Beware of Prophets for Profits

“Think again Sunshine!” Pop-intellectual Jordan Peterson has released a video in which he takes the role of a prophet and tells all Christian churches— Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox— how to do outreach and what our message should be. It is a video in which an exemplar of unhealthy right wing “good think” lobs rhetorical grenades at unhealthy left wing “political correctness” in the name of a religion and a God he himself does not embrace. His central thesis is that young men are burdened with a version of “original sin” experienced as guilt and shame for three overstated reasons, promoted by his enemies such as Derrida and Marx, deconstructionists and cultural Marxists. 

The three reasons that young men are shamed are the following, stated by Peterson in the most grandiose and slanted ways:

1. Western culture can be an oppressive patriarchy that abuses and excludes people for selfish gain. 
2. Human economic activity often pollutes the Earth and harms the ecology of creation. 
3. The engine that drives the first and second reasons is the human drive to dominating power and selfish exploitation. 

Taken as tendencies humans struggle with, these are simply universal issues to be aware of (and repent from to the extent we are complicit in them). And they are Biblical issues at that. The first 11 chapters of Genesis have all of these themes. Peterson’s sales trick, however, is to play the victim card for males, particularly young males, as being unfairly burdened by these sources of guilt and ethical culpability. He doesn’t simply state that they are perhaps blamed a disproportionate amount for these issues, while others are treated as innocent. That might be a defensible position in some of the more shrill and shaming cultural battles we engage in. Instead, Peterson absolves men completely and denies these issues affect men at all. 

His solution is NOT to see what is true in those three reasons. He presents a strawman of the worst possible version of these reasons, instead of arguing against the most persuasive version of these reasons. Always beware of hucksters who are unwilling or unable to deal with the best their opponents have to offer, and instead rely on caricatures. It’s like a adult man bragging he’s the strongest in the room when the room is filled with 12 year olds. 

His solution is NOT to repent and confess the sins of ourselves and our fathers to God to receive forgiveness and healing of our shame (i.e. the solution the Bible actually prescribes and exemplifies). His solution is to ignore and reject all possible causes for shame and blame, and to tell people to come back to Church without repentance, so that the Church may christen the desires that come natural to them, and tell them they don’t need to change a thing. Just be more “natural” and help “fix the Church up”. 

What is perhaps most perplexing about this video— and keep in mind this is framed by Peterson himself as an authoritative admonition to the Churches— is that he did NOT give any direction for the moral formation of young men. This is very weird since he is the same guy who wrote “12 Rules”. That book is full of truisms and platitudes about the moral formation of young men that I often agree with. For instance I’ve been teaching young people they should be making their beds every morning since the mid-1990’s! 

So, Peterson is known for advocating for the moral formation of young men. Why on Earth then did he not tell the Churches to do some of that? At least tell them to teach what is in his 12 rules. But in the video he goes out of his way to tell the Churches to invite young men on a platform is basically “You’re OK, just be who you are!” It’s a problematic video even from the basis of Peterson’s own writings. 

The only thing I would agree with here is that Churches “need to ask more of their members, not less”. This is absolutely true, even if the scaffolding he preaches provides absolutely no basis to do that. In order to “ask more, not less” we need to have a robust sense of how to critique, discipline, and re-route our natural desires follow Jesus toward Christlikeness. And the words “Jesus” and “Christ” are words that are completely ignored and unmentioned in an entire 10 minute message the the Church which the Body of Jesus Christ. That silence is deafening, especially for someone who claims to speak for the Church. 

When a cartoon caricature of the ideological right castigates and criticizes a cartoon caricature of the left, the reality of the actual human situation in the vast and messy middle remains untouched. I know cartoons and buffoons on the reactionary left and reactionary right who try to speak for the Church and direct the Church. I highly recommend that the Church reject both of them. Because both are anti-Christ. 

And for the record, here are some great thinkers who I disagree with on many cultural and social issues, who are nevertheless cultural commentators of great insight and integrity, who accurately represent the views of those they disagree with, and who are committed to following Christ: GK Chesterton, Pope Benedict, Bishop Robert Barron. All three of these thinkers would arrive at similar social and cultural positions as Peterson in a much more engaging and intellectually honest way. Peterson, in my opinion, is an intellectual huckster who has found a gravy train to make money off of socially conservative Christians. We have been warned about people trying to fleece the flock and who use godliness as a means of financial gain (1Timothy 6.4-5).