Interpreting without faith

Though my evidence is more anecdotal than empirical, I would venture to guess that more Christians pray for the conversion of Jordan Peterson than any other public figure. Peterson, a practicing clinical psychologist who has taught at Harvard and the University of Toronto, became an overnight celebrity when he refused to abide by Canadian laws concerning pronoun usage. Since that time, he has spoken live before a quarter of a million people, been read by millions, and been seen or heard online by at least a billion.

Peterson’s boldness gained him his initial audience, but he maintained it by his uncanny ability to speak to the needs and desires of people disaffected by the relativism, materialism, and hedonism of the modern world. In 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos and Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, Peterson challenged his readers—young and old, male and female—to live lives of virtue and integrity, to be nonjudgmental truth-­tellers, to exchange resentment for gratitude and ideology for responsibility, to work diligently and purposefully, and to pursue meaning and beauty.

In his newest book, We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine (Portfolio, 576 pp.), Peterson looks at both positive and negative Biblical roles: Adam, Eve, Cain, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Jonah, and the builders of the Tower of Babel. This book follows in the wake of a lengthy series of online lectures he gave on Genesis and an equally lengthy series of online roundtable discussions he moderated on Exodus. Given its origin, it should come as no surprise the book is overlong by half and goes down far too many rabbit holes.

Nevertheless, it is seminal reading for an age that has lost its moorings in goodness, truth, and beauty and that desperately needs to return to, and wrestle with, the foundational book of our civilization. Which is not to say that Peterson treats the Bible as the Word of God. He does not read the Old Testament literally, or even historically, but he understands what it means: what it tells us about the nature of God, man, and the universe. The reason so many Christians are praying for Peterson’s conversion is that he gets so many things right about the message of the Bible; the dignity and sinfulness of man; the need for wisdom, sacrifice, and humility; and the nature of marriage and the sexes.

Rather than acquiesce, as too many believing Christians have, to the deconstruction of our God-given sexual differences, Peterson states with courage and clarity the complementary roles of our original parents. “Adam orders, names, and subdues. Eve is predisposed by nature and God to speak for the oppressed, ignored, and marginalized, bringing their concerns to Adam’s attention.” Such are their unique, equally valuable charisms. Sadly, when they are tempted in the Garden, their strengths become their weaknesses.

I have heard dozens of sermons on the Fall that seek to explain how an innocent Eve could succumb to the lies of Satan. Peterson uncovers a motivation implicit in the text that only an experienced psychologist would notice. Eve, he explains, falsely believes her “compassion is so all-encompassing that it can convert and incorporate even that which is deadly poison.” Yes, her sin is pride, as many a theologian has noted. Peterson’s contribution is to link that pride to her nurturing, empathetic qualities. She is like a mother who smothers her “children with the wonders of [her] excessive care, so that [she] can benefit narcissistically and undeservedly from the praise given [her] by those who too-carelessly observe [her] not-at-all selfless sacrifice.”

Eve trusts foolishly and pridefully to her compassion, but Adam trusts foolishly and pridefully to his competence: to his ability to fix everything and everyone. He does not turn to God for help, but blames Eve and God for his sinful choice. His pride lurks “in the guise both of self-presumed right to judge woman and God, and in outright refusal to admit to insufficiency, error, or sin.”

Adam and Eve’s pride leads to resentment, a spiritual cancer they pass down to their son Cain. When God confronts Cain for failing to sacrifice properly, Cain does not repent and offer a better, more costly sacrifice. He “rejects all … personal responsibility” and attempts “instead to shape the entire world in the image of his inadequacy. When this fails, as it must, he invites the spirit of bitterness to dwell within him, instead of setting his house in order.” While modern psychologists and preachers are often too quick to free their patients or congregants from any and all feelings of guilt and shame, Peterson exposes how envy and resentment are hidden cancers that cause us, like the prideful builders of the Tower of Babel, to shake our fists at God, natural law, and the divine call to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

In contrast to Adam, Eve, and Cain, Noah, Abraham, and Moses heed the call and set out on the adventure God has for them. Noah becomes one “whom observation and reputation have deemed sagacious, careful, capable of delay of gratification, other-oriented in the proper manner, and mature.” Abraham, by trusting God’s covenant promises, subordinates “what is narrowly self-serving and instrumental—impulsive, hedonistic, and deceptive—to what is properly highest.” Moses becomes a leader who can hold authority while establishing “a necessary hierarchy of ordering and responsibility” with the power to transform slaves into freemen.

In working through this contrast between the spirit of Cain (that resists all authority) and that of Abraham (that honors tradition), Peterson offers a bold but Biblical answer to a problem American Christians seem less and less willing to confront: How could a good God allow His people to defeat and displace the Canaanites? “Children (descendants, physical and spiritual) of those who lack all respect for their parents will be ruled over both inevitably and justly by the offspring of those who properly honor and revere their mothers and fathers, ancestors, and traditions.” A cosmic moral order exists; when we violate it, we reap the consequences. Many churches have forgotten this truth; Peterson does well to remind us.

Which is not to say that everything Peterson writes in the book is Christian “friendly.” He refuses to come down clearly on God’s existence, preferring to have his cake and eat it too: “Does that make the divine real? This is a matter of definition, in the final analysis—and, therefore, of faith. It is real insofar as its pursuit makes pain bearable, keeps anxiety at bay, and inspires the hope that springs eternal in the human breast.” That’s probably the best we can hope for from a secular, academic psychologist. I will keep praying for his conversion.

—Louis Markos holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities at Houston Christian University. His 26 books include The Myth Made Fact and From Plato to Christ.