Maybe you, like me, are curious about the tendency for some holidays—in particular, religious ones—to celebrate the idea of sacrifice. At times it seems a little macabre, maybe even barbaric, especially if it’s about someone dying. In the case of the Christian world, each spring there is a focus on sacrifice and suffering by remembering the brutal crucifixion of a man living in the Middle East two millennia ago—Jesus Christ.
For today’s Western, civilised world that often indulges in comfort and shuns suffering, this is a hard message to stomach—many would question why God would send His Son to such a fate and why He would then want us to remember such a death. So is a message about the virtue of sacrifice and suffering still relevant to our Western society? There’s one man who thinks so and he’s not a Christian, either! Jordan Peterson, considered one of the world’s leading intellectuals, is speaking to sell-out auditoriums with a very old but simple message about the necessity of sacrifice and the acceptance of suffering.
Jordan B Peterson
“Life is suffering”, he said to one packed venue. That’s an inescapable truth and a sobering message for our ‘cotton-wool’ generation, but the audiences listen. There’s something that resonates about the age-old truth of his message. As a clinical psychologist, Peterson believes the axiom that life is brutal is embedded in our psyche: “It’s not an accident”, he continues, “that the axiomatic Western individual is someone who is unfairly nailed to a cross and tortured. It’s like, yes…right…exactly!”[1] He recognises that, for the West, the Christian story of Jesus’ crucifixion has become the archetypal picture—the greatest example—of the cruelty and unfairness that so often passes for life. Jesus embodies something about the unfair and unjust cruel nature of life itself. An embodiment that the West, even with its material hedonism, can still learn from. Of course, for believers, Jesus’ suffering and death is not just an archetype, it’s a reality and a powerful example, too. Jesus is the selfless ideal—our Passover sacrificed for us—that vividly shows us the mode of being and challenges us to walk in it. But such an ideal also becomes a model of how to transcend our own pain and suffering.
In his best-selling book 12 Rules for Life: an antidote to chaos, Peterson elaborates on this idea. He puts it in unapologetic terms: “Pick up your damn suffering and bear it…and try to be a good person so you don’t make it worse”. This thought is an antidote expressed by Jesus Himself: “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24). Peterson sees this teaching about the nature of suffering as a lesson in effectively navigating the hardships of life: “You have many reasons to be resentful…but you accept it! That’s what life is like: it’s suffering. That’s what the religious people have always said… Try to reduce it. Start with yourself. Get yourself together”. Another way of putting this might be, ‘Take responsibility for your life and don’t play the victim’. This is a lesson for us all. This season is one of self-reflection, that begs us to look at ourselves and ask, what do I need to change in myself in order to bear or lessen the problems I face? It’s a time that challenges us to order our lives in such a way to be a bulwark against the chaos and tragedy of life. And if we do, if we bear our cross, then we gain the prize.
The person who wishes to alleviate suffering – …who wants to bring about the best of all possible futures; who wants to create Heaven on Earth – will make the greatest of sacrifices.
Extrapolating Peterson’s connection between suffering and sacrifice, he explains “the person who wishes to alleviate suffering – …who wants to bring about the best of all possible futures; who wants to create Heaven on Earth – will make the greatest of sacrifices…to live a life aimed at the Good. He will forgo expediency”.[2] This is a message equally for the world and those of faith. Suffering is part of the fabric of existence, but we need not be crushed and embittered by it. Like Jesus, we must pick up and bear our cross, even if unjustly, because that’s how we overcome, not by running from it, ignoring it, or blaming someone else. Getting beyond the pain and suffering takes sacrifice, but that sacrifice leads to a greater place in the future. It was because of “the joy that was set before Him [Jesus] endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). And if we are going to make the best of ourselves, we must learn to sacrifice, to give up and go without, to bear the burden, for the glory that awaits us in the resurrection. This path leads to peace and completeness.
Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, was a man who understood this idea. He saw the ugly face of suffering and death in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. His profound conclusion is increasingly antipathical to Western thinking about life, “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering… Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete”[3]. Frankl expresses an ancient idea, one grounded in the life of Christ, that completeness comes through the trials we experience in life, because “He [Jesus] learned obedience by the things which He suffered (Hebrew 5:8). Suffering is the crucible where we learn and develop godly character.
The stories of suffering and sacrifice still have ancient wisdom for us today. Sometimes the comfort we pursue makes us uncomfortable when faced with such stories. Life is brutal, it was for Jesus, but if we accept and confront suffering, learning to bear our cross, we can experience a kind of personal peace. This is part of God’s plan, a way for us to experience peace now in a pain-filled world.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PdoU4vPTqk
[2] 12 Rules for Life: an antidote to chaos by Jordan B. Peterson. Published by Allen Lane, 2018. Page 172
[3] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/531847-if-there-is-meaning-in-life-at-all-then-there
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