https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=secTABV3nM8
It’s called We Who Wrestle with God, and I took that title, which I’m very happy about the title by the way, I took that title from the meaning of the word Israel. So when I was doing it back in 2017, I did a series of lectures on Genesis, and there’s a story in Genesis, in the biblical book of Genesis, of Jacob wrestling with an angel or wrestling with God. The story is ambiguous, and he wrestles through the night with the angel or with God, and his hip is damaged as a consequence, but he is victorious, which is strange, to say the least, because you wouldn’t think that if you were wrestling with an angel or with God that you would be victorious. And the angel or God announces in the morning that he now has a new name, and his name is Israel, and that’s where the word that we’re familiar with comes from. That’s the story it’s derived from. Israel, so those are the chosen people, the people of Israel, are those who wrestle with God. And I thought, well, that’s so interesting. It’s so interesting. Why? Well, because we all do that. And if you’re tilted in the atheistic direction, you might say, well, that’s preposterous. And I would say, no, it’s actually more true of you if you’re an avowed atheist even than anyone else, because you’re wrestling so hard that it’s become a cornerstone of your identity. You might be antithetical, let’s assume, to the religious enterprise, but you’re still so obsessed with issues of morality, let’s say, and about the stories that surround morality and about the ethics that should orient us, that that’s become a cardinal part of your life. So follow God or oppose God, you’re pretty much stuck with the wrestling. And the notion that the chosen people of God are those who wrestle with God is such an interesting idea, because the story doesn’t make the case that it’s the believers who are chosen. It makes the case that those who struggle are those who are chosen. And it makes the case, too, that in that struggle, that struggle can be intense enough to cause damage. Maybe if you walk away from a wrestling match with God and the only thing that’s damaged is your hip, you’ve had a pretty good bout, you might say that. And also, it’s such a strange idea that the person who does that wrestling, let’s say in good faith, could emerge victorious. That’s about as optimistic an idea as you could possibly promote. And so, I was very struck by that. I was struck by the idea that, that to be chosen properly by God is to wrestle with that which is highest. That’s right, not to believe it, but to wrestle with it, right? To be obsessed with it in some sense, to allow it to grip you, the question of what should be uppermost. And you might say, well, nothing should be uppermost. And, well, there’s a problem with that, because then what the hell are you doing? Or are you fragmented in 50 different directions if nothing is uppermost? Does that just mean confusion and chaos reigns? If you’re not psychologically integrated around a single point, let’s say, are you not just confused and chaotic and also maybe hopeless? And if your society isn’t oriented towards a single destination, let’s say, isn’t abiding by, isn’t motivated by a shared vision, then isn’t your society confused and fragmented and hopeless? And doesn’t that imply that there’s something like a unity of purpose? Because the alternative would be disunity of purpose, right, or absence of purpose. None of those seem to be particularly positive. And wouldn’t it be something if that purpose was found in the act of the wrestling? Not in a totalitarian belief or not in a belief that requires the abdication of reason and not in the blind following of ideology and not in a hopeless and corrosively bitter cynicism, but in the act of contending itself. And I think that’s such an optimistic idea. And so part of those ideas, some of those ideas, the initial elements of those ideas, were making themselves manifest to me when I wrote Beyond Order. And I wrote a rule, which I’m going to talk about tonight. Imagine, this is rule two, imagine who you could be and then aim single-mindedly at that.