On Jordan Peterson

Last week I finally got around to watching Cathy Newman's now infamous interview of Jordan Peterson.  I had seen the memes and chuckled.  Now that I have context, I just shake my head.  It is remarkable how blatantly and purposefully Newman attempted to twist his words around.  Consistently through the half-hour long interview she asks a question, listens to the answer, and regurgitates a twisted facsimile of words intentionally misrepresenting what Peterson literally just said.

This week I started reading Peterson's book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos and am through the first chapter.  These 12 rules may make it sound like this book belongs in the self-help category, but that's too simplistic.  For example, the first rule is to stand up straight with your shoulders back.  Yet the corresponding chapter spends more time discussing serotonin, bullying, and lobsters than posture.  While there is nothing unique about the 12 proposed rules, Peterson's explanation of why (or, meaning) is the feature attraction.

Peterson is a clinical psychologist and a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.  The first time I had even heard of him was late in 2016 when he gained notoriety for opposing the Canadian government's Bill C-16 through a series of YouTube lectures.  This bill proposed to add "gender identity or expression" as an identity protected under the Canadian Human Rights Act.  Peterson detailed his concerns about it being a crime to not call someone by his or her preferred pronoun.

I watched a small portion of one of these lectures and was grateful he was making such bold statement, but that was about it for me.  However, many more individuals, particularly young men, began consistently viewing these and other lectures.  Peterson wound up with quite following (as of this writing over 900,000 on YouTube and 555,000 on Twitter).

His appeal to young men should not be terribly surprising.  So many boys are growing up without fathers in their lives.  That's bad.  Boys reach adulthood and do not know what it means to be a man.  There are two primary and quite divergent voices speaking on this issue right now: The radical feminist left, and the childish and uncivil alt-right.  Both these camps are drenched in lies.  The Left diminishes the role of man, while the alt-right identifies it with abuse and dominance.

And then there is Peterson.  Unlike the radical left, he believes manhood is important and offers something unique to society.  Yet, he's calm, rational, and far less reactionary than the alt-right.  Peterson gives meaning to manhood and life in general, but does not play down to the stereotypes one would see in Gavin McInnes' Proud Boys.  While alt-right groups like Proud Boys look at PC culture and throw vulgar temper tantrums to prove their manhood, Peterson engages the mind and encourages specific everyday changes one can make to grow up and stand up.

And Peterson does offer meaning.  Considering multiple generations of men have been void of meaning, this is a positive development.

Anthony Bradley explains it like this:
The world that nurtured Millennial and GenZ men is that of exaggerated and romanticized versions of masculine success aimed at winning the validation and affirmation of others. In this perfectionistic world, you never measure up, which forces you to think there’s something ontologically wrong with you.  Toxic shame, then, leads men to self-assess as pathetic, weak, worthless, stupid, cowardly, foolish, inadequate, insufficient, or never good enough.

Boomers and GenXers continued to browbeat, berate, and shame Millennials and GenZ teens for trying to numb their shame with drugs, alcohol, video games, sexual promiscuity, pornography, and so on. The shame that young men carried was re-shamed by ministry leaders who wanted these men to feel low enough for the gospel. What they didn’t understand was that these young men were acquainted with lowliness. A large percentage of men born after 1990 already felt weak, beaten down, and worthless. Young men needed empathetic pastors to build them up to be the men that God created them to be.
And empathy and compassion are as much responsible for Peterson's success as his message.  When he tells a young man to stand up straight, he isn't yelling it through the voice of an abusive father.  Nor is he simply taking on a clinical, but sterile, role describing the benefits of such posture.  Peterson is stepping alongside abandoned boys and young men, putting his arm around them, and advising them as a loving father would.

However, for the young Christian male, he must be careful.  Consistently we must point back to the Christian's identity and purpose in life.  The radical left and alt-right give no accurate identity or real purpose to young men.  Zero.  Peterson gives something of worth, but it still falls short of the identity and purpose found in Christ.

Peterson is respectful of Christianity, but he does not teach the gospel.  Towards the end of his chapter arguing for standing up with backs straight, he alludes to great biblical men like Noah, Moses, and even Jesus.  But referencing biblical heroes as good examples of men and confessing Jesus Christ as Lord are different things.  While he offers something useful to a generation of lost men, what he offers, like everything else, is not a substitute to what Christ offers.

Jordan Peterson is dangerous, but not necessarily in a bad way.  Anyone who boldly proclaims a counterculture message is a danger.  He is a danger to established academic order and new social norms.  For the Christian, he's danger as well.  Not because what he teaches is inherently anti-gospel, but because he has become so popular so quickly that one can quickly fall into a cult-like following of him.  This can easily happen when Christian teachers explode in popularity as well.  The issue isn't the person or even the message, but the elevation of the person above Jesus and the message above the gospel.

That Peterson has an obsessed following is not his fault, but hopefully he realizes how much clout he now wields over a significant population of hurt and/or lost young men.  I'm confident that his role as a clinical psychologist informs his approach to his newly achieved fame and influence.

As someone mentoring and teaching young Christian men, I have no intention of guiding them away from Jordan Peterson.  His presence in modern culture is a welcome one.  However, I hope to prevent young Christian men from placing him on a pedestal that should be reserved for only one.




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