"Peterson, the Canadian clinical psychologist and author of the influential best-seller, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, focuses on what the story of Noah means for us today.
So, what can we learn from Noah and the Flood?
The story begins with a claim as fresh as this morning's news — "the wickedness of man was great in the earth" (Genesis 6:5). In considering the Soviet gulags and the Nazi concentration camps, it is hard to deny the existence of human wickedness. Nor do we not have to look to Soviet communists or Nazi brownshirts to find deep depravity. Sooner or later, notes Peterson, "You'll tangle with someone who's malevolent right to the core, and maybe it'll be you that is malevolent."
The story continues, "And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, 'I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them'" (Genesis 6:7-8).
God goes from delighting in creation earlier in Genesis to sorrowing over creation. Does God really change? Peterson does not take up this question.
Not everyone, however, viewed God as an enemy.
"Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God" (Genesis 6:9). What does it mean to walk with God? Peterson describes Christ's Sermon on the Mount as "the closest thing we have to a fully articulated description of what it would mean to walk with God, so that you're in the ark when the flood comes."
According to Genesis, the rains and the flood do not last forever.
Peterson's interpretation....When encountering the floods of life, some people believe that their troubles will last forever, that the rains will ruin everything, and that there is nothing they can do about it."
Lifesite
So, what can we learn from Noah and the Flood?
The story begins with a claim as fresh as this morning's news — "the wickedness of man was great in the earth" (Genesis 6:5). In considering the Soviet gulags and the Nazi concentration camps, it is hard to deny the existence of human wickedness. Nor do we not have to look to Soviet communists or Nazi brownshirts to find deep depravity. Sooner or later, notes Peterson, "You'll tangle with someone who's malevolent right to the core, and maybe it'll be you that is malevolent."
The story continues, "And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, 'I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them'" (Genesis 6:7-8).
God goes from delighting in creation earlier in Genesis to sorrowing over creation. Does God really change? Peterson does not take up this question.
Not everyone, however, viewed God as an enemy.
"Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God" (Genesis 6:9). What does it mean to walk with God? Peterson describes Christ's Sermon on the Mount as "the closest thing we have to a fully articulated description of what it would mean to walk with God, so that you're in the ark when the flood comes."
According to Genesis, the rains and the flood do not last forever.
Peterson's interpretation....When encountering the floods of life, some people believe that their troubles will last forever, that the rains will ruin everything, and that there is nothing they can do about it."
Lifesite
