Why Should You Go to Church? | Jordan Peterson

Why do people go to church? Because that's what's going on. Why should they? Because that's a discussion. So Jonathan took me to an Orthodox ceremony in Seattle, and like I wasn't into it. I found it, it grated on me. You're like a 10-year-old boy that we're telling to stop moving. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So that was my Freudian fixation. It's like, you're a 10. Stop wiggling. Yeah, yeah, stop wiggling. No kidding. No kidding. But, you know, there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then, man. And I went to an Orthodox mass here a couple of weeks ago, and I found it unbelievable. And a Catholic one a week before that. I was down at Franciscan University, and I found it unbelievably soothing, which was very much unlike the reactions I've had before. And that was partly, well, for complicated reasons, because I actually find any place that isn't a bloody nightmarish catastrophe soothing now. I mean that, man. But there was more to it than that, too. It was because I also did develop, and partly as a consequence of our discussions, a deeper appreciation for what was happening in the ritual itself. And also more tolerance for whatever inadequacies I might perceive, you know. And partly that's also realization. You know, lots of modern people say, well, I don't go to church because I don't believe that. It's like, well, A, who cares what you believe? Like, who the hell are you anyways? And why do you even care what you believe? And how's that working for you, this belief set that you theoretically have? How sophisticated is that? Are you Plato or what? It's like, well, here's the church, and here's me, and I'm right. It's like, well, no, you're not. And first, and second, you don't even want to be, because that's a great place to be. Like, pinnacle of brilliant wisdom. It's completely solipsistic. No tradition for me, thank you very much. You know, I've got it all right in my head. And even if you are right that the bloody institution is chaotic and decadent in some fundamental sense, it's like, well, good. There's something for you to do. Like, there always has been throughout the entire history of mankind, because that's the once great king who's fallen into disrepair. It's like, well, if the church is broken, and you're the genius to see it, why do you go fix it? Well, then you might say, well, we'll just abandon it. It's like, okay, well, fine. You're going to get rid of that, A. You're going to get rid of marriage. You're going to get rid of funerals. You're going to get rid of Christmas. You're going to get rid of any sense of sacred time. You're going to dispense with the whole history of what Judeo-Christian thought. You're going to dispense with the idea of the sacred nature of the individual. Like, how far are you willing to go with this? And believe me, that question is right in front of you, because there's a wave of radicals who are asking you at every moment, what makes you so sure that there's a difference between a man and a woman? No, there isn't. Or the yes, there is when we want there to be, and no, there isn't when we don't want there to be. You saw that with the Supreme Court appointment. It's like, we have to have a woman, but there's no such thing as a woman. It's like, and so, yeah, you Frenchmen, you know, you've abandoned your Catholicism. You think the Catholics, they were crazy. It's like, you ain't seen nothing yet. And so I believe, and Jung kind of convinced me of that. He more or less posited, and you could say the same thing about Orthodoxy. He said, Catholic is as sane as people ever get. And that's partly because we have to have one foot in the dream and the mystery. We have to. You know, when I heard Douglas Murray speak recently about this, that was very interesting, because Murray is an atheist, essentially, and he has a variety of reasons for that. But he has swung around hard recently, and he said, when he was talking to Dave Rubin, he said, I don't believe that either conservatism or classic liberalism can survive in the absence of the religious surround, which was really something for him to admit. And it's taken him like five years of thinking to come to that conclusion. But then he said something even more remarkable, I thought, and he said, and it's actually the mysterious part of it that has to be retained. The virgin birth, the resurrection, the crucifixion, all of that crazy mythology, let's say, because otherwise it just degenerates into another form of cheap social justice. And like, don't we have enough of that? And I think that's, now, I don't know what to make of that, because, well, and that's why we have discussion continually about the, what would you say, well, the transcendent, I suppose, the miraculous, the transcendent, the idea of the resurrection, for example, and all of that. It's like, well, what do you do with that? And the answer is, we don't know, but we don't throw it out without having some sense of what's going to come in to replace it. And we're seeing that now. You know, look at us, we're so confused, wonder the Russians are at war with us. It's like, we're not having anything to do with those people. They simultaneously proclaim that a woman is absolutely necessary for the highest position in the land, or one of them, and that the same person says, well, I don't even know what a woman is. It's like, well, are those people insane? It's like, clearly, clearly, that's just way too far, right? When I talk to my Democrat friends, I say, look, you can have one of those. You know, there's either no distinction between a man and a woman, or it's important that a woman's on the Supreme Court, but there's no bloody way I'm giving you both. So, because I don't even know how to do that. I have no idea how to do that. Like, what am I supposed to do? Celebrate womanhood, and simultaneously celebrate the fact that the differences between men and women are so trivial that they're irrelevant, and they can be changed at will. That is insane. It violates the law of non-contradiction. And so, there's no, that's, you think religious people are crazy.