Truth Unites - Is Jordan Peterson Now Preaching a Christian Message?

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

In this video Gavin Ortlund and Glen Scrivener discuss Jordan Peterson's influence: why it is so broad, whether it is consistent with Christianity, and what it reveals about our culture. See Glen's original video here: https://youtu.be/omNdy1hDq70?si=7F2N0XzQ7oSylISp See the 321 course here: https://speaklife.org.uk/321course/ The Reset Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzJKwoAeeX4&list=PL4zD5797LHdfhw3vJEz0UkksUnxrnNTin Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Jordan Peterson is speaking to modern hunger in ways that many churches and many pulpits are not. And there are lots of young men aching for fatherly instruction and not getting it in the church. And we've got to the limits of what that worldview can deliver. And I think people are miserable, utterly miserable. And it's a little bit like the younger son going into the far country. And ending up in the pigsty. The money always runs out. the famine always hits. Hey, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. I'm here with my friend

Glenn Scrivener, and we're going to talk about Jordan Peterson and what is his appeal. Why is he so popular? What can we learn from that? What do we learn about the culture right now? In what ways is his message similar to Christianity and what ways might it be different? So this should be a fascinating discussion. Glenn, how are you doing? Thanks for being here. I'm doing really, really well. Yeah, looking forward to Christmas. I can't tell whose background is less impressive. I've just packed up all my books and the more I stared at, the more pathetic it looks over my shoulders. So I said, you have to be extra entertaining to make up for that in this one. I, uh, yeah, you're just trying hard not to flex with all your theological tomes behind you.

It's an expression of humility. You know, what can I say? I'm just trying to lower myself down. You bring nothing is what you're saying. Yes, exactly. Exactly. It's a metaphor in some way or another. Tell us about Speak Life. I actually am curious to learn myself. What is Speak Life exactly? And when did it get started? So there was always a ministry going back to 1952. There was an old preacher called Eric Hutchings, who was called the British Billy Graham. And I'm sure there were a number of different evangelists in the UK called the British Billy Graham, but he was certainly one of them. And he would hold Crusades and then he would have a radio ministry, the same as Billy Graham.

And where Billy Graham's radio ministry was called the Hour of Decision, his program was called The Hour of Revival. And that's what the ministry was called for so many years until Eric Hutchings died in 1982. And I'm actually only the second evangelist to be employed by the evangelistic trust. And there was a 30-year gap in between us. And I kind of took over the reins in 2015, and we rebranded it in 2016 to become SpeakLife. But we didn't have to change the constitution of the charity because it was always seeking to see a revival of Christianity. in Great Britain and the rest of the world through preaching and media.

And that goal has not changed. The media has, but the goal has not changed. And so a lot of my work is preaching around the place and using media. And some of that is the old media of writing books and that sort of thing, but a lot of it is the new media and social media and video and YouTube and really wanting to make much of Jesus through these digital ways. So that's what we try to do. we're an evangelistic ministry that equips the church with shareable faith.

Yeah, it's fascinating. It's, as you described that, it's actually very similar to what I'm feeling increasingly drawn into with my ministry and truth unites, so trying to use these platforms to promote the gospel and so forth. So it's fantastic. If people are going to watch, I'll put a link to the particular video we're about to get into. If people are going to watch one video to start with, because to be clear for people,

speak life has a YouTube channel, so check it out. What's a good video to start? with. Oh gosh. Go to speak life media, search for us. And there's a whole series called Reset that is all sorts of interviews with people like Tom Holland and Douglas Murray and people who are really a lot of secular thinkers who are speaking into the meaning crisis of today. And what we do in Reset is actually talk to a whole bunch of people, some of them Christians, some of them not, about Genesis chapters 1 to 4, largely because George. Gordon Peterson picked up Genesis chapters one to four and walked slowly through them in a Toronto theater back in 2016, 2017.

And an entire kind of YouTube ecosystem kind of developed around him and around that meaning crisis. And we've been trying to speak into that. So maybe the reset playlist would be something interesting that people could look up. Fantastic. I'll put a link to that as well. People can check it out. And you just mentioned the meaning crisis. Now, already right there, that kind of could be a good springboard for us to launch into talking about Jordan Peterson and just the culture right now.

I think that's kind of one of our points of common interest is analyzing the culture and what's going on right now. I'd love to ask a first question, but just interrupt me at any point if you want to go off on any other tangents too. But when did you first encounter Jordan Peterson? And I'll answer this question first, and then you can go. So I was in 2017. I think it was 2017. We were living in Chicago. My wife, Esther, was out of town for the weekend.

I watched one or someone had linked to an article discussing him or something like this, watched an interview, watched a second. I thought, this is kind of interesting. Watched a second interview. Put Dad away for a bit. Finally got the kids to bed and sat down to relax and watched a movie. Got into the movie a few moments and got bored and went back to YouTube and watched more Jordan Peterson interviews. And to this day, I couldn't articulate exactly why I found him so interesting and why.

I mean, that's a lot of my life right now. I find YouTube videos more interesting than movies often. But there's something about his way of thinking and way of approaching things that is really intriguing. I've watched his interview, the famous interview with Kathy Newman many times. And something about the kind of plodding, thoughtful way he's actually answering the questions, as opposed to kind of getting into like the polemics back and forth so much. It's just really interesting to me. And then I've just followed his career, especially with interest in what it shows about the culture right now ever since then.

What about you? When did you first encounter Jordan Peterson? I'd love to say that I was riding on the ground floor of the Peterson train. Ground floor of a train, that's really is a mixed metaphor. But the status rocket of Jordan Peterson taking off. So I like the maps of meaning book and that kind of thing passed me by. His University of Toronto kind of lectures passed me by. I certainly was aware of him by the time he had the Kathy Newman interview.

I mean, he came to prominence, I guess, on YouTube because he made a protest against the Bill C-16, compelled speech legislation, as he would put it, in Canada about having to refer to other people by their own pronouns. And he absolutely refused to do that and said, you know, they can put me in prison and then I'll go on hunger strike. And that's that's the sort of resolve that the man has. And certainly when I watched the Cathy Newman interview in the UK, that landed with such force because there is such a tradition really in UK journalism of very forthright attack dog kind of questioners. And sort of peers. Morgan is in that vein, but he's a more tabloid version of what kind of a lot of BBC reporters are kind of like, and they will doggedly ask the same question of a politician like seven times until, you know, the person breaks down crying, and it's very adversarial. And I've always watched those sorts of interviews like a car crash and seen like this poor politician or this poor, you know, interviewee. And I've never seen anyone turn the tables on an attack dog

reporter like that. And suddenly, Jordan Peterson out of nowhere, just, you know, Kathy Newman went for him. And she was desperate for the gotcha moment. And in the end, literally, she says, you've got me. I have gotcha. He says, doesn't he? He's like, I gotcha. She says, you have. And when you know the background of this is what so much. of UK journalism is kind of like it was like oh my goodness I remember listening to that to that interview on on YouTube as I was driving I had to pull over and start texting my friends have you have you seen this it was such it was such a thing and yeah there's an intensity to him there's there's there's the concision of his

expression he is a transcript of his words is quite like a transcript of his words could survive the publication process without too much red ink i think and um his ability to extemporize and just speak off the cuff with factual data at his fingertips and he's the clinical psychologist coming out and being able to come up with you know x-y-and-z studies about um whatever he's talking about that's incredibly impressive And just the he knows people. And what I what I loved about the the judo flip moment with Kathy Newman, for those who are into apologetics, I think it is kind of a presuppositional apologetic moment where she's kind of going after him.

And he basically doesn't really answer the words coming out of her mouth. He points to her feet and what she's standing on kind of in terms of the arguments. he's like she says you know what why does your right to free speech trump a trans person's right to be respected and he said well you're the last person who should be asking this you're a journalist you're you don't mind offending me and more power to you um and that that is why kathy newman flipped out at that moment like you can see everything come crashing down because he's pointed to her feet and he said what are you standing on right now you're standing on the right now you're standing on the right to offend people, aren't you? Right now, you are meant to be a bastion of

freedom of speech. And yet you're questioning me about this. Let's talk about you and your presuppositions. Let's talk about what's standing underneath your feet. And that's why I think you see Cathy Newman go into existential freeform on national television. And this is why everyone was clicking and watching. And I thought it was a fascinating moment. And, yeah, I've definitely been following him since then. Why should your right to freedom of speech trump a trans person's right not to be offended? Because in order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive. I mean, look at the conversation we're having right now.

You know, like, you're certainly willing to risk offending me in the pursuit of truth. Why should you have the right to do that? It's been rather uncomfortable. Well, I'm very glad I put you on the spot. Well, I'm very glad that I've exercised my freedom of speech. You get my point. It's like you're doing what you should do, which is digging a bit to see what the hell's going on. And that is what you should do.

But you're exercising your freedom of speech to certainly risk offending me. And that's fine. I think more power to you as far as I'm concerned. So you haven't sat there and I'm just trying to work that out. I mean. Ha, gotcha. Just so people know where we're going here, the desire here. is not to bash Jordan Peterson, nor is it just to uncritically soak in everything.

He says we want to try to critically analyze his thought and what we can learn about the culture right now from the impact he's having and so forth. In a second, I'm going to play a clip from your fantastic video responding to him. So for people watching this glaminated video responding to Jordan Peterson's, I think it was the final talk that he gave at the ARC conference, analyzing it just with this wonderfully clear Christian response, a gospel response. you know, just what we're saying here, looking at the good and the bad and kind of sifting through it. So I'll link to that.

In that, let me give you a chance right out of the gate, though, to kind of just explain this main concern to use these metaphors of the Tower of Babel and the ladder of Jacob in the book of Genesis. One of these as an image of we're building our way up to heaven, Tower of Babel, the other as heaven is coming down to earth, ladder of Jacob. And if I listened to your video, the last portion on a bike ride, as I was getting off my bike ride, this is what kind of stuck with me that the idea here is there's a concern that for all that he gets right, there's this missing of the fact that heaven comes down to earth, and that's the Christian message. And instead there's this idea, we hoist the world on our shoulders what's up to us to make heaven come, to build heaven and to get our way to heaven and that kind of thing. Is that, well, maybe just let me let me let you kind of just unpack a little bit of your essential sort of concern in response to his arc talk. I think ever since the Genesis talks that he gave on a stage in Toronto where he books out a theater and he invites people in to listen to him preach, really, for a very long period of time, hours plus, to talk about the psychological significance of Genesis and the psychological meaning of the scriptures. And right from there, I saw he really knows people. And he really is brilliant when he talks about anthropology and what humans are like.

But the lenses through which he reads the scriptures are, first of all, Darwinian and then kind of Jungian and then very stoic, moralistic kind of lenses that he views the scriptures through, such that even when he preaches on. Genesis chapter one. He's trying to make the Bible relevant and believable for secular Westerners, but the way he does it is by saying it's not silly to think that God created order out of chaos through the word because that's what humans do. We're always creating order out of chaos through the word, aren't we? And so even when the scriptures are talking about God, very quickly, Jordan Peterson is talking about man, humanity and how we, create order out of chaos through the word. And even as a as a Christian, I kind of watch this. And I just remember it was like 45 minutes into the first lecture on Genesis one. I was like,

this is brilliant. This is really connecting with people. We should be preaching like this. And there's lots of ways in which we should be preaching like, like Jordan Peterson preaches. But then I sort of woke up and thought, he's actually taught, he's actually taken like the paradigmatic passage on the transcendent creator and turned it into a message about us. and you see that throughout Genesis. We can talk about that at greater length, but he's constantly taking passages that are about God and God's gift to humanity and the way in which we are first the chaos

that is formed and shaped and fashioned through the Word of God. That's first who we are, rather than those who are set on our own feet to be in the image of this creative God to pass on that through our own creative agencies, before we are ever in a position to be Godlike. We are the nothing that God makes something out of. We are the chaos out of which God makes order. And so he's constantly doing that.

By the time he gets to Genesis chapter 28, he's thinking about the ladder of Jacob. In Genesis chapter 28, Jacob is having a dream and a vision, and he sees this ladder to heaven, and the angels are ascending and descending out of the, and the Lord is standing there. You get the sense that the Lord himself is the ladder, on which angels ascend and descend, but it's the Lord himself who is the ladder.

And this is a great gift. How is heaven and earth united? In Genesis, heaven and earth are united really through the God man. You go right back to Genesis chapter 3, and the great hope of heaven and earth uniting is the seed of the woman will crush Satan, actually. And there will be somehow this union of heaven and earth, and somehow this miraculous birth, a child of us. will be a miraculous gift from above in order to unite heaven and earth. And yet throughout Genesis, you get these illegitimate unions of heaven and earth in which in Genesis chapter six, the sons of God go to the daughters of men.

That's an illegitimate union of heaven and earth. And the flood kind of happens. And then you've got Babel, there's an illegitimate union of heaven and earth where you've got humanity trying to ascend towards God and climb the ladder and hoist the world on its shoulders and make a name for itself. And that seems to be absolutely ruled out in Genesis. That is an illegitimate way of uniting earth and heaven. To tilt the earth towards heaven is illegitimate.

That actually the way of God is always the way of grace because his initiative comes first. And so my great concern, as he talks in this arc conference about Jacob's ladder, is that he kind of inverts the ladder, such that it's not the Lord who, out of his own initiative, and grace unites heaven and earth. Somehow it's we who ascend. And that's the burden that I have in my analysis. It's really helpful. I want to play a clip from sort of the conclusion of your video that I just

think I just want people to see this. I think it would be helpful for them. And then I want to ask you a question of if he is sort of missing the fundamental notion of grace that we understand in the Christian gospel, then how is it that he is leading so many people to Christian? How is it that so many people come through Jordan Peterson into Christianity if he does have this point that he's missing? But first let me play this clip for us. After the Jordan Peterson train, we jump to the Tom Holland train, we jump to the Ion-Hursey-Ali train, and we find ourselves in church, and we find ourselves in that moment meeting with a God who descended from the top and joined us in the gutter, because that's the true Christian message. The message, that's the true Christian message.

It liberates us, that saves us, that gives us joy in our misery, that sets us on our feet, and yes, that then enables us to live responsibly out in the world. And then we can effect all those great 12 rules for life and more 12 rules for life. And I don't know what Jordan Peterson's third book will be, 13 more rules for life. But that is how it will happen. It will not happen by us hoisting the world on our shoulders and trudging up the hill. That's hell. Christ took that burden on himself.

He trudged up a different hill, died on that cross, rose again for you to meet you in your darkness and in your weakness, to save you apart from any effort and apart from any responsibility taking that you might have taken upon yourself. And instead, Jesus saves you. And then set you on your feet and says, run along, live responsibly in the world. Love your neighbor. Love the least and the last and the lost and the little and the lonely and the excluded. Love those people. And in that way, you will encounter the spirit that is at the top of the hierarchy. but you'll be experiencing the spirit of Jesus, who is the down and out God.

Don't live the Babel life of up and in living. It's the down and out God who is proclaimed in the scriptures. Jordan Peterson is on a journey. He still needs to really reorient in order to come into the kingdom. And in order for anyone to fruitfully listen to Jordan Peterson, I think you need to have your spidey senses alert to all these aspects. aspects. Otherwise, I think he could lead you into some really unhelpful ways into a burden that he wouldn't want to put on you and into an introspection that he certainly wouldn't want to put on you.

So let's turn to Jesus, the down and out God. So just maybe just reflect just briefly on this because I got so many other questions I want to ask you too. But how is it if there's this missing of that fundamental gospel message that it is God who comes to us, the initiative lies on his part? How is it that so many people are finding their way into Christianity through Jordan Peterson, or do you think they are? I certainly think they are. And my experience in the UK is I speak around in a lot of different churches, and I'll meet a lot of different people who are new to church,

and they will sort of look over both shoulders and say, have you watched any of Jordan Peterson's videos by any chance? And I was like, yes, I have. And he has set them on a journey of reading through Genesis for themselves, and then Exodus and then Leviticus and and they do end up in churches. Quite often they don't end up in non-liturgical ritual light Protestant churches. Quite often they will end up in churches that are demanding, that are ancient and that are liturgical and that have some pretty serious discipleship programs because

that's that's kind of his message and his shtick is very much getting people into the wisdom of living and those are the sorts of traditions where people often go. There's been quite a pipeline from Jordan Peterson to Jonathan Peugeot, who's an Orthodox

YouTuber as well and then into orthodoxy. And I met many of them at the art conference where Jordan Peterson spoke. So yes, there are people finding faith. I think they kind of do it because they're encountering the scriptures and you really are a sitting duck for the spirit to work, can't you? If you open the scriptures and if you've got an anthropology like Jordan Peterson's anthropology that says that there's a malevolence within us that if it was

truly unleashed would be absolutely abysmal. I think when he writes in 12 rules, for life about things like original sin. I think he gives a very compelling picture of that as a clinical psychologist. And, you know, he'll often say that the odds of you living in Germany in 1940 and being a resistor of the Nazi evil are almost zero. Butco, right? And it lands with a weight because he kind of speaks in those sorts of. terms and so people who are very aware of our tendency towards malevolence and therefore aware that we

need something more and therefore opening up the scriptures i think they're finding themselves in places where faith happens and where jesus meets them i would also think that jordan peterson what one of the teachings i've always loved about him is um he doesn't think we're transparent to ourselves and that what i say i believe I might not actually believe. And Alex O'Connor, Cosmic Skeptic, the YouTuber, he gave a great example of it. And he's learned this from Jordan Peterson.

And he sort of says, you know, if I tell you, I'm not superstitious at all, but I freak out when there's a black cat and I won't walk under a ladder. You know, at that point, what I say, what my self report about my believingness is one thing. What I actually live out is something else. And so, and I would apply that to Jordan Peterson's own teaching. I hold out some hope that actually his own trust in God, if he has any, is a lot better than the Pelagian message that he often gives. Pelagius, this great heretic who basically says we just need to copy Jesus in order to save ourselves. I think Jordan Peterson preaches a kind of a Pelagian gospel, but who knows?

Maybe actually his own spiritual orientation is a lot more Augustinian and a lot more healthy than what comes out of his mouth. and perhaps people are following that trajectory rather than some of the Pelagian things that he says, perhaps is one thought I've done. Yeah, that's hope so. Yeah, let's go back, though, to something you said about how we as the church can learn. Simple metaphor that came to my mind yesterday after my bike ride listening to your talk is, it's not enough. Let's suppose there's a great hunger in downtown Ohio, and people are going out and giving out candy to people who are hungry.

it's not enough for me to simply judge that candy is not nutritious if I'm not out there giving out food to people, you know? And the simple fact is Jordan Peterson is speaking to modern hunger in ways that many churches and many pulpits are not. And there are lots of young men aching for fatherly instruction and not getting it in the church. And so I think, you know, we should really consider this. How can we learn about this? And you, you know, the comparison in your video came up between Jordan Peterson and Billy Graham, not in the content of their message, but in the appeal, the ability to fill a stadium and so forth. And there's something instructive about that that we need to listen and just listen to the culture right now. I think this is something we're both interested in is listening to the culture so we can bring the food to the hunger in the best possible way. So let's just take a few minutes and talk together about what is it about his appeal that is really. touching hearts right now as a way to try to understand the culture. I have one thought I'll share, but I'd love to hear your thoughts first. What do you see as the draw that is really causing him to have a kind of Billy Graham type influence? I think he's a Stoic in an age of Epicureans. And if you go back to sort of ancient Greek philosophy, the Stoics and the Epicureans were these two different schools of

thought. And the Stoics would say that life is all about virtue, whereas the Epicureans would say life is about happiness, pleasure. And I think we are living in an Epicurean age where we kind of believe that minimizing suffering is almost the goal of all things. And we've got to the limits of what that worldview can deliver. And I think people are miserable, utterly miserable. And it's a little bit like the younger son going into the far country and ending up in the pigsty. The money always runs out. the famine always hits, you always end up in the pigs die, and you need something a lot more than, you know, the maximization of pleasure as a goal in life. And therefore, along comes a stern, sort of fatherly figure that underneath that sternness has a real heart to do you good and to save you and to wish you the very best in life.

comes Jordan Peterson with a more stoic outlook who says virtue. Have you forgotten virtue? Have you forgotten goodness? Have you forgotten 12 rules for life and 12 more rules for life? And have you, have you forgotten what it is? And in the arc conference talk, he speaks of responsibility, you know. We've lived in an age where we just claim our rights. We just claim our rights. And he's like reminding you of a responsibility and saying that as you put into practice, the, little kinds of responsibility that you have around you. Just tidy your room. Just put your own affairs in order. Don't try and save the world, right? Do do the good that you can to the people that are nearest and dearest to you. And he talks about subsidiarity, which is just kind of

have the most concern for the things that are closest to you. And then that might scale outwards. And he said that to a lot of people who are in a pigsty. And who tried the pleasure thing and it hasn't worked. And I think people will hear a stoic message and really respond to it because there's a heck of a lot of truth to it. But I always kind of think, you know, when the Apostle Paul went to the Ariopagus in Acts chapter 17, he came across these two kinds of philosophers, the Stoics and the Epicureans. and they are used to debating one another. As soon as they encounter the gospel of Jesus Christ, they kind of unite in their opposition to Paul.

And because Paul is not playing either of those games. A Christian might at times find a lot more resonance with the Stoic message. At times, they might find a lot more resonance with the Epicurean message. There's all sorts of Christian hedonists, right, who can sound Epicurean at times. And I think there's all sorts of scriptural warrants for that kind of outlook that we delight ourselves in the Lord. But we will also find ourselves resonating with the ethical concerns of the Stoics. But at the end of the day, Paul sounds like a babbler to them because he preached the good news of Jesus and the resurrection.

And all those things are very different to what Jordan Peterson is offering. But I don't think we can underestimate the appeal of a Jordan Peterson figure. in an Epicurean age. And I think therefore a lesson for us in the church is, what about the wisdom literature? What about the sermon on the mount? What about the book of James? What about discipleship?

What about the sacraments? What about embodied worship? And all these practices that actually the church, you know, has an abundance of riches of that sometimes we evangelicals, a guilty of neglecting for a very simple thin salvation message. And I think Jordan Peterson has an allergic reaction to a thin salvation message that says, it doesn't matter what you do. Jesus loves you plaster on the smile and on you go. And so he can challenge us. And I think he can awaken us to the riches that we already have

when we start to talk in richer terms about this gospel that applies to the, the whole of our lives and some of those wisdom issues. Yeah. Yeah, your answer is probably much better than mine here. The word that I would boil my thought down to here, just to very much agreement with you, is the word responsibility. I remember there's a time where he's giving a talk somewhere,

and he mentions how the audience always gets very quiet and hushed when he talks about responsibility, and then he gets choked up. I can, I kind of appreciate when he gets choked up because I get choked up a lot when I'm preaching, and I know that's kind of frustrating at times, but there's this dynamic when your heart is invested in the people to whom you're speaking, there is this dynamic where you feel deeply what they are experiencing your message as.

I really appreciate this. It is kind of a course correction to Western culture. You know, so as you're saying, just so people understand Epicureen being more pleasure-seeking, stoic being more responsibility-driven. And that call to responsibility, what I learned from it is there is something in the human, human heart that longs to spend itself on a cause beyond itself. There is something, you know, all of us are wired as human beings as not just to hoard pleasure, that that is not fulfilling. We're wired in such a way that we actually need something to sacrifice ourselves for, to give

ourselves to, to lay down our life for a cause. And as a Christian, I will say that I really can relate to that in terms of my own relationship with Christ. It is just thrilling to me to be able to say, Lord, I want to spend my life for you. And there is something in the human heart that longs for that. And of course, we've got to get that, as you say in the proper frame,

so it needs to come as a response to what God's done for us. But still, that is a beautiful thing to sometimes focus on a little bit. Let me play another short clip. This is a shorter one. And then I want to ask you a question based upon this. Strangely enough, the meaning in your life doesn't emerge as a consequence of your pursuit of your proximal hedonic, subjective, narrow, purely self-serving

goals and drives. There's nothing in that that's nourishing. Amen. And there's nothing in that that's nourishing in part because unless you can integrate yourself across a large time span, taking care of who you will be in the future, and simultaneously fulfilling your social obligations in a responsible manner. So much more animated now. None of the, nothing within the subsidiary structure can operate properly, much less you claim the right to the gratification of your hedonic desire That's a non-starter. And even if you could do that, you wouldn't find in that the meaning

that would sustain you in times of trouble. You find the meaning that would, and everyone knows this. You find the meaning that sustains you in trouble when you need, for example, to regard yourself with some positive attitude in the midst of your stupidity and your suffering, and you can see in yourself the fact that, well, at least you were in service to your wife. At least you had been useful to your children.

At least you helped take care of your parents. At least you were of some service to your friends or to your customers, to your business associates, to your nation. You find that means. in service, and that service is in service of that harmony that makes up the entire Jacob's ladder that stretches from earth to heaven. Lots of, you know, he's very animated and it's very powerful, and maybe talk to us about how,

from a Christian perspective, what is true and good about this idea? Well, what would you affirm in that? I love in Galatians chapter 5, verse 6, the whole letter has been about, well, the presenting issue is about a bunch of preachers saying, if you really want VIP Christianity, then you've got to go down the route of circumcision. And the circumcision preachers were basically saying, if you go through this door marked circumcision, you're actually putting yourself under the 613 commandments of Moses. And you are going into the VIP lounge of Christianity. Because the circumcision teachers still love Jesus.

We love Jesus. But if you really want to upgrade your Christianity, then you need Moses. as well. And so take on board this sort of responsibility. And so circumcision represented that desire to take on yourself the burden of the law yourself. And Paul just preaches against it just fiercely and consistently throughout all the six chapters of Galatians. And he summarizes it in Galatians chapter 5 verse 6 and says, actually, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision mean anything. what counts is faith expressing itself through love. And if you pick up Martin Luther's commentary on Galatians, it's just so, it's so beautiful,

it's so pastoral and so rich and wise. And Luther says, yeah, that's it. It's faith expressing itself through love. And so what is faith is receiving the gift of God, who is Jesus, your righteousness for you. And then having received him without earning him or achieving him or performing for or paying for him, receiving him freely as a gift, in spite of all your sin, you then express that faith through love. And so Luther was constantly talking about there is a passive righteousness before heaven. And in the eyes of God, I have the righteousness of Christ not according to

anything that I do, but only according to the merits of Jesus Christ. So there's a passive righteousness that I receive, but then there's an active righteousness that I work out horizontally in the world. Before the eyes of God, I'm passively righteous in Christ. Before the eyes of the world, I'm very active in love. And actually, the whole shape of Peterson's talk was to speak about faith and responsibility. And that's what made me think of Luther. It's what made me think of Galatians. that actually, yeah, we are to be those who come with empty hands to Jesus, receive him, and then pass him onto the world. And there's that great statement that's attributed to Luther, you know, God does not need your good deeds, your neighbor does. And it's that idea of the down and out kind of life of receiving from Christ, but that is not the end of the story.

And what I'd want to say to Jordan Peterson is don't have an allergic reaction to the book of Galatians or to Luther or to the gospel. that faith when it is truly grasped gets busy, gets active, and passes itself on out to the world. And we truly do find ourselves in love. Didn't Jesus say if you lose yourself, you find yourself, right? And we all know that that's what life is about. You can think of the violin player who's just lost in her music, or you think of the soldier who's just, you know, lost.

He's lost in one sense. identity because he's just given to his comrades in the units and they are together and that you lose yourself to find yourself and the ultimate way of doing that is you lose yourself in jesus and you find yourself on the far side of that and a lot of what peterson says resonates with that because we've tried the self-actualization route and we've tried just um just living for ourselves and just you do you we've tried that and it's failed and it's so empty And we're in the pigsty. And Peterson is coming and saying, you know, don't forget about responsibility.

And that's absolutely resonating. And there's something very, very biblical about that. Let me ask you two questions, two final questions. And in both of these, just kind of speak to a viewer who may be wondering about these things personally, as we all do. I mean, we all have to work through this at a personal level. So firstly, you had a great image in your video about how Jordan Peterson is in one sense so close to the kingdom, but in another sense, you were talking about how sometimes it's far to tell, is he really close or is he really far?

Because he's turned the other direction, looking in the other direction. And it brought to my mind Nicodemus in John chapter 3. Nicodemus is this, you know, the elite of the Pharisees. And yet he comes to Jesus and he, I mean, it's just an amazing scene. When I preached on this passage, I used the metaphor of a Caltech tenured professor sneaking out to go to one of the students. in Caltech and say you're the real teacher. Because when Nicodemus calls Jesus rabbi, that's a powerful moment. But Jesus in response to him says, you must be born again.

And that's so powerful because he's not saying, oh, Nicodemus, you've done really well. You're 80% of the way there. You've just got to close the gap, 20 more percent to get to God. He's saying, you've got to start over, you know. So maybe for someone who is really bought into this idea of hoisting the world on our shoulders, In fact, I'll play not right now with you and me, but in this, I'll play another short clip of Jordan Peterson talking about that. And we could remember, we could remember who we are. We could remember who we are.

He really believes it. And that's what this conference was for to remind people, everyone who attends who you are. Right. You're the... That gives him a chance to kind of collect himself. He really believes this. Like, he's in his message. This is what so many people are responding to.

You're the men and women, individuals made in the image of God, who stumble eternally uphill towards the Jerusalem on the hill, the shining city on the hill. No, and we're so foolish. We regard those propositions as something approximating what, primitive superstitions, when in fact they're the most brilliant intuitions into the fundamental structure of reality that have ever been offered. It's not so bad.

We've brought wealth in plenty to billions of people around the world. We've been struggling uphill properly, and if we were wise and faithful and courageous, and responsible, we could continue to spread that to everyone. We could eradicate absolute poverty. We can bring about time of abundance and opportunity for everyone, and we'll do that. We can do that if we hoist the world on our individual shoulders and operate collectively in this harmonious manner and continue the struggle uphill toward the city of God.

And so if someone is really bought into this idea and they're personally invested in this, how would you communicate the gospel to them as a message of good news that might lift a burden from them to understand that it's actually not our job? to hoist the world on our shoulders because that's exactly what Christ has done. Yeah. So he says in that second clip that you played, when we are at the end of ourselves and the hedonic pleasure thing has not worked, we need that word of affirmation that we have done enough. And he says it as though it's something that we need to tell ourselves. And I think it's a very rare person. who is actually able to do the Stuart Smalley thing from Saturday Night Live, you know,

I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone, people like me. You know, like, that doesn't work. Like, we know that, because if you're an idiot, then you've just received the word of an idiot who's trying to tell you that you're worth something. Like, what do I know? I'm a moron. Self-affirmation just can't work. Like, we need a word from outside ourselves. Or else we end up, like Matt Damon's character in saving private.

Ryan. And as Tom Hanks dies for him, he says, earn it. Earn it. And those words just like echo around his skull for the decades. And he just breaks down at the end, have I done enough? Have I done enough? What could possibly be enough to warrant your salvation in that? And in a sense, because he is such an extraordinary figure, Jordan Peterson is able to ascend the ladder a lot further than many other people. But I do worry about those in his wake who feel like, well, I just need to do 12 rules and then 12 more rules and then 12 more rules. And at some point, we all hit the buffers and we just need the grace of Jesus. And that's why I think what Paul said in the Ariopagus to the Stoics and the Epicureans is so beautiful. he preached to them the good news of Jesus and the resurrection.

So first of all, there's the good news. He doesn't just give them good advice. There's plenty of good advice in the Bible, and there's plenty of good advice in 12 rules for life, largely because there's plenty of Bible in 12 rules for life, actually. But good advice is very different from good news. If I'm at Caltech and I'm your professor, good advice is study hard, you know, spend all your time in the library and maybe you'll pass, right?

But then it's on you, right? Good news is you have graduated, right? Top of the class. And that is a declaration. And the Christian gospel is a declaration that you belong to Jesus, that in the eyes of heaven, you have the righteousness of Christ. You're filled with the spirit. all of Christ's doing and none of your own. That is not the end of the story because then

you are able to go out in the world and express that faith through love. But that is where it begins. It's good news of Jesus and the resurrection. And the Jesus bit is so important. You've got to get to know Jesus. You can open up the Bible, but you've got to meet the one the Bible is about. And there's a person there, not just rules. not just a regime, not just a worldview even.

What you've got is a person who can forgive you for all the ways that you fail at the rules and who can love you nevertheless. You need Jesus, and you need the resurrection. You need hope because actually hoisting the world on your shoulders and trudging up hill. I mean, classically, that was the Sisyphus kind of picture of hell. And no one can do that. And no one can struggle in life. without hope. And I think a lot of what Jordan Peterson has picked up has been from like Victor

Frankl's sort of logotherapy and coming out of Auschwitz, Victor Frankl came up with the idea that you need to live for meaning. And if those who had a meaning in life survived Auschwitz better than those who didn't have that kind of sense. And he sort of brought that into his psychotherapy and logotherapy. He called it like a therapy of meaning. But also Victor Frankl talked. talked about hope actually, probably a little bit more than what Jordan Peterson does. And you can't do any of this without hope, without the sense that beyond the sacrifice, there comes the blessing, beyond the cross comes the resurrection. And I think a Christian message would incorporate all those three things. You would have good news, not just good advice. You would

have of Jesus, not just rules, and resurrection, not just the sacrifice and who knows. comes. Wonderful. Here's a final question for us both to reflect upon is let's share personally, trying to shepherd our viewers toward the gospel. When you were mentioning it is good news, often it comes into my heart. It's good news, and I might even just want to say it's the best news imaginable. Because the more I think about it, the more I think, it really couldn't be a more wonderful message. Christianity encapsulates all these other good elements that you might pick out here or there, and it absorbs them all into itself, and it's this wonderful, beautiful story. So maybe a final way to shepherd our viewers toward this, wherever they may be coming from,

is for us to share personally of how we experience the gospel. The question I'd love to ask is, what does it feel like to experience the gospel as opposed to either stoicism or Epicureanism? And I'll go first and then let you go. And I'll say, for me, as a father of five young children, you know, one of the most sacred, powerful experiences in my life is my relationship with my kids. I can think of each one of them right now, and in every different way, you know, people often say, well, how do you, what happens as you have more kids? Is it harder to love all of them and give them enough attention? And I would say your capacity

to love grows with each one, you know, something new is pulled out of you. I know the way I feel about them. That's a, that's a very powerful experience. It's a, I could even say it's a kind of transcendent experience. When I think about the gospel, you know, it's amazing to me that it never gets old to me to think that the God, who is supreme transcendence, allows me to call him father. And if my relationship with him is based upon grace such that he loves, such that my love for my kids is only very imperfect and pales in comparison to his love for me, I realize what comes into my heart is hope that, you know, I can start from that standpoint. If he loves me that much, and if the cross of Christ is the evidence of that, then there's hope, you know, to keep responding to him and keep moving forward in life.

That's just the emotions of it as I think about it in relation to all of this. Maybe you could just share a little bit about that for you personally as well. That's so interesting. That's brought to mind another story. The whole idea of parenting, Jordan Peterson's talk at the art conference orbited around this illustration of how he taught. his 18-month-old son to set the table, you know, one fork at a time. It's this idea of responsibility and subsidiarity and just starting small and saving the world, but, you know, doing it one knife and fork at a time.

And my only problem with his whole analogy is that it started just a little bit too late. It started while he was trying to give off himself to his son. And really, it should start with all of us as newborns who cannot do it for, ourselves and require a father to love us and require love to come first and for love to take the initiative with us. And therefore, like, adoption in the Bible is such a picture of what God is God's love is like that a prior love has been set on us to bring us into a family where there is security and attachment and freedom and joy. And it's first about being loved and then you're set on your feet to contend forthrightly with the world, which is what Jordan Peterson wants us to do.

And so the story that came to mind is Greg Lagarnas, who was an Olympic diver. And if you press into his story, it is an adoption story as well. And it's quite a heartwarming and beautiful story of him being loved into a place of security. And he won all the gold medals that were going in the Seoul Olympics and the Barcelona Olympics and he got all the world records. And he was asked in Sports Illustrated once why he was able to perform under pressure because he was known for being able to get to the final dive and he absolutely has to nail it. And a billion people are watching, you know, live on the Olympics. And he nailed the dive and they say, how do you do it?

He said, oh, it's easy. I climbed to the top of the 10-meter die. I climbed to the top of the 10-meter board. I remind myself, my mother loves me. me and I dive. And it's and it's like, and everybody gets that. As soon as you say that, you're like, oh yeah. Because even if he belly flops into that pool, you can fall in life, but you can't

fall further than the arms of loving parents, right? And that security, that love did not stop Greg Lagarnas from achieving and from pushing the boundaries. it was the very context of living forthrightly and contending with the world and having the adventure of his life. He had the adventure of his life because love comes first. And that's, you know, that's what it feels like to know that before I've woken up every morning, the spirit of the sun cries out of a father in my heart. That's what the apostle Paul says in Galician.

Chapter four. So chapter before, before. says faith working itself through love. Before I get to work out in love, the spirit of the son in me is crying out upper father and I get to join in before I've done anything. And that's the security. And then I can do the Greg Lagunas thing. I can climb up to the top of the 10-meter board and I can remind myself that my father loves me and I can dive. Beautiful. Well, may many of those who are searching for meaning who are resting through these things find that in the gospel. That's what I want to give my life to is to helping people with that. I know that's a

a passion of yours as well. So I really love talking with you. Tell us what's the next video coming out on Speak Life that we can be looking for. I started watching yours last night responding to Bill Maher and loved it because I've often found him to be one of these triumphalist atheists who, as you pointed out, all these claims he's just wrong in a lot of these claims he's making. So that was a good one. What's, what can we look forward to me? Yeah, check out. Yeah, check out, check out the Bill Maher video where he tries to debunk Christmas and then gets everything wrong. He makes an actually video and he actually gets all his actuallys wrong. actually. And so we have fun kind of having a look at that. And if people want to check out online

more about how to explore the Christian faith, I can't, I highly recommend 321Course.com, which is our evangelistic course where we just immerse you in Jesus, his vision for God, his vision for the world, his vision for you. And yeah, you can check that out at 321Course.com. Fantastic. So for everybody watching, check out the video description. They'll be a link to that, the 321 course, as well as the video we've referenced to check out Glenn's great ministry. Also, don't forget to subscribe to Truth Unites like this video. If you want to support Truth Unites, you can see the link to the Truth Unites website in the video description. Thanks for watching, everybody. We'll see you next time.