The pride of Adam led to self-consciousness and thus the fall from his true self. Can this be a lesson for us all?
The Pride of Adam
Jordan Peterson’s We Who Wrestle with God is an interesting and perhaps not uncontentious book. Given Peterson’s verbosity and penchant for complex detours, I’ve been skimming the book seeking out parts that particularly speak to me or provide a certain kind of insight.
It’s a curious book. Interpreting the Old Testament through the lens of modern psychology wrapped in a certain kind of 19th Century existentialism is a style that is all too Jordan Peterson. Nevertheless how he interweaves Biblical narratives with such psychological and existential insights opens the reader to oneself as if to a mirror, which I have found striking and beneficial.
The first insight is on pride taken from the story of Adam and Eve partaking of the forbidden fruit. The fall leads to Adam and Eve’s self-consciousness of nakedness and thus the desire for hiding through blame and other means. Peterson relates the fall of Adam and Eve to the introduction of pride into the world:
To become self-conscious is to know nakedness, limitation, and mortality; to regard this emergent self as something bounded off from everything without; to feel alienated from intimate partner or other family member, from the broader culture, from nature, from the cosmos, and from God: to feel particularized, to become self-conscious is also to suffer from that emergent separateness, in part because everything not-self (and that’s a lot) can now be perceived as both imitation and threat, arrayed in some fundamental sense against the now-isolated individual. With self-consciousness comes scheming: instrumental action and self interest precisely as narrow as the new and restricted conceptualization of the self (68-69).
The Pride of Adam and the Naked Self
The true self is the vulnerable naked self; the self that stands before God and others as it is: in its weakness and vulnerability, as God’s child. It is to be part of a larger cosmos among others, to not be the only person in the universe, and thus to be in some ways ‘transcended’ (Sartre) by the other. This is the person God knows.
Conversely, the one who seeks to cover up nakedness and vulnerability is the estranged self–the self no one knows. Peterson …
Why should I not be worried about my own skin, precious and vulnerable as it is? Three considerations are relevant … 1) The experience of self-consciousness is indistinguishable from suffering. 2) Focus on the now narrowly and separately perceived self motivates, selfish, instrumental, and manipulative behaviour. 3) Emergence of self-consciousness directly interferes with practical performance and behaviour (69).
In essence: Sin. The one obsessed with oneself is in sin, has adopted unhealthy, toxic behaviour and thus ends up further away from his true self, God, and neighbour, and all of creation. He becomes manipulative, double-sided–the true divided self (Laing). The person in such duality presents a false self as the fig leaves hiding his own nakedness and vulnerability.
Pride as the Gateway Passion
It all comes down to pride.
Pride is considered one of the big gateway passions to greater passions. This point by Peterson really took me aback and reminded me of Merton …
The social psychologist Mark Richard Leary found … that those who experience high levels of self-consciousness were also more likely to engage in strategies of “impression management”: that is, to scheme and plot to best ensure they were being ‘perceived’ in social situations in a manner they desire . Such strategies coincide frequently with the deception of self and others–accompanied by all the associated pitfalls of the lie. There is little difference between self-directed focus and suffering (69-70).
How terrifying! “Impression management”.
Again, back to Merton:
“And I wind experiences around myself like bandages to prove I exist …”
Being perceived in social situations in a manner I desire … Painful. How often do I do that? Peterson continues that over time the person feels trapped in self-consciousness which heightens anxiety and depression. What if you don’t or can’t live up to the expectations of the model of yourself you want to project? Thus the person continues to control and manipulate “twist and bend the fabric of reality so that negative emotion can be reduced by whatever deception is deemed necessary” (70).
When Adam is called by God in the garden and is exposed in his sin, he casts aspersion onto Eve by blaming her rather than seeking truth. He hides his own weakness, his own pride, the short-circuiting of the sacramental relationship to the world in order to take it and consume it as he pleases, for his own pleasure, and in essence breaking the relationship between him and God.
Peterson …
How much of our suffering emerges because we are not humble enough to learn? Because we insist tyrannically that what we already know is sufficient and absolute? Because we demand recognition for a reputation that we have failed to earn? Because we shrink away in cowardice from the great expanse of the unknown and mysterious? Because we have insufficient faith in the goodness of Being and man? Is all that no necessarily on us? Is that responsibility not self-evidently the truth? If we were sufficiently enlightened … would suffering vanish (73)?
Humility as the Vanquisher of Pride
Humility is true encounter. When we mess up with others, when we say things that are mean or hurtful, when we lash out in a professional environment even and cross the line letting our deep seeded frustrations hurt those around us, the only way through is encounter–with God and the other. The encounter is the only ‘Way’ to healing. To reach out and let go of the mask, to let go of the pride, to accept the damage we’ve caused, and seek forgiveness. And often it’s the fear of the other’s transcendence (Sartre) over us, over our freedom to remain in the mask that terrifies us more so than the reaction.
It’s the nakedness we need to stand before the other that terrifies us. We sweat behind the mask, and realize we must take it off. Seeking forgiveness, asking for forgiveness from the other, does that. And by virtue of encountering the other in humility, we encounter God, and the other, by encountering us in naked humility, encounters God somehow too.
Peterson …
In the Christian world, such enlightenment is technically indistinguishable form the innovation to take up the cross and tread the path of Jesus (Matthew 16:24), which is of course the most demanding of all paths, journeys, and attitudes: that resounding, dauntingly courageous, and apparently impossible-to-emulate “yes” to everything regardless of suffering (73).
A truly poignant insight indeed! The way through is the death of the ego, and all the suffering that comes with it that we place back on Christ, because His yoke is easy and His burden is light. The movement away from self-consciousness is taking up the shame walk of Christ and entering into shame and suffering as He did for the life of the world.
Becoming Yourself by Serving Others
My father of confession always tells me when I struggle with pride and ego, to go and serve others. To remove the mask of a certain ‘role’ in society, and to just be. To live a simple and humble life of loving God and neighbour. For is this not the life of the saints? Living simple lives before God and man and all of creation. Seeking to become nothing to the world to be everything for God and neighbour. Eschewing the masks and roles society wants to foist on us, and becoming truly ourselves by becoming more and more like Christ.
This is the Way of becoming truly alive, truly human, and more and more like Christ who came as the second Adam to reveal to us Adam’s true nature, the true Image of man.
May we seek to walk deeper into the Being of Christ, and allow him to purge us, through suffering, through encounter, of all that is fake and conceited and egoistic and demonic.
May we grow more in the Love and Beauty of God and become fully ourselves.
