Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Ross Byrd's avatar

Well said. To mix in another parable, I tend to think the secret hidden in the Parable of the Sower (where Jesus explicitly says he tells parables so people will NOT understand) is that Jesus' ministry is almost more about soil-tilling than seed-planting. The truth (the seed) is simple and plenty. The problem is the lack of fertile soil. Jesus came to til the soil, to play the long game--not just to give us the truth, but to make sure the truth could go in. Jordan Peterson is an example of a good soil-tiller. And yes, I think Christians are called to adopt this method as our Savior did.

Expand full comment
David's avatar

I’ve been highly critical of Peterson, but this article has persuaded me to ease up on some of my criticisms. This is partly because it reminded me that Peterson, in many ways, prepared the way for my own reversion to the Christian faith. When he first entered the public scene, I was captivated by what he had to say as it pointed beyond my shallow understanding of Scripture. But now, in 2025, my frustration stems from the realization that he’s been rehashing much of the same material he introduced in 2017. And this rehash reduces the full force of Scripture—often in tortured and convoluted prose—to Jungian archetypes with ties to neuroscience and evolutionary biology.

Consider your rendition of Peterson’s all-too-familiar response to the question of whether he believes in God:

“And anyway, who are you to declare that you are on the side of the highest good? Who are you to claim the name of Christ or God and to say that you really and truly believe it?

Because if you really believed that God existed, you would act as though He did in every moment and every way. I’m not ready to claim that. Are you?

So my answer remains, ‘I act as though God exists, and I’m terrified that He might.’”

While this response exemplifies Peterson’s sincerity and his commitment to wrestling with the true weight of living authentically, it also reveals his underlying confusion. When Peterson speaks of God as “the highest good,” he clearly doesn’t mean this in an ontological sense. His understanding often resembles Feuerbach’s critique of God as a projection of humanity’s highest values. If I’ve understood him correctly, when he says he is “not ready to claim” that he is “on the side of the highest good,” he confuses having faith with embodying the highest good entirely, rather than seeing faith as a pure, unmerited gift given even to those wholly unworthy of it.

Though Peterson’s understanding of faith is confused, his refusal to assent to a performative or superficial notion of belief is admirable. There’s conviction in his refusal to proclaim something he doesn’t fully grasp or live out.

This also brings to mind Kierkegaard’s "possibility of offense" in "The Sickness Unto Death." In that chapter, SK uses the parable of the emperor offering the poor man his daughter in marriage. SK argues that such an offer would be an incomprehensible scandal to the poor man, raising skepticism as to whether the emperor is sincere—or simply mocking him to “make fun of the poor fellow [and] render him unhappy for the rest of his life.”

Kierkegaard goes on to say:

“If there is anything that would make a man lose his understanding, it is surely this! Whosoever has not the humble courage to dare to believe it, must be offended at it. But why is he offended? Because it is too high for him, because he cannot get it into his head, because in the face of it he cannot acquire frank-heartedness, and therefore must have it done away with, brought to naught and nonsense, for it is as though it would stifle him.”

Perhaps, despite Peterson’s sincerity, his misunderstanding of faith—as something requiring full embodiment of the Good—offends him precisely because it feels unattainable. This is, as SK might put it, despair in disguise: a failure to recognize that grace is given freely to all, even to him—not as something to be embodied all at once, but as something that calls us, nevertheless, toward divinization.

Yet despite these criticisms, I can’t deny that Peterson does the Lord’s work, evidenced by the fruit he bears (my own conversion, or reversion, being testament to this). Perhaps my frustration lies in the fact that I see him failing to bear that same fruit in his own life (at least for now), remaining lost in the abstractions of Jungian archetypes, unwilling to move beyond myth in order to embrace the scandal of divine love, and the “humble courage to dare to believe.”

When it comes to authenticity and conviction, Kierkegaard surpasses Peterson with his critique of Christendom, his understanding of despair, and his conception of the self before God. But then again, Peterson was a gateway drug for me—leading not only to thinkers like Kierkegaard but the Gospel itself.

Expand full comment
10 more comments...

No posts