Jordan Peterson: We Who Wrestle with God - A Conversation at Pepperdine University

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our host, Pepperdine's 8th president, Jim Gash. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Pepperdine University. By a show of hands, is this your raise your hands if this is your first time here at Pepperdine? All right, we got some folks that are new to Pepperdine. My my predecessor, the fourth president of Pepperdine, used to say, "Pepperine's campus is the kind of campus God himself would have built if only he could afford it." So, welcome to God's Paradise here at Pepperdine. I want to thank you all for taking the time to join us.

I know right now with the way the the traffic is and with the road closures that it's not easy to get to. And so we recognize that you have made a sacrifice to be here and we're grateful. And I want to thank our generous friends who have made it possible for the Pepperdine President Speaker Series to happen. As you know, the stories that we tell ourselves shape us. As Plato told us in the Republic, a good story can save us if we're convinced by it. The movies we watch, the books that we read, and even

the social media that we consume all leave a mark on us. They leave a mark on the way we view the world. In doing so, they shape our souls and they shape our culture. There's no avoiding this truth. We are molded by the stories that we share whether for good or for ill. CS Lewis said that if you don't read good books, you will read bad ones. And at Pepperdine, we value reading good books. And in the power of immersing ourselves in great stories. As you can see behind me, we've got a bunch of good,

really good books. A display inspired by our own Pacin Library. Our belief in the value of great stories is why we have a thriving great books program and why we are wholeheartedly committed to a liberal arts education. It's called this because it's liberal, it's deep, and it's wide in its range of study. The truth and beauty we find in reading the Odyssey is the same truth and beauty we find when we perform an experiment in a science lab. our students to learn to see both truth and beauty and to trace them to their source. We

at Pepperdine believe that all truth belongs to God wherever it's found. Liberal arts is also called this because it's liberating. True education, more than just giving us knowledge, frees us to pursue our calling. It liberates you to become the person you were created to be, to live the story that God has written for you. Our belief in the value of great stories is part of the reason I am so pleased to welcome our guest today. a guest who for years has been helping millions of people around the globe find purpose and meaning in their lives

through unlocking the transformative power of some of the greatest stories ever written and ever told. Jordan B. Peterson is a best-selling author, a clinical psychologist, a prominent public intellectual, a father, a husband, and a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. The Jordan B. Peterson podcast routinely tops the charts of the education category. He's written four books. The first called Maps of Meaning was an excellent work of academia presenting a new scientifically grounded theory of human belief. The next two books, 12 Rules for Life and Beyond Order, were both New York Times bestsellers and collectively

sold more than 14 million copies. Dr. Peterson's an international lecture tour has sold out more than 400 venues, providing live insight into the structure and mythology and narrative to literally hundreds of thousands of people. Add 3,000 today to that. For 20 years, he taught some of the most highly regarded courses at Harvard and at the University of Toronto while publishing more than 100 well-sighted scientific papers with his students and co-authors. He also recently founded the Peterson Academy, a top quality, highquality higher education platform accessible internationally with hand selected professors from some of the best universities

in the world. To date, more than 50,000 students have enrolled since the beta version was launched publicly in September of 2024. He earned a BA from the University of Alberta and a PhD from McGill University. And his YouTube channels have over 10 million subscribers and have had over a billion views. One of the most influential public intellectuals of our time, Dr. Peterson's generational impact on our culture has been recognized by public figures across the political spectrum, including podcast host Joe Rogan, actor Matthew McConnA. All right. All right. All right. Soccer great Cristiano Ronaldo, comedian Bill

Maher, and Atlantic columnist Caitlyn Flanigan. Neuroscientist and prominent atheist Sam Harris has said about Dr. Peterson. Jordan has an enormous following because he's addressing a hunger for meaning that the secular world often fails to satisfy. Whether you agree with him or not, his influence is undeniable. His latest book, We Who Wrestle with God, all 500 pages that you can use to curl with it, was released in November of 2024 and immediately rocketed to the top of of uh the charts of book company or book rankings all over the world. This book considers the transformative meaning

and power of biblical narratives, the stories that have shaped Western civilization. This past Friday night, nearly 100 members of the Pepperdine faculty, staff, and students gathered together at my house in the backyard to do our own wrestling with Dr. Peterson's book in groups of eight as part of our dialogue dinner series. I think I speak for all of us when I say that I am thrilled to hear what he has to share with us this evening. Please give a warm pepperine welcome to Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

[Applause] Thank you everyone. Now much appreciated. Um it's quite something to be at a friendly university. So I want to see if I can tell you three stories in a relatively short period today. And uh I'm going to try to address the issue of foundational structure and purpose and moral relativism. That'd be a good thing to cover in 35 minutes if we can manage it. Uh but that's part of the utility of stories. They can pack a wallop in a very short period of time in a very memorable way. And so I'm going to start

with the story of Jacob and his brother Esau. And that's a story that's a story of what happens if you found your life on the desire for power uh and then decide to change. So it's a story of error and a story of transformation and uh it starts with the birth of two brothers. They're twins like Cain and Abel and they emerge, they fight in the womb and that is a representation, a reflection of the fact that people do strive for dominance um however appropriately or inappropriately and that that often manifests itself in families between

siblings uh as well as between say metaphorical brothers or enemies. Um, Jacob literally comes out of the womb fighting with Esau. And he's not a good guy. He's seriously not a good guy. And that's actually quite typical of particularly Old Testament biblical narratives. The the heroes of those stories, not always, but are often flawed. And Jacob definitely qualifies as someone who's flawed. And his first flaw is that he strives after power. Now, it's a modern doctrine that's put forward by political radicals and post-modern types that there is actually no other fundamental orienting motivation than that

of power. And my sense of that is that it's an interesting claim and it is definitely the case that institutions and individuals degenerate in the direction of power. And but that doesn't mean that power is the only valid motivating and unifying force. And so that begs the question of course if it's not power what else might it be if there is something that unifies and the story of Jacob actually addresses that. So now Jacob is wrestling with his brother for dominance in the family. And he starts at a disadvantage. His brother has undeserved privilege you

might say as the firstborn. And in consequence, he's uh he's granted the lion share of the inheritance, which was a standard practice at that time among agriculturalists and and herder pastoral people. You couldn't divide your property evenly up among your children because it would take only a few generations and the uh p parcels of land or parcels of animals, let's say, share of animals would become so small you couldn't sustain yourself or a family. And so that was counterproductive. So in a rather somewhat arbitrary fashion, the decision was made, an impersonal decision that the firstborn

would get the lion share of the inheritance. And that was just how it was. But Jacob's not happy with this. And neither was his mother. And so he conspires with his mother and the family is divided. And so that's a pretty standard story too. No doubt that may have happened in your own family that at least at times that you fractionate into different groups and work against one another. And that's what happens with Jacob and Esau. And so Jacob is a mother's boy. He's a tent dweller. I suppose he's more educated than his more masculine

outdoorsoriented somewhat impulsive sibling. Esau, who's a man who spends all his time outside hunting and has maybe also the flaws of a of someone who's oriented in that direction. So, for example, he's more impulsive and and more heedless than the conniving Jacob and and his conspiring mother. And uh there's two stories of extreme betrayal in that text. So, Esau goes out to hunt and he's a great hunter. uh especially of deer and that's partly why his father loves him preferentially which is part of the family divide. and he comes back from a hunting episode and

he's exhausted and famished and his brother is busily working away in the kitchen making a porridge out of beans and uh Esau asks to be fed and Jacob who's always ready with a conspiracy and well primed with his mother in consequence of his interactions with his mother tells him that he'll feed him but only if he gives him his rights to the firstborn share of the inheritance. And Esau, who you know plays a causal role in his own downfall, you might say, like we all do, agrees impulsively and he gets his meal and he gives

up his inheritance. And uh it's a crooked deal. And I suppose Jacob's pretty damn thrilled about how effective his conniving was despite the fact that he betrayed a man who was his own brother and set his father against him. And uh I suppose that's the uh justification that people who use crooked and machavelian means to gain power satisfy themselves with well paying not enough attention to the broader context which is well you gain something sure but in a crooked way. And you warped your own soul in consequence of doing that and you put a rift

in your family and if you think that was a good deal then you're not you're more than a bit of a fool. In any case, that's what happens. And Isaac, who's the father, um, who does not enough to stop this sibling rivalry from emerging because in principle he could have if he would have been paying a bit more attention. He's not happy and he decides he's going to redress the situation with the blessing that's bestowed on his that will be bestowed on his children as was the custom um before he dies. and he's an old

man at this time and he's going blind and he doesn't have much more to offer. And um Esau in principle is out in the field out in the wilderness again hunting and um he comes home and Isaac prepares to bestow his blessing on him and he's going to make it uh what would you say? He's going to go beyond above and beyond the call of duty so that he can redress the injustice that's been done to his older son with his blessing. But Jacob being the man that he is and obsessed with power and conspiring

with his mother um dresses up as Esau and fools his father who is too blind to tell the difference and and uh he gets the blessing too. And that's not something that in those days you could take back. Your word was your bond and once you delivered your decision it was final. And so Jacob walks away with victory, right? uh he's obtained his position of power and the fact that he had to do that at the cost of betraying his own brother and his father. Well, the chickens come home to roost at that point because

Esau, who's a rather aggressive person, as you might expect from a hunter, more or less decides that he's going to kill his brother and he has a reason. And so, Jacob leaves. And that's not the best way to leave home, you might say. uh but uh it does give Jacob pause and and this is a cru crucial issue. You know, one of the things that our students are miseducated about on a regular basis is that all conceptions of up and down morally speaking are relative and that there's no real point of orientation in the world.

And you know that that means I suppose that you don't have to upgrade yourself with guilt when you make a mistake because there's no such thing as a mistake. But it leaves you bereft of any understanding. If you do act in a reprehensible manner and your life collapses into absolute catastrophe and your brother hates you and you have to run away, it's like it's possible that that's not good. And it's possible that maybe you had something to do with it, especially if you're power mad and you're conspiring and lying and deceiving and in bed with

your mother, so to speak. And that's all Jacob. And so that's down, you might say. That's a definition of down. And I suppose Jacob understands that because now his brother hates him and he has to leave home under a cloud and he's not very happy about that. And he he decides he's going to change. And so that's an interesting twist in the narrative, too, because to change implies the direction that there's a direction to change, right? that if you've made a lot of mistakes and you've ended up in your own particular variety of hell that

that's down and that there might be somewhere you could go that isn't that that would be better and that would be up or at least towards up. And if you're at the bottom of the world and you're suffering miserably and you realize that you might have had something to do with it and you make a decision that you're going to change, then you've also made a decision that down exists and so does up and that you might strive to move towards what's up, even given your limited understanding of how to orient yourself properly in the

world. And that's what Jacob swears to do. And so he builds an altar which is a representation you might say of the connection between up or heaven and earth. And he commits himself to to this process of upward transformation. And he makes a sacrifice. And that's what you do when you decide to change is you aim upward. Whatever that means to you at least you're going to try to stop doing the foolish things that got you in so much trouble you can't believe it. And you're going to what? make a sacrifice. And what does that

mean? How about you give up doing all the stupid and unacceptable things that you did that brought you low to begin with? And that's a sacrificial gesture in the direction of what? In the direction of what? In the direction of up. Well, what does that mean? Well, Jacob has a dream, a famous dream that night. He dreams of Jacob's ladder, which is often represented as a spiral staircase to the stars, so to speak, and it wraps its way upward into the ineffable. There's no visualizing what's at the top. And you you might ask, what does

that mean? And it means just as hell is a bottomless pit because there's no place you can get that's so awful that there isn't some damn stupid thing you can do to make it worse. So is heaven a spiral that that what that that moves itself upward without end. So that as you climb the distance between you and the top remains constant. Right? And that means it that up is inexhaustible. And no matter how well you put the world together around you, there's still infinite opportunity upward left above you. And whatever's at the top of

that, that's God. And that's a matter of definition, right? That's how that term which is complex and complex and incomprehensible. That's how that term is specified in the context of that story. Right? God is what you aim at however badly when you decide to give up your idiocy and improve. Okay. Now, let's see if we can specify that. So, in the story of Abraham, that spirit that abides on high is characterized in a particular manner. And so, in the story of Abraham, God comes to Abraham. God is what comes to Abraham as the spirit of

adventure. Okay. Now, this is very good thing to latch on to. So, when God comes to Noah, he comes to him as the intuition that warns the wise that all hell is going to break loose and that preparations need to be made. Okay? In the story of Abraham, God makes himself manifest as the spirit of adventure. Now, Abraham is an old man. By the time this spirit descends upon him, he's in his 70s and he's not really a very good person either. He's not kind of outright evil like Jacob and obsessed with power. He's more

failure to launch type of pathology, right? Because he has rich parents and all of his needs are met, right? And so you might say he already lives in the socialist paradise. Everything that he could require in the manner that an infant might require is delivered to him without effort. And that seems to suffice for approximately 70 years. But you might ask yourself, is the state of infantile satiation the highest pinnacle of your development? And Abraham realizes or God convinces him that that's not the case and says to him that he has to leave his family

and his tribe, the safety of his community and his security and venture out into the world. And that's the same as that's the same as moving towards the edge of psychological development, right? We we don't learn in a state of satiation and security. We live on we learn on the edge of challenge. And that's the edge that you play on. For example, when you're engaged in a sporting activity and you're pushing yourself to the limit of your ability in relationship to the people that you are competing and cooperating with in the context of the game,

you want to be on the edge that transforms you. And that's the edge of adventure. And that's what God represents in the story of Abraham. And he invites Abraham to leave his zone of comfort and to dance on the edge of chaos and to transform himself beyond his wildest imaginings in consequence of that. And that's the Abrahamic covenant which is the foundation of the biblical of of of the Abrahamic societies. That's that's exactly it. At least the classic Abrahamic societies. They enter into the covenantal relationship that God offers to Abraham. That's a transformative endeavor. Now

remember, Jacob is trying to transform upward, right? So this echoes that story. Okay. So what's the nature of the offer that God makes Abraham? or what's the nature of the consequences of following the calling of the spirit of adventure that takes you beyond your zone of comfort out into the terrible world. And it is a terrible world. Like the adventure that befalls Abraham is brutal, right? He encounters tyranny and he encounters starvation and he's sent to save the pathized cities and he's eventually called upon to sacrifice his own son. The adventure is tragic and brutal.

And you might ask, well, why bother with that when the alternative might be to reside like a satiated infant in relative material comfort, especially when it's at hand. And God, who's the spirit of adventure, justifies that with the covenant. And what he says is this, and this is very much worth listening to. He says, "If you leave your family, if you leave your comfort, and you venture out faithfully and with courage into the terrible world, voluntarily into the terrible world in covenant with the highest, making the proper sacrifices along the way, which is what Abraham

indicates he will do and does continually through the story, then you'll become a blessing to yourself. And that's a good deal particularly if your life isn't a blessing to you as so many lives seem not to be. Like how do you have to conduct yourself so that you believe that your existence is a blessing? Well, maybe your existence is an adventure and maybe it's a daring and difficult and ultimately challenging adventure and not a search for infantile security or the pursuit of power or hedonic pleasure. And that's the offering that the spirit of adventure makes

Abraham that he accepts. And then God says, "That's not all." And that's already pretty good all things considered. He says, "Your name will become known among your people." And that and it will be known for valid reasons. And that's a pretty good deal, too, because anybody who isn't an outright bloody psychopath actually matters. It actually matters to them how they're perceived by the people around them. And what you might hope for if you had some sense and you were aiming upward and in regard to what was best for you and for everyone else was that

you would conduct yourself in a manner that so that people would admire what you're doing genuinely and regard you as a person that might be relied on in times of trouble and and who could serve as a source of accurate counsel when the storms come and the seas get rough. And so, and is it the adventurous sort who turns into that sort of person? Well, that's the proclamation of the Abrahamic story. And so, that's pretty good, too, because people are certainly motivated perhaps above all else to attain a certain status. And that can be gamed,

and it is gamed by the psychopathic and the power mad. There's an element of it that's a beneficial ambition because why wouldn't you want to conduct yourself, for example, so that your children and your wife admires you and so that you're a beacon to the community if you had the choice and obviously you'd have to make the sacrifices necessary to do that. But the payoff would be well, you'd be a blessing to yourself and your name would become known validly to your community. So, hooray. And you think, well, that's a pretty good deal and worth

taking a risk for, and that's not all. Then God tells Abraham, "If you do th this forthrightly and wholeheartedly and you bring your best to the table, which is what Abel does in the story of Cain and Abel, by the way, if you make the offerings that only you can make in the best possible way and you go voluntarily on this adventure, you will establish something of lasting permanence that will echo down the generations." And that's why Abraham becomes the father of nations. And that's because the pattern of adventurous movement forward that he embodies is

the best possible pattern for fatherhood. And if you manage that to find a wife and to have children, but to establish in their psyches and in their behavior this pattern of faithful and courageous adventuring, then that success will cascade down the generations and multiply. And so that's a good deal. And then God says, "That's not all. It's good already, but it's a big risk to do this. Um, you'll do this in a way that will bring nothing but abundance to everyone else." Now, that's a great offer and very complex because it's a it doesn't offer

a zero sum of the world. It's not a Malthusian world with limited resources. It's a proclamation that the spirit that guides you to maximally develop, which would be the spirit of adventure is the same spirit that when manifested in the world unites people in the pursuit of peaceful abundance in a manner that brings far more to everyone without end. Right? And you see that echoed for example in the gospel stories. I mean, if you regard Christ in some sense as the ultimate adventurer, that's also why he's the and the perfect sacrifice, that's why he's the

miraculous provider of the food that never ends, right? And so then that's all pretty good. And but it's not the end of it. The last offer is cap is the capstone, so to speak. And he says, "No one will be able to stand in your way, right? your friends will multiply and your enemies will flee before you. And that's not a military metaphor precisely. It's more the fact that if you adventure forward voluntarily, then you'll learn enough so that you're a master of your destiny and that people will flock to you to cooperate with you

and your ventures will be successful because of the manner in which you conduct yourself. and you'll prove victorious in consequence of the ethics of your action. And so and and what what's so interesting about this story, let's say from a biological perspective, because you can certainly read it as an evolutionary biologist, it's it's make it makes a very I think a claim that's undeniable because the counter claim is pro is is preposterous. The claim is that there's an an instinct within you that you could characterize as a spirit that pulls you out into the world

to develop and expand your apprehension and to shape your attention. And that that proclivity to develop in the world is also what makes you optimally healthy psychologically. Well, the counterproposition would be that the the spirit that motivates your child to be courageous and curious and to expand his his field of competence is the same spirit that if manifested would make him miserable and sick. Well, no creature like that could exist. It has to be the case that the force that inspires you to become who you are has to be the same force that maximally adapts

you to the world because otherwise what sort of misshapened monster would you be at your best you'd be the worst. And that's no no one believes that. And it isn't only that. It's that that instinct is allied with what other people will find respectable and admirable and that will bring them together around you and help you organize your community in a manner that's integrated and peaceful and productive. And it has to be the case because otherwise our instinct to develop would be at odds with our social being. And that's a completely idiotic theory and no

one would hold that. And why wouldn't you presume that if you were a voluntary adventurer and your children imitated you that they would m be much more likely to be successful? And isn't it the case that if everyone was doing that simultaneously that society would become abundant just as the American society that you all inhabit has become abundant and for those reasons. And wouldn't it be the case that if you did that completely and made the appropriate sacrifices then no one could stand in your way? And so I think this story is theologically impeccable. I

think that it's demolishes the claims of moral relativism. I think it's easily understandable in that context and I think it's biologically solid and that's pretty good definition of truth as far as I can tell. And it's also salutary and it's provides some security if you understand it. And it's highly motivational. And so maybe that's why we remembered it for 3,000 years. And maybe that's why it's the foundation of the most sophisticated societies on earth and a subset of which at least are also the most productive and peaceful societies on earth. And so that's the story

of Abraham. And you know, Abraham is called upon as he moves forward, the magnitude of his sacrifices increase. And you know that that's the case in your own life is that that's one of the consequences of success. Every time you reach a new pinnacle, let's say, you're called upon to be a little more than you were at the place of the last pinnacle. And that means at least to give up a little more of your immature foolishness. And also to aim a little more accurately and a little higher. And you see that in the story

of Abraham because it's a series of s it's a succession of sacrifices and you can imagine that as he climbs upward up Jacob's ladder his vision of what constitutes the ultimate refineses and so his aim improves as he moves forward which is not much different than saying that you can in fact improve. And you see this in the Jacob story too because as Jacob moves away from his pathological relationship with his mother and his powermad orientation, he disciplines himself and comes over time to be a good man, right? A man who can make peace with

himself and his waring brother, for example. And so that's part of that process of upward spiraling improvement. And at the pinnacle, of course, Abraham is called upon to sacrifice the son that God has promised him forever. And he's willing to do that. You might ask, what does that mean to be willing to sacrifice your child to what's highest? And that's absolutely in keeping with Abraham's pattern of action as an adventurer. Because if you are the sort of paternal figure, let's say, who encourages your child to move out into the world and to face their fears

and to become ever more competent, you are sacrificing them to the ter to the terrible reality of their own life in the belief that if they accept that challenge voluntarily and they themselves sacrifice to God that they will become handlers of serpents and masters. ers of terror and prevail in the world. And that's exactly what happens in the story of Abraham because he voluntarily offers his son upwards and he gets him back. And that's exactly what happens to you in your life if you're blessed, let's say, and sensible because you push your children out into

the world and you tell them to pursue something other than you and your relationship and their security. And if that works out optimally, then they turn into adults and you get them back, right? But in what would you say? As equals and as as people that you can be proud of and as people who have lives that are blessings to themselves and who are admired by their own people and who establish something of permanence and who make the world a more abundant place and who prevail and ethically so. And so and of course that sacrificial

pattern which is established with Abraham is amplified in the book of Job where it's portrayed as an answer to meaningless suffering and then it finds its full expression in the passion which is a at minimum a archetypal representation of the pattern of total sacrifice upward that characterizes the proper foundation of abundant society, right? And we put that symbol of sacrifice, the crucifix. We put that symbol of voluntary sacrifice at the center of our churches and the church at the center of our cities because we understand even though we don't know we understand this or because

we know and we don't understand that the pro this the the foundational principle that stabilizes the world and maybe the cosmos itself is the principle of upward striving voluntary self-sacrifice and And that's optimized in the passion story. And we know that enough so that we put that symbol at the center of our culture, even though our understanding of why that happens to be true, is still less developed than it might be. And so that's an elaboration of that theme and a representation of what constitutes up and an explanation of Jacob's ladder and a representation of

what constitutes sacrifice and an indication of how narratives underly our moral orientation and provide us with the ability to navigate in a world characterized by possibility and opportunity and suffering. Right. Thank you very [Applause] [Music] much. Have a seat. Questions? Anybody got any questions? Seems pretty straightforward to handle, right? So, let me start off by asking you how you got on this pathway to writing a book to doing uh research and and uh storytelling on kind of the biblical Old Testament story. And not only that, I mean, there's a whole lot more that you've done,

but what started you on this pathway? Was there an inciting incident that said, "You know what? I need to look more into the biblical narrative or was this something you grew up with?" I mean, unpack that for us. How how do we get here? Longstanding obsession with death and evil, I would say. Okay. Well, when I was, you know, there's psychologists who can help you with that. Yeah, I've heard. Yeah. Well, I found them. I found them. Um, when I was 13, I uh I read Soljen Nitson's Day in the Life of uh Ivan Denisvich

and started to investigate Soviet totalitarianism and at the same time delve into the horrors of the Nazi of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. And I was I've always been obsessed with the idea of malevolence more even than death. But because malevolence and death are the two what would two of the they're the two they're the two ultimate obstacles you might say to progress forward and malevolence probably worse more so than death that's why by the way when in the full passion Christ is not only crucified in the most painful possible way so that's the worst

imaginable death that's not enough he has to harrow hell as well and that means that the full confrontation with life. It's a terrifying thing to understand is the voluntary willingness to confront both death and hell, right? The source of all malevolence. And you see the same thing in the story of Jonah, by the way, because Jonah runs from truth and in consequence and his conscience and in consequence he's condemned to death in the stormy seas. But then despite the fact that he's dying and you might think nothing is worse than that and that you think

that because you're naive that's for sure. Then the beast from the abyss comes up and takes him in his jaws. And that's the same that's the same story. And like I was very what would you cognizant of the fact that these horrors these political economic horrors were very very real. And I was very curious about their source. And initially I planned to I did a political science degree and I thought about going into law and I thought about pursuing a political career. But I became convinced during my undergraduate years that the fundamental reasons for the

existence of evil were neither political nor economic despite the fact that all my professors insisted that they were especially economic because so many of them were leftists. And so I started to delve into clinical psychology because I I understood partly through soliten I would say that it was it was the proclivity for individual sin that was actually the causal factor the primary causal factor in the establishment of totalitarian states. This is why for example you know in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah the angels come to Abraham and tell him that God is going to

take out the pathized cities and Abraham objects. He says you can't demolish a whole city because of the sins of its inhabitants because they'll be innocent and good people intermixed with the you know the misgreants and the hedenists and the power mad strivvers and the machavelians. And Abraham says, "Well, if I can find 50, I think he starts with 50 good people, will you spare the city?" And God says, "Yes." And Abraham being a fighty feisty sort of character manages to bargain God down to 10. And there's a real reason for that. And the reason

is is that if there is a pathological city that's still free and open enough so that 10 people are daring enough to tell the truth despite the fact that that will alienate them from their neighbors and cause them misery and grief, there's still hope for the city. And you're called upon to be one of those 10. And I started to understand that deeply when I was about 22. And I swore at that point that I would make whatever sacrifices were necessary to get to the bottom of that. And I meant the bottom. And so I've

been doing that over decades, right? Trying to go deeper. And that's what I'm doing with each lecture is trying to go deeper and to find the fundamental principles. And well, one of the things you talked about was this this um call it an allergy to the totalitarian state and having people tell you what you can say and what you can't say and what you have to say. And for those of us who didn't know who Jordan Peterson was until, you know, call it 10 years ago, that's when you came to public attention. you know, you

had this YouTube channel and and I'll just confess, I was not someone who subscribed to your YouTube channel when you were a professor at at Toronto or or at Harvard, but there was that moment that you were like, I can't, going back to Joan, I can't hold the truth that I believe inside me when I know what I believe I'm called to say. And so would you say that was the moment at which the first step, the first, call it the first step on the Jacob's ladder that the rest of us saw happened. And and

and like we'll get to Jacob, but but there were some wounds there. When you take a step of faith into the unknown, as you said, you're called to do some sacrificing. You were a liked guy. People liked going to your classes. People liked listening to your lectures. People liked reading what you wrote. And then overnight you were liked by a lot of people still, but not at all by a whole lot of others. Tell us kind of how how that shaped the course of what came next. Well, the courses that I taught at Harvard and

at the University of Toronto were the highest ranked courses in my department and among the most well-known courses at both universities. And so students the the most typical comment that I would get in student evaluations was that the course changed their lives completely. In fact, one of the things that frustrated my students is that they found themselves unable generally to speak about what they had learned outside the course to people who hadn't taken it because it was revolutionary enough. So that they couldn't easily transmit it to people who hadn't who hadn't been exposed to the

context necessary to understand the stories, let's say. And so, you know, that was great fun. It's great fun to teach at a university and have your courses to have people flock to your courses and to have students respond in that profound manner. And so, um, I knew already I I probably knew by 1983, a little later than that, 1986 I suppose, somewhere around there, that what I was working on had revolutionary significance. And then I could see that making itself manifest even at McGill because I taught a course there to my peers. Uh we had

a meeting every week that they would come to despite having many other courses where we discussed some of the ideas for example that are akin to the ones I discussed today. And then at Harvard well the impact was the same. and then at the University of Toronto and then I started working with this little television station in Ontario and that brought it to more people and I put my courses online and that started to expand. But then uh there was a step change in 2016 when my idiot government decided that it was okay to tell

me what to say or to demand that. And I thought, see, I knew by then. I knew this this cuz people have complimented me on my bravery, which I it it isn't I mean, I appreciate that, I suppose, although what do they say? A compliment is more difficult to take than a reproach. And um but it's also not true. I it I didn't keep saying what I was saying because I'm brave. I kept saying what I was saying because I was a lot more afraid of God than of Justin Trudeau. And so, you know, and

see, I I mean that I don't I don't mean that in a like a merely propositional way, you see, because I already understood by then that there is no deeper meaning than adventure. And that there's and that the true pathway to adventure is the truth. And that the reason for that, there's a reason for that. And the reason is is that you see if you decide that you're going to say what you believe to be true. See, that's a proclamation of faith. And it's a procl it's the proclamation that claims that the tr the truth

will set you free. And also that the truth is the word that operates on the chaos of the world to produce the order that is good. The sacrificial truth is the spirit that operates on the possibility of the world, the unrevealed possibility of the world to produce the order that is good. And see, I know that's true. I I understand that. I know it's true. And so then when someone comes along and says, "Well, you can't do that anymore." I think, "What the hell do you know about it?" like says who you know and I'm

a strategic character and I worked with a lot of people as a consultant and as a clinical psychologist and I knew perfectly well that if you were entering the frey the first thing you do is deprive your enemy so to speak of any power over you and I thought it through with my wife and I thought well there's nothing you can take away from me that frightens me so do your worst you bastards and so I lost legal term that's a legal term I lost my job essentially it became impossible to continue it and I

lost my clinical practice I also had a private enterprise and that remained intact and so that was pretty useful but you know if I am at a university and I can't say what I think what the hell am I doing at the university the only thing I have to offer my students is what I actually think and and I'm I'm a very rigorous scientist and a very rigorous thinker and all I ever did was tell my students what I believed to be true. And that doesn't mean I was always correct because no one's always correct,

but certainly my orientation was as upward as I could make it. And I could tell that that was the case because of the effect that I had on my students. And they weren't taking to the streets, waving signs, proclaiming to the world that at 19 they were the masters of the moral universe and knew how to set the economy right despite never having done anything at all in their life. They were going home and trying to stabilize their families and do their duties and do their homework and turn themselves into the sort of people who

could take their place in the world. And so all of that appeared to be positive. And then of course the consequence of that, the collapse of my my academic career, the demolition of my research projects and the loss of my clinical practice and then like 10 years of pursuit by the governing body of my profession. Rather pointless pursuit on their part because they're supposed to be re-educating me at the moment, which of course is an impossibility. and they can't they can't find anybody to do it which is you know ultimately hilarious in a completely preposterous

manner but all the you know it was it was terrible in many ways and but the terrible part of it wasn't so much the foregoing of what I had been doing because I stopped being a professor and a clinician but I didn't stop what I was doing and the terrible part was starting to speak to much broader audiences in public and to find out how deep the desperation was amongst the people that I was talking to. I think I really experienced that first in 2017 because I rented a theater and did a series of lectures

on the Old Testament and which is a like that's a surreal business move. You can imagine going to a bank with that as a business plan is I'm thinking about renting a theater for like 17 nights and lecturing to yeah to young men about the about the Old Testament. And I think I'll start that with a one-hour lecture, two-hour lecture on the first sentence of Genesis. Uh you want to you want to lend me some money? And but the but the theater sold out you know and and that was very interesting but it was also

then that I saw see when I was a clinician I was dealing with people's pain sort of one-on-one and that was a lot because I saw a lot of pain and a lot of complexity but it was kind of bounded you know right and I did that about 13 13 to 20 hours a week quite a But but it was it was bounded. But then when I started speaking more publicly, I started to see that on this immense scale. And that was that was rough. And two parts of that were rough seeing it. I especially

saw it among young men. Um you know, mostly men watch you YouTube. And so part of the reason that my messaging appealed to young men was a secondary consequence of it being on YouTube. Most of my students at the university were female. But I got a real sense of how desperate the situation had become for young men and and that was painful very and continues to be so. But what was more painful I think was the fact that it didn't take that much to set it right. M you know like I talked to a lot

of young men I don't know how many thousands of them now who have told me that you know they started to listen to what I was saying or read what I was writing and that they put their lives together and I thought well that wasn't that hard really it's like it didn't take that much effort it's why was that so lacking 60 years of turning young men over to the bloody progressives who do nothing but demoralize them for their masculinity from the time they're boys to the time they're men while simultane ously lying in every

possible way to young women. You know that was but the pain I think was the magnitude of the suffering and and the multiplicity of it combined with the observation that the pathway forward was there all the time and in some ways everyone knew it and had ceased to make it clear and it's a great privilege to to partake in that. But it's it's also I don't know how to describe it. You know, if if someone comes up See, I have conversations with people all the time that are like the conversations you have or don't have

even with the people you're most intimate with because people come up to me like they know me because they've watched what I've been talking about for maybe hundreds of hours. And and so then they tell me the very very deep things about their lives and they're very positive things but they're not nothing and there's a lot of it. I mean it's great. You know, there's nothing you could imagine that would be better if you had any sense than to imagine yourself in a situation where wherever you went in the world that people you don't know

would come up to you and tell you how much better their life is, their family's lives, because they've been paying attention and putting what they've learned into practice. That's a that's a very good deal. Like I can't seriously imagine anything better than that. But uh well, we've got nothing. We've got a room that's uh populated probably half with students. And when we announced that you were coming, I received quite a few uh emails from students who said how thrilled they were and how excited they were that to have the opportunity to hear from you in

person because they've been listening to it. But I got two that I want to read to you. Sure. And and I I remember watching one of my first videos I saw of you was a similar conversation you were having with someone about the value of encouragement, how important encouragement was and how little of it that was actually needed in order to have the impact that you need. And so here's let me just read to you. This was from um one of our law one of our students who said this. He said, "Hold on a second."

This was a student talking about the impact that you had on his life. He said, "I often say that Dr. Jordan Peterson was my gateway drug to Christianity during COVID lockdown. Feeling emotionally drawn to religion but still intellectually resistant, I stumbled upon Dr. Peterson's YouTube lectures. Once he helped me understand the psychological value of getting my life in order and accepting personal responsibility, I was able to see that taking up your cross was the most pra practical and logically sound advice for living a fulfilled life. I converted to Christianity a few months later. It's one

of our students and I I want you to hear that not just as a story. This is someone here that says you you helped them get on the the Jacob's ladder. Like I saw that sitting alone useless trying to figure out what responsibility to take on wasn't the answer that I was looking for and there was something bigger and deeper. And here's from another female student. Dr. Dr. Peterson helped me open a path in my life that led me back to faith in God. His online work challenged me to engage the biblical stories as well

as the Christian faith with an intellectual seriousness, cander, and humility. In doing so, he equipped me with the tools necessary to tear down those roadblocks that had originally led me to abandon my faith and cast it to the side of the road during my college years and in my early to mid20s. We don't have time for me to read everything that that I've received, let alone all that you've received. But as you said, encouragement is is encourage. It gives you courage to continue to do what you're doing. And I want you to understand that there

are times when you're going to be shot with arrows. There's times that you're going to be criticized. There's times that you're going to to be exhausted. But I want you to carry with you when you do the encouragement and the life-changing impact you have had on students not just across the country but here in this room at Pepperdine. So I want to say thank you for that. But I've got a follow-up question. I've got a follow-up question because I I think I'm not the only one in here that wonders what the answer to this question

is. You talked with with incredible personal emotional impact about the people not just today but in the past who have come to you and said Dr. Peterson, because of my uh interactions with you, whether it's uh through something like this or watching your YouTube or meeting you on the street, I have decided to, for example, get rid of pornography in my life because that is an imaginary escape away from the reality of human interaction. I've decided that I'm going to get a job. I've decided I'm going to repair my relationship with a father or a

mother or a sister or a brother. And and you you won't believe how much my life has changed. So you get that all the time. And you've also just heard that people say, "My life has changed not just on the how I'm living and how I'm feeling. It's on my eternal destiny." So, I want you to react if you would to the relative level of encouragement that each of those has. I'm a better person. I'm a I'm a more productive individual in addition to somebody else saying, "Not only are those things true about me, but

I have decided that I'm going to follow Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior." Tell me, tell me how those reactions hit you. Are they different? Are they the same? They're different in depth. Tell me. Well, I suppose that's why we've used the image of a mountain or a sequence of mountains for that matter forever because you you can aim at and journey towards the top of the mountain, but each step on the way partakes of the pattern of climbing the mountain. And so you might say that the cross sits at the top of the

highest mountain way of thinking about well that's why we that's why we we we play that out in our architecture. That's why it's played out in Brazil for example, right? That the cross is at the top of the highest mountain. And that's true because why is that true? Because it represents the ultimate challenge of life. You see this is this is the biological argument. I'm I'm bringing Brett Weinstein who's an evolutionary biologist along my tour that starts next week for three for three lectures and I want to try this Abraham story out on him because

I think it's the antithesis of the selfish gene notion is that no human fatherhood is very complex and if you want to propagate your genes down the generations to speak like an evolutionary biologist well obviously sex is the gateway to that or it's a necessary every condition, but it's it's necessary but not sufficient. You have to establish the pattern of benevolent fatherhood that echoes down the generations. Then that puts your life in eternity, right? And that has a pattern, an eternal pattern. And the closer you get to that eternal pattern, the more you touch on

the deeply religious. And the the the the foundation of that eternal pattern is the ultimate sacrifice upward. And that obviously has to be the willingness to completely confront the reality of not only death but unjust death or not only that but the unjust death not only of the innocent but of the good to confront that as an existential reality and to delve into hell itself. And how can you live fully if you if you don't take that on as a obligation because that's the biggest you might say that's the that's the obstacle of life that

that's the story of the obstacle of life and if you can master death and hell then obviously you master everything else and at minimum that's what the Christian passion story means. Now what does that indicate metaphysically or ultimately? Well, you know, there's only so much you can say as a finite creature. You know, everything devolves into mystery. The concept of God himself that that shades into the ineffable. It it's beyond explanation. But it's at least that and that's not nothing, right? That's that's plenty. That that'll give you something to chew on for most of the

decades that you manage to, you know, to keep yourself moving forward. And I just don't see how there's any possible objection to that, you know. And I I figured that out partly when I was figuring out the story of the brazen serpent in the in the Exodus story. It's actually in Numbers, if I remember correctly, because it's near the end of the Exodus journey. You know, when when the Israelites are being tormented by poisonous snakes and deserve it because they're whiny victims and they're rebellion, they're rebellious against the evil patriarchy. I mean, nothing ever changes.

And seriously, and the consequences of that is that they remain lost and that God sends poisonous snakes to bite them, which seems a bit much. And but it's just a indication that you can take a bad situation and if you turn yourself into a whiny, rebellious, narcissistic, hedonistically oriented, demented victim that hell's just going to get deeper and here come the snakes. And so, you know, so the Israelites get tired of being bitten and they call on Moses to intercede with God, as annoying as that is. And God says, "I'm not getting rid of the

damn snakes. And but what I'll do is I'll you go gather up all the bronze that your people have and make a staff." And that's Moses' staff, right? That's the living staff of tradition. It's the staff that turns into the serpent that devours all serpents. It's the tree of life. It's the It's the magic wand of the wizard. It's the flag that you plant when you go to new lands. That's Moses' staff. And to put a serpent on that poisonous serpent and to make it large so that everyone can see it and have the Israelites

come and look at it voluntarily and if they look at what poisons them voluntarily, then they'll become immune to the poison. And that's the secret to life. It it literally is that that's the pharmarmacon. That's the symbol of healing that physicians have used for centuries because voluntary exposure to what poisons you cures you. And so you're obligated, and you know that with regards to your children, to send them out into the world to take their little doses of poison and become fortified along the way. And there's no reason that doesn't have an ultimate pattern. And

it's clear that the ultimate pattern is the passion story because the passion story is literally literally the story of the best imaginable person far beyond innocent but actually positively good who suffers the most unjust possible painful death at the hands of his of tyrants, enemies and the betrayal of his family. Like it doesn't in front of his mother. In front of his mother who loves him who loves who loves him. Yes. When there was an option given to sacrifice somebody else who was right. Absolutely. And an option of course to use power and to and

to and to and to use force and to take on an earthly crown say and to to accept the temptation the third temptation that's offered in the desert to become the king of the world instead of what? King of eternity. Well, why would you be king of the world if you could be king of eternity? And then you might say, well, what does it even mean to be king of eternity? And it means, well, to face death and prevail and to face malevolence and to transcend it and to live out the pattern that's part of

the Abrahamic story and to become the eternal father who establishes the kingdom that lasts forever. It's like if you once you understand that, well, there's no going back. Not if you have any sense. Like that's the pearl of great price that Christ talks about in the gospels is that once you understand what's ultimately valuable, you're not going to trade it for the treasures that rust and can be stolen. The immediate hydonic pleasures that's the that's the um that's the Homer Simpson like you know what whatever things I choose right now that make me happy. That's

a problem for future Homer. Future Homer. Yeah. For future Homer. That's a problem for future Homer. So, we've we've got students here who are are looking at their future and trying to like how do we get on this pathway? What is the what's the first step? You we know there's a Jacob's ladder. I mean, take taking your your your imagery from the Bible, the the the Jacob's I see it's there. H how do I step on? What's my first step? What do I do? Where do I begin? Well, the the standard answer to that is

something like confession, repentance, and atonement, right? So, so let's take that apart. Confession. Things aren't the way I would want them to be. Like, here's the way I'm suffering. This is what you do in psychotherapy or what you used to do when they're actual we were actually psychotherapists. You're the first part of it is a confession. It's like, well, there's something wrong with my life. That's humility. There's something wrong with my life. I'm suffering too much. Things have gone sideways. Okay. The next part is well why you know and and that and that's separating the

wheat from the from the chaff, let's say. Well, some of it some of it's going to be situational and you want to assess that and hopefully some of it's a pattern of your own error, you know, and you you want that to be the case because if it's the world that's set against you, then you're in Job's situation according to his wife. If the world is set against you, the world and God, you can shake your fist at the sky and curse God and die and that's pretty much what you've got. But if you're the

idiot, well, that's kind of an optimistic idea because maybe you could stop doing the stupid things that you're doing and then terrible things wouldn't happen as much. At least it's worth a crack. And so that's the Well, that's part of the confession. And then the repentance is, well, here's things I did wrong and I could stop doing them. That's part of that sacrificial offering and the atonement. That's to be at one again and to start that pathway forward. And so that's that's radical truth. That's another way of thinking about it. And there's various ways of

doing this. Carl Jung said that, you know, psychotherapy was unnecessary in the face of a supreme moral effort. And and he meant a supreme moral effort. And he was a good example of exactly that. And the one of the simple ways I suppose is here's two pieces of advice for what they're worth is look around and see if there are things around you that you could set in order, which means you know how that you would set in order. Like that's an ambition that's also appropriately humbled because you might see things that could be better,

but you just don't have the bloody discipline to manage it. And so if you try, you fail. But if you look, if you set your sights properly, you can think, well, is there anything around me, no matter how trivial, that someone as useless as me could make better? And I did that off. This is a behavioral approach. No, I mean, when I had people who were very confused and infantileized, let's say, and who were still living in their, you know, high school bedroom when they were 40, the first thing we'd start to do is just

put have them put their room in order. And you think, well, that's trivial. It's like that is not trivial in a chaotic household. You go into a chaotic household and try to set one thing in order and you see what happens like death and hell will make themselves manifest immediately. And so it because because it's all because it's all part of the same pattern. You know, if a household is chaotic, there's 10,000 decisions that haven't been made. And as soon as you decide to fix one of them, you'll instantly encounter the spirit that's responsible for

the entire mess. And believe me, you'll learn plenty doing that. But it's a place that people can start. And you know, if you're trying to sort yourself out and you're failing, then aim lower, right? You're not on your knees enough. It's you bit off more than you can chew, like Eve and Adam in the garden in their pride. And so you have to keep lowering your aim until someone as adult as you can hit the target. And that's painful because maybe it's only a foot away, you know, and you're pretty embarrassed that at 40 you're

trying to figure out how to organize your sock drawer, but you got to start wherever you are. And the thing that's so interesting about that, Christ makes reference to this in the Gospels is that he says to those who have more, more will be given, and from those who have nothing, everything will be taken. And the economists call that the Matthew principle. And it's a principle of nonlinear transformation. Technically once you start moving downward the process accelerates. It's not linear right. So one thing spiral. Yeah. Exactly. But the same is true moving upward. And so

you know you can take these small steps forward. Exactly. And that accelerates and it does that quite dramatically. And of course that's what I hear from these you know these young men in particular who come and talk to me. It's almost like that could be a really good chapter for a book like clean your room something like that. Maybe maybe that should be one of your one 12 rules for maybe I read it somewhere. You you mentioned um you know Christ's teaching in this regard and and it reminds me of of so so the the

fishermen are fishing and you know we've got the two instance like okay we got nothing here Jesus cast your nets on the other side. So, right, don't don't just give up. Take the next step. And then and then as you get farther up to Jacob's ladder, there's another time where Jesus says to them, he says, "Push out into the deeper water." Right? There's more there. That's what happens to Moses. It's scarier. Yeah. And it's riskier and it requires faith and it requires sacrifice and it requires conquering, but there's more there in the deeper water. And

that's what I think what you're trying to tell all of us and you're trying to tell the world in your in your uh approach is take a step of sacrificial faith in a journey upward upward selfless t take on the next load to carry. Endure the suffering that comes with it. Welcome it. maybe even welcome it because you know as we know this is transformative. Well, it it can be it can be uh what was what was the book? Um antifragile. So you the the more you take on the stronger your bones get the stronger

you're going to be able to handle the next load. And so I think that's kind of is that fair to say it's summarizing kind of what your what your message is to our students? I would say more deeply than that like like as I referred to in the story of Abraham that actually summarizes the process of adaptation itself. It's like to learn means to move forward adventurously and to learn means to become more resilient and more skilled like there's no difference between those concepts. Of course, that's the case. And you know, you said there's more

there's more pro provision in the deeper waters. And well, then you say, well, what's what's the provision in the deepest of all possible waters? And that's the story of the passion is that the secret to eternal life is in the voluntary confrontation and acceptance, even welcoming of death and hell. It's a hell of a thing to know, you know, but but there's an optimism in it because the underlying message, which is the message that you have to believe if you believe that human beings are capable of thriving and that have some relationship to the eternal,

is that whatever you face calls forth within you something that can face that. And so no matter what you are, no matter what opposes you, the force that abides with you is more than up to the task. That's what God tells Job, for example. Amen. Amen. Amen. But that's what you tell your children. You know, you you know this. That's what you tell your children if you love them. And that's what you act out. You say, "Look, kid, you can do it." Well, what does that mean? You can do that. Do it. What does that

mean? It means that in the voluntary confrontation aspects of yourself that have been here to for hidden will make themselves known. And we know this. We know we know this. For example, if you determine to undertake a stressful task voluntarily as opposed to begrudgingly, the consequence of that consequences of that decision cascade all the way down to the genetic level in that if you put yourself in new circumstances and you do that voluntarily, you turn on genes that code for that pattern of behavior in all the cells of your body. And so the transformation is

total. And so and that's part of that what what would you say that's part of you accessing you might say metaphysically you're accessing the realm of hidden ancestral wisdom really at the genetic level. I mean you learn as a consequence of incorporating new information you know as you take on new challenges. That's up that's an that's that's transformation in consequence of information. But there's transformation at the psychophysiological level too because just as when you lift weights your muscles become stronger, when you lift spiritual weight, so to speak, your soul flourishes. And that's and it matters

if it's voluntary. It's it's a crucial distinguishing factor. It has to be vol. We know this from psychotherapy. If you expose people with anxiety disorders to their trigger involuntarily, they get worse. But if they take on that exposure voluntarily, then they become braver and they transcend their anxiety. This has been known thoroughly across all the psychological schools for at least it's going on a hundred years. It's the one of the few things that all psychological schools have converged on. There's a few others. the the beneficial aspect of truth, for example, and the transformation of re

the transformational nature of voluntarily revealed truth, but that's a form of exposure anyways. Right. Right. Right. Right. Well, I I I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but our time is coming to an end, but I don't want to finish before I have the opportunity to uh to express our appreciation and uh to give you an award um that u that I've got right here. So, let's come forward here. Let me explain to you what this is. As I told you when we were talking um in the green room before coming out here,

Pepperdine has an annual theme for the year and the theme for this year is freedom and it comes from the verse in 2 Corinthians where where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom and on behalf of those who you have helped gain freedom in in their personal life or in their spiritual life to the communities that those people as a result of following the Abrahamic approach in and having their communities blessed by them in addition to themselves and for the communities at large around the world who are being blessed by your teachings on

freedom. I want to present to you on behalf of Pepperdine University the 2025 award president's award for freedom. Thank you [Applause] [Music] sir. Do you want to say a few words about that before we close? [Music] [Applause] So, so this is an obelisk and there's a pyramid on the top and you that was on purpose and so that's a that's a hierarchy of value like and and and it's an emblematic of a journey upward, right? And so in in the the ziggur and the ziggurats were built in in in archaic times as you were traveling

up the ziggurat you were moving forward to heaven right and then there was a competition between ziggurat builders that's memorialized in the tower of babel because you can build false ziggurats right in when you're a grandizing yourself which is what the builders of the tower of babel did and so then you might ask yourself well what should be at the pinnacle of the ziggurat right and in Washington your monument is capped with aluminum, which was the most valuable metal at that time. So, the thing at the pinnacle should be the most valuable. That's the idea.

Now, you notice that on the back of your dollar bill, you have a pyramid with an eye on top of it. Well, so what does it say in the sermon on the mount, God? Christ tells his followers, aim at the stars, right? Put God before everything else, right? Which means orient yourself towards the highest good. Assume that the people around you are made in the image of God. And then what? Pay attention to the moment. Orient yourself properly. Then pay attention to the moment. Right? And that's that open eye that's at the top of the

pyramid. And that means that the that once you set your eyes on the stars, your open eyes will show you the path. And that's all exemplified in that architectural monument. Amen. Amen. We're going to take a picture and then I have some closing I'll have some closing comments in just a moment. We're going to take a picture looking at these these guys right here. Okay. All right. One more round of applause for Dr. Peterson. Thank you. So you [Applause] [Music] Thank you all for joining us today for this President Speaker Series event. I hope you

enjoyed the our time with Dr. Peterson as much as I did. At Pepperdine, we talk about things that matter and that's the goal of this President Speaker series. We want to put the most important voices in conversation on campus for the good not just of our students but for the entire community. We hope you'll join us for future events in this series. Just follow Pepperdine on social media and stay informed of all of our upcoming events. Thank you again for joining us. God bless you and safe travels home.