Christian fans of the Canadian academic and controversialist Jordan Peterson, who suspect he is heading to faith, should hit the pause button. At least on the basis of his new “Message to the Christian Churches; because it reveals how much further Peterson has to journey.
As “Relevant” magazine put it, the new Peterson message gets the gospel wrong. Peterson has a new home at the daily wire, a conservative site that appeals to Us Christians who lean right and mostly support Trump.
The normal things Peterson might get right are in this message, particularly about young men.
However, before he gets there, he points out that he got an audience of millions for his earlier video lectures on Genesis. Even while acknowledging that “it is completely presumptuous of me to dare to write and broadcast a video entitled message to the Christian churches”, here’s going ahead: “but I’m gonna do it anyway because I have something to say.”
So for Daily Wire, with a largely Christian audience, the stakes are high.
The familiar Peterson message comes next. Lots of young men make up his audience “because of the weight of historical guilt, that is upon us, a variant of the sense of original sin in a very real sense, and because of a very real attempt by those possessed, by what might be described as unhelpful ideas to weaponize that guilt, our young people face a demoralization that is perhaps unparalleled. This is particularly true of young men. Although anything that devastates young men will eventually do the same to young women and that in this era of antinatalism and equally reprehensible nihilism is precisely the point when they are children. Boys are hectored for their toy preferences, which often include toy weapons, such as guns. And they’re more boisterous playing style as boys require active, rough and tumble play even more than girls for whom it is also a necessity.”
Under the weight of Derrida-style deconstruction, and in the midst of ecological crisis, young men in particular, are trapped in shame and confusion, according to Peterson. He paints a picture of a civilisation in crisis.
His analysis contains elements that will strike a chord with conservatives (an attack on post-Modernism, his claim of the influence of Marxism, traditional gender boundaries being attacked) and progressives (an urgent ecological apocalypse).
Peterson’s answer is to call the church into action. “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 arc, to build a land, to conquer a ladder to heaven, to build, and the utter terrible catastrophe of life to face stalwartly [corrected] in truth devoted to love. And without fear 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 wanna call you to the highest purpose of your life.”
So what’s wrong with that?
Calling women and men to a life of adventure in Christ started on the shores of Lake Galilee. And dissecting the difference between popular philosophies and Jesus’ teachings happened in the Areopagus (“Men of Athens” said Paul).
But there’s a gap in the Peterson and that gap is the gospel news that Jesus is the great resuer who died on the cross to bear our sin.
There is a small allusion to this in Peterson’s message to the churches at the end where he says “
You are inviting ask more of them than anyone ever has. Remind them who they are in the deepest sense and help them become that 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. ”
Peterson is right to say “remind them who they are in the deepest sense.” But we also need to remind them of who they are not. Not to tell them to be disciplined, or get their act together. Not to tell them not to believe in justice. But to tell them that they can be justified, that jesus has done all that is needed to for them to become new women and men.
Without this gospel Peterson is preaching a conservative version of the “moralistic therapeutic deism” that evangelicals readily cite as the program that progressives fall into – of societal improvement without conversion, without the atonement. A version of the same thing, clothed in conservative rehortic is no better.
Really?
I thought he had a valid point. Christianity is radical. We have a job to do… to make disciples of all nations. We are called, as God’s children, to leave our comfort zone. We are to make disciples of our neighbours (Jerusalem), our compatriots (Judea), our region (Samaria) and to the ends of the earth.
We should go out and preach the good news, testify to the good news about Jesus to our neighbours, care for widows and orphans, love our neighbour as ourselves.
We don’t do these things to be saved but because we are saved we desire to serve God and neighbour. The church should be calling its members to use their gifts to build up the body of Christ.
His message resonates with me because I see churches filled with people who don’t seem to know what their gift is or how to use it. It seems to me that much of the body of Christ is disabled and many members have atrophied due to not being used.
Peterson is saying “let us get this body functioning again and let each member do its job” so everyone gets the satisfaction of playing their part.
I agree that it’s all a bit intense… but I hear what he’s saying… and I agree.