Jordan Peterson: No One Gets Away with Anything
The Book of Mormon says 4 times that “no unclean thing” can “dwell with God”/“inherit the kingdom of heaven”/“enter into his kingdom”:
Wherefore, if ye have sought to do wickedly in the days of your probation, then ye are found unclean before the judgment-seat of God; and no unclean thing can dwell with God; wherefore, ye must be cast off forever. (1 Nephi 10:21)
And I say unto you again that he cannot save them in their sins; for I cannot deny his word, and he hath said that no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of heaven; therefore, how can ye be saved, except ye inherit the kingdom of heaven? Therefore, ye cannot be saved in your sins. (Alma 11:27)
But behold, an awful death cometh upon the wicked; for they die as to things pertaining to things of righteousness; for they are unclean, and no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of God; but they are cast out, and consigned to partake of the fruits of their labors or their works, which have been evil; and they drink the dregs of a bitter cup. (Alma 40:26)
And no unclean thing can enter into his kingdom; therefore nothing entereth into his rest save it be those who have washed their garments in my blood, because of their faith, and the repentance of all their sins, and their faithfulness unto the end. (3 Nephi 27:19)
(Thanks to https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mormon/simple.html for enabling this simple search of the Book of Mormon.) When I was a believing Mormon, this scared me—in a way that probably had good effects on my behavior.
On a lot of fronts, Jordan Peterson has done a brilliant job of giving powerful nonsupernaturalist interpretation of sacred texts. His book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief goes into the most detail on that front. But his other books, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos and Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life do a fair bit of this. In everything I am aware of (which also includes many YouTube videos, though a small fraction of his total stock), he has not touched on the Book of Mormon. Yet, he gives a good nonsupernaturalist interpretation of “no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of heaven” when he says “No one gets away with anything.”
In this post I have two different versions of his bit elaborating on “No one gets away with anything.” The video at the top of this post is a 3-and-a-half minute clip. The other version is last 14 minutes of his lecture on meaning for moderns of the story of Abraham is the other. That starts at the 46:00 mark, where he is saying “You wake up in the morning, and what do you have in front of you?” (The 14 minutes are followed by a Q&A that is also interesting, but deals with different topics.)
Now I’m scared again.