Peterson responds like this:

… only if you think ruling over hell constitutes success… and this is what Milton’s Satan said “Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven”. Kim Jong Un… Yes; he’s a ruler. What’s his domain? Hell!
#1769(02:13:46)

Peterson of course here has in mind all sorts of wrongs that go beyond deceit. Whenever we want to do something wrong, as he says in one of his lectures, it is like ‘trying to distort the fabric of reality’. To him, we can never get away with toying with something that is obviously too big for us; hell is the inevitable result for those who try.

In John Milton’s epic poem ‘Paradise Lost’ (which Peterson refers to), Satan is talking to his ‘lieutenant’ Beelzebub, trying to convince him hell is a better place for them than heaven. He says this:

Here we shall rule undisturbed, and in my opinion,
To rule is something worth wanting, even in Hell:
It’s better to rule in hell than be a servant in Heaven.

Satan, previously a heavenly archangel, who swapped ‘heavenly light’ for ‘mournful gloom’ somehow manages to be glad that he’s the one in charge in this domain and that he gets to call the shots even if it is over a desolate, miserable and horrendous bottomless pit.

The profound nature of Milton’s poem struck me with even greater force when I encountered the same quote again in “The Great Divorce”, a fabulous work of allegorical fiction I personally ranked the best book I read last year. In the key passage, C.S. Lewis writes this:

…The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”. There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy — that is, to reality.

I asked myself if (and how much) we are like Milton’s Satan? I saw how, even in daily small matters (never mind big ones), we choose misery over and over again, usually for something we deem, in the moment, to be of more value. Perhaps we’d rather win an argument and humiliate people and have our relationships suffer in the process rather than listen to one another patiently and with a readiness to humble ourselves and apologize should we be found in the wrong — thereby showing how we’d rather have war instead of peace. And, coming back to the earlier case of deception, we’d rather manipulate people if we stand to gain, showing we’re indeed no different from Satan who chooses hellish discord rather than joyful harmony — except, thank God, for the fact that at times we regret our deeds and seek to amend them.

It is true that we recognize a bit of selfishness in ourselves but, as far as our perception takes us, nothing to be compared with the level of malevolence found in this Satan. We’re not that bad… And perhaps we’re right because after all, Milton’s Satan launched a full-on war against God almighty — and we’re not this proud and delusional.

However, if we daily make choices that show we’d rather stay selfish and not learn how to love, or that we’d rather display pride and not learn patience, kindness and goodness, then it doesn’t matter what we think we are, it is our actions that make a case of who we really are: people who choose hell and not heaven.

Milton’s Satan mounted up an army to fight the Lord’s angels to have him dethroned; even if he could never succeed. But he tried. And daily, we decide whether we fight for the good or the bad, whether for God’s reign or Satan’s. The choice is made here and now, in our normal day-to-day experiences, and not in some hypothetical world. Every day, we decide whether we want God’s dominion or not; we decide whether we’ll humble ourselves under God’s rule or not.

We daily choose whether by God’s help we’re going to be faithful and trustworthy servants seeking other people’s good or we choose the hell that is injustice, exploitation and dissensions that are characteristic of any place where each is pursuing his own interest at whatever cost. We decide whether by God’s help we’re going to seek a righteous rule or if we want the hell that is tyranny. We decide whether we’re going to live godly and holy and self-controlled lives or whether we want the hell that is the recklessness in self-indulgence manifested in drunkenness, immorality, rage, etc.

It’s for this reason I found Lewis’ statement below (from the same book) to be spot on:

And that’s why, at the end of all things… the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except Heaven”, and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.

Each day we’re given, we choose whether we’re going to seek God’s “kingdom and righteousness”, or whether we’re going to seek for the hell that is our self-assertion — which inevitably sets us against each other, as we seek to establish our dominance.

One thing became apparent to me; it is not by surprise we ‘are sent’ to hell. We don’t “end up” in hell as if by accident when it has been what we freely preferred all along. Hell is only a continuation of our daily choices. C.S. Lewis, few paragraphs later, rightly concludes:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.

Thanks be to God that in the end, the Lord’s dominion will be absolute, from everlasting to everlasting, and every rebellion and evil crushed. I only don’t want to be purged together with the evil that is ever challenging his righteous rule. So, brethren, “Be not deceived” into thinking that there’s a place for anything (or anyone) that now displeases the Lord of glory, for, as Paul says, “wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 6:9)