On the ark of the covenant, the cathedral, and the cross: Easter Message I – Jordan B. Peterson

Via JordanBPeterson.com

There has to be a bridge between the finite and the infinite.

There has to be a place where the ephemeral meets the eternal.

There has to be a bridge between the knowable and the unknowable.

There has to be bedrock at the foundation.

The ark, which is the portal to God, is to be carried on the shoulders of those who are Holy. It is not to be touched. To touch the ark is to risk death. There are holy things that cannot be touched except at mortal risk. These things that cannot be touched are the very foundation of the community.

The ark must be placed at the center of the temple. The temple must be placed at the center of the community. The community must be arranged around what is untouchable and unshakeable. The untouchable and unshakeable is what is axiomatic. The people following the ark have determined to journey toward the eternal Promised Land.

The city arranged properly around the ark of the covenant is eternal Jerusalem.

Something must be axiomatic, or everything shakes and falls. The axiomatic cannot be expressed fully in words. The axiomatic, untouchable and unshakeable, is instead what makes communication possible. The axiomatic is a spirit, a process, a living force. Its manifestations, however, are concrete. That is the transformation of the spirit into matter. That is the generation of the Tablets of Stone.

The ark of the covenant contains the Rules that are derived in the first order from the axiomatic principle. That principle is the Spirit that made the Rules manifest. The Spirit is the ultimate inhabitant of the ark, and the rules the result of its action. That Spirit is the creative Logos.

The ark of the covenant and the temple is replaced by the cathedral at the center of the community. The cathedral is the cross in architectural form. The cross is where the transformation takes place. The transformation is the incorporation of the body of Christ. That incorporation is a dramatic pretense; is the embodiment of the decision not to believe in Christ but to act Him out, which is to believe in a much deeper manner than to merely believe.

Christ is He who transcends death by voluntarily accepting death. Christ is He who rejects the kingdoms of this world for the Kingdom of God. Christ is He who speaks the truth that creates the habitable order that is good from the chaos of potential that exists prior to the materialization of reality. Christ is He who wields potential as the sword that cleaves death. Christ is He whose radical acceptance of the conditions of life defeats the hatred, bitterness and vengefulness that the tragedy and malevolence that taints Being otherwise produces. Without the acceptance of death, bitterness rules, and Hell triumphs.

Christ is the potential of man and woman.

It is said that man and woman alike are made in the image of God, and that God is He who uses the eternal Logos to generate habitable order from the chaos of potential. This is the axiom. This is the diamond at the center of the world. This is the Spirit in the ark that is untouchable. This is the bedrock of the culture that brings peace and prosperity and that respects the dignity of man. This is the Great Truth. This is the responsibility whose acceptance allows each of us to live despite the catastrophic fragility of our limited being. Our likeness to God gives each of us a value that transcends the finite. Individual and society alike are charged with the ethical demand to respect that value. This is not only the presumption that grounds the idea of the Rights of Man. It is the presumption that lays upon each of us the Ultimate Responsibility that is the inevitable corollary of those Rights.

Face the chaos of the future.

Employ the Logos of which you are a part to transform that chaos into the habitable order that is Good. Speak the truth. Embody the truth.

Accept, impossibly, the limitations that make Being possible. Dispense in that manner with resentment, hatred, and the desire for infinite and unbounded vengeance and all the cruelty and evil that accompanies it. Pick up the cross of your tragedy and betrayal. Accept its terrible weight. Hoist it onto your shoulders and struggle impossibly upward toward the Kingdom of God on the hill.

The alternative is Death and Hell.