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My comment on this video:

Whatever you believe, the best way to absolutely guarantee that you will be wrong, eventually, is to never consider the possibility that you're wrong. Never consider the possibility that you're wrong, and you will be wrong about something, eventually. The chances of it are 100%. It is statistically impossible to avoid. 

As an American expat living in Mexico for most of the last 8 years, who used to love "Dia de los Muertos" imagery for aesthetic reasons, a country with large roadside chapels dedicated to Santa Muerte, and where people dress up in elaborate death costumes and solicit tips in tourist destinations in May (Mexico is spiritually very dark), and as a songwriter and performer who embraced darkness for decades as a means of "defeating it," even naming my band the Nathan Payne Memorial Service for a short time, as a joke,

I can say from many years of personal experience that it's not a joke. I was never into witchcraft, and music that is dark for darkness' sake bores me (devil stuff, usually), but I embraced drugs and darkness for a long time, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that if you're lucky, and God's mercy is shining on you in spite of your attempts to reject it, the best outcome will be that you have only wasted vast amounts of time. That's the best you can hope for.

The "exposure therapy" angle is interesting, but Jordan Peterson is missing the point of the bronze serpent. It wasn't about facing the scary thing that was biting them. It was about turning death into life. Looking at the bronze serpent was an act of faith, as in faith that it could save them, based on the promise of God through His prophet Moses. The bronze serpent was a precursor of the cross.

Mexico is all about "exposure therapy;" I looked at a furnished house in Puebla with a statue of the devil 5 feet tall, placed prominently in the living room. You can visit a Santa Muerte chapel on the side of major highways. At the tourist destination I mentioned earlier (El Pipila in Guanajuato), a father led his toddler son to the guy dressed up as death. The guy wasn't dark. He was a normal dad. Obviously, the intent is to face death and defeat fear. I get it.

But there's a difference in facing death and putting statues of it in your living room. There's a difference in copping to the potential horror of what may or may not lie beyond the grave, and wearing it, playing with it, naming your band after it, dressing up like it, and decorating your life with candy skulls and beautiful monsters. Jesus does not love Halloween. He died to defeat it. And through his stripes, we are healed (Isaiah 53:5).

Thanks for listening.