We Need to Talk About Jordan Peterson

I'm amazed at my own belief and I don't understand it. Protestant, you're the worst at the moment.

Jordan Peterson’s Rise and His Interest in Christianity

Jordan Peterson has taken the world by storm. He is one of the most popular voices in the world today and his recent new contract with the Daily Choir means he will continue to influence millions with his ideas.

Peterson's relationship to Christianity is particularly interesting. Let's take a look at how Peterson's thinking about Christianity has evolved over the years and then we'll come to some conclusions.

So make sure you stick around until the end to hear them. About nine years ago, Peterson released a video titled What Matters, where he revealed that he was not an atheist anymore.

I'm not an atheist anymore because I don't look at the world that way anymore. I'm not a materialist anymore. I don't think the world's made out of matter. I think it's made out of what matters.

It's made out of meaning. Here, Peterson doesn't say that he has become a Christian, but he does talk a lot about Christianity in the rest of the video.

He mentions Adam and Eve. God creates Adam and Eve explicitly in his own image. There's a variety of interpretations about the first being that God created. So there's a tradition in medieval Christianity and Judaism as well that the first man was hermaphroditic and male and female together and then separated into two separate entities, which then were forever looking to be rejoined.

And there's a very profound psychological idea there, which is that the union of masculine and feminine produces a kind of perfect wholeness.

Very interesting. Of course, this tradition in medieval Christianity regarding the first man being hermaphroditic and then separating into two separate entities is just that, a tradition. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Bible.

Peterson goes on to talk about original sin.

A profane world exists because paradise always falls apart. And that's a catastrophe. That's the human catastrophe. And maybe that's original sin. And profane life is characterized by suffering, intense suffering, and that's a terrible thing.

Again, that's an interesting interpretation, but it's not at all what the Bible teaches about, original sin, which is the sin that the entire human race inherits and is born with because Adam sinned as the federal head, the representative of the human race.

Since the fall, with the first Adam as our federal head, we are averse to all good things. Our sins come from our sin nature. It's who we are.

It's what we want. It's what we desire. Peterson then uses his novel understanding of sin to explain the story of Cain and Abel.

I mean, it's so terrible that the first two people to really inhabit the profane world, Cain and Abel, Cain is so disturbed by the nature of the world that he turns into a revengeful, homicidal, resentful, fascist, authoritarian, and the father of war.

Well, that's how bad, that's how bad profane existence can be.

For Peterson, the problem doesn't seem to be humans having a sinful nature that rebels against God's moral commands. He talks about things being bad because of the profane world and profane existence.

The problem seems to be something outside of us, not something inside of us, inherent in us. Finally, Peterson offers up his definition of evil.

And I think you can define it, no problem, because people say, well, you can't define evil. That's wrong. Evil is the production of suffering for its own sake. That's simple.

But that's only partially correct. According to the Bible, evil is just the same as sin, which is disobedience to any of God's moral commands, not just the ones that relate to the production of suffering.

So not seeing Jesus as the only way to God and salvation is evil. Not submitting to all of the Bible as God's inerrant sufficient revelation is evil. And distorting the Bible's teachings to fit into your own particular worldview is evil.

From this video, it looks like Peterson likes to use the Bible to formulate his own ideas, but he isn't really submitting himself to the Bible as God's inerrant and sufficient revelation to the human race.

Christ as Psychological Symbol or Historical Reality

Let's continue looking into how Peterson's thinking about Christianity has evolved over the years. In 2021, a Jordan Peterson clip went viral in which Peterson became very emotional about believing particular things about Jesus.

Okay, so you can think about Christ.

From a psychological perspective, and this particular critic that I've been reading said, well, that doesn't differentiate Christ much from a whole sequence of dying and resurrecting mythological gods.

Peterson says that you can think about Christ from a psychological perspective, but an essential part of Christianity isn't just seeing Christ from a psychological perspective, but actually seeing Christ as a real historical figure and believing everything he taught, the entire Bible, as being true, the direct revelation of God to the human race.

The Bible is full of commands, and we should love them. Never despise not even one jot or tittle of scripture, but always remember the main purpose of this book.

It is to show us Christ. It's notable that Peterson doesn't go this far in his understanding of Christ.

C .S. Lewis pointed this out as well. The difference between those mythological gods and Christ was that there's a historical representation.

Of his existence as well. Peterson says there's a historical representation of his existence. That's a very interesting way of not saying that the Bible provides an accurate historical account of Jesus' life.

Now, you can debate whether or not that's genuine. You can debate about whether or not he actually lived and whether there's credible objective evidence for that, but it doesn't matter in some sense because, well, it does, but there's a sense.

In which it doesn't matter. No, actually, there's no sense in which it doesn't matter. If Jesus didn't actually live and die in the exact way the Bible says he did, then all of Christianity is absolutely worthless.

There's still a historical story, and so what you have in the figure of Christ is an actual person who actually lived plus a myth, and in some sense, Christ is the union of those two things. The problem is is I probably believe that, but I don't know.

I'm amazed at my own belief, and I don't understand it.

I'm really glad that Peterson is believing more and more about things related to Christ, but wherever he is right now, this simply isn't Christianity. According to Christianity, the narrative of Christ is simply true and historical without any element of whatever Peterson is calling a myth.

My prayer is that God will continue working in Peterson's heart to bring him to a true and full understanding of Christ and his resurrection.

Peterson’s Moral Vision and the Need for the Gospel

We have a narrative sense of the world. For me, that's been the world of morality. That's the world that tells us how to act.

Again, some weird terminology here. Peterson is talking about the world that tells us how to act, not God who has given the human race his moral law. Like before, it seems Peterson is picking and choosing the parts of Christianity he likes, and not simply accepting the Bible in its entirety.

It's real. We treat it like it's real.

It's not the objective world, but the narrative and the objective world touch, and the ultimate example of that in principle is supposed to be Christ, but I don't know what to... That seems to me oddly plausible, but I still don't know what to make of it.

It's too, partly because it's too terrifying a reality to fully believe. I don't even know what would happen to you if you fully believed it.

Jordan, my prayer is that you would fully believe the entirety of what God has revealed through the Bible, and I know exactly what would happen to you. You would experience joy of salvation in relationship with the God who created you.

At this point, it kind of seems that Peterson is very close to believing that he maybe wants to believe. However, let's keep walking through what Peterson has said about Christianity. In 2022, Peterson released two videos titled, Message to the Christian Churches and Message to Muslims, that settles the current state of Peterson's relationship with Christianity.

It all started in some sense with the lectures I did on Genesis in 2017. My family and I took a risk and rented out a theater in Toronto on the off chance that there might be an audience for what might be described as a psychological approach to our ancient stories.

Again, Peterson says that he has a psychological approach to the Bible. Well, unless he also views the Bible literally and historically, a psychological approach to Christianity simply isn't true Christianity.

Now in the West, because of the weight of historical guilt that is upon us, a variant of the sense of original sin in a very real sense.

Jordan, you keep on using the term original sin, but again, your concept of original sin doesn't seem to be the Bible's definition of original sin.

You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Calling Young Men to Responsibility, Not Just Psychology

The Christian church is there to remind people, young men included, and perhaps even first and foremost, that they have a woman to find, a garden to walk in, a family to nurture, an ark to build, a land to conquer, a ladder to heaven to build, and the utter terrible catastrophe of life to face stalwartly in truth, devoted to love and without fear.

Jordan, I loved what you said there. And all of that is very, very true. But you're missing the most important things, sin to confess and repent of, Jesus to depend upon for salvation from sin and hell, and the Bible to look to for objective universal truth.

Without these foundational things, Christianity would merely be a psychological solution, which is ultimately no solution at all.

Invite the young men back. Say literally to those young men, you are welcome here. If no one else wants what you have to offer, we do. We want to call you to the highest purpose of your life.

Again, this is great and very, very true. We live in a culture that doesn't treat men like men, which results in millions of immature grown boys.

We need to do a better job of calling young men up. And it stings because the evangelical church has been calling young people down. There are multiple websites that teach youth pastors how to play gross out games, like bobbing for Tootsie Rolls in a toilet, or drinking blended Big Macs, or playing baby bottle burp.

What's wrong with you people? This is the shameful and frankly abusive way that we've engaged young people for decades. And this approach couldn't possibly be more wrong or less respectful, frankly, to the young men in our churches.

But again, I'm not hearing Peterson say anything about the highest purpose of our lives being to know and proclaim the gospel of sin and salvation through Jesus Christ alone.

And here's a message to those young men skeptical about such things. What else do you have? You can abandon the churches in your cynicism and disbelief. You can say to yourself, narcissistically and solipsistically, the church does not express what I believe properly.

Who cares what you believe? Why is this about you? Do you even want it to be about you? What if it was about others? What if it was about your duty to the past and to the broader community.

That surrounds you in the present? Again, Jordan, what you're saying isn't untrue. It's just missing the heart of Christianity. For Peterson, Christianity seems to be about others and about your duty to the past and to the broader community that surrounds you in the present, which are certainly good things, but Peterson never says anything like, what if it's true?

What if you're a sinner who needs to be reconciled to a holy and righteous God? Without a proper understanding of these questions, nothing Peterson says has a right foundation.

Protestant, you're the worst at the moment.

Sure, we acknowledge that much of Protestantism has dumbed down the gospel to entertain the masses, but it remains that Protestantism is where true biblical Christianity lives. Now many pastors and churches who are fulfilling the exact duty Peterson is talking about.

Catholic, Orthodox, invite young men, put up a billboard, say, young men are welcome here.

So Peterson doesn't care if young men go Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox churches. Anywhere works, as long as they are taught how to grow up and be real men. Apparently, the truth that Catholic and Orthodox churches do not teach the true saving gospel of Jesus Christ isn't important to Peterson.

Your churches, for God's sake, quit fighting for social justice. Quit saving the bloody planet. Attend to some souls. That's what you're supposed to do. That's your holy duty. Do it now before it's too late.

The hour is nigh.

Again, I totally agree. But Jordan, what exactly do you think it means to attend to some souls? Does it just mean to teach them to be responsible, to clean their rooms, to grow up instead of being immature boys?

Because if it doesn't include acknowledging and repent of sin, turning to faith in Christ alone for salvation, and submission to the Bible as God's infallible and sufficient revelation to the human race, then that's simply an incomplete, non-Christian view of attending to some souls.

Peterson’s Message to Muslims and the Exclusivity of Christ

If you like this video, subscribe to help spread this message. Peterson's message to Muslims further clarifies where he is spiritually.

It is time for those of you in the Muslim world to stop fighting among yourselves, you Shiites and Sunnis, and also time to stop regarding the Christians and even more specifically, the Jews as your enemies.

Of course, that all sounds great to say, but what if all this fighting is actually the result of official Muslim teaching? Just because Peterson doesn't like what Muslims are doing, doesn't necessarily mean that these Muslims are being bad Muslims.

Why? Not least because you have the enemy located in the wrong place. First, the best place to find Satan, let's say, is within. If you think the true enemy is in someone else's heart, then you haven't thought nearly long enough about the darkness within.

Very true, but it remains that from its very beginning, Islam has taught that there are also enemies within and enemies without. That's why war was such a central part of the beginning and spread of Islam.

So your best bet on the spiritual warfare front is to make of yourself and your Muslim practice something so admirable that the light shining from your well-constituted psyches and productive, generous, and wise actions is so intense that people convert to your faith from sheer admiration.

There's a goal.

So Peterson is giving Muslims advice on how they can get more people to convert to Islam. Clearly, Peterson is in favor of people from all religions unifying together to make the world a better place and does not believe Jesus is the only way to God and salvation.

Far more unites you with the other people of the book as your own prophet himself, peace be unto him, forthrightly said, than what divides you.

Whoa, Peterson is grouping together Muslims and Christians as people of the book and says far more unites us than divides us. That's simply not true. We have fundamentally different views of God and we have fundamentally different views of Jesus.

The reality is that far more divides us than unites us.

So how about we all quit squabbling over trinkets and details and face the real problem?

But the real problem is that people do not believe the Bible, have not repented of sin against the Christian God and have not trusted in Jesus alone for their salvation.

So the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life and there are few who find it. And it is narrow because it is only through Christ. No man comes to the father but by me. I am the door. He is the savior of the world because he's the only savior in the world.

These aren't trinkets and details at all.

I wish you well as you strive to become the light in the world that your faith truly demands. Let's see if we can unite as people of the book and negotiate our way toward the paradise that we might truly and jointly attain.

Peterson talks about the paradise that we might truly and jointly attain. But of course that's not a Christian view of the world at all. If salvation is found only in Jesus Christ, which Christians believe, then only those who have repented and trusted in Christ will attain this paradise by God's grace.

Jordan Peterson says a lot of fascinating true things but he's basically a humanist who wants everyone to work together to make the world a better place, not a Christian who believes that the ultimate problem is sin and that the ultimate solution is repentance and faith alone in Christ alone.

And for this reason, Jordan, we as Christians plead with you, repent and believe the gospel.