so that we can be reborn toward the highest good. This requires us, like Saint Paul says, to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. This fear and trembling happen not so much because sacrifice is so hard but rather because letting go of our ego and pride —our unwillingness to be a fool—is the most difficult struggle we will ever know.

“Humility is nothing but the truth.” – Jordan Peterson

It comes down to this:

Our adoption of a teachable attitude toward our Conscience—our choice to humbly set out on the intrepid adventure to learn what we don’t yet know—makes us capable of further redemptive qualitative distinctions. This thrusts us into the divine flow where we are enabled to make authentic sacrifices of our current inadequate self that can and will empower us to become the best that we can be. This is the archetypal and practical process of redemption.

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* Carl Jung talks about two poles of consciousness: the individual self and the universal part of consciousness —the Socratic Daemon—often called the conscience.

** Jordan Peterson defines totalitarianism—both collective and individual—essentially as rebellion against the most High: everything that needs to be discovered has been discovered. “Reason falls in love with itself, and worse. It falls in love with its own productions. It elevates them, and worships them as absolutes. Lucifer is, therefore, the spirit of totalitarianism. He is flung from Heaven into Hell because such elevation, such rebellion against the Highest and Incomprehensible, inevitably produces Hell.”