Introducing Bishop Jordan Peterson

Speaking one’s mind can be both controversial and compelling, writes David Quinn

Recently I came across for the first time an interpretation of why the Jews spent 40 years in the desert before finally arriving at the Promised Land. It was to “purify them” of the slave mentality. I then found this is a very common Jewish interpretation of the Bible story.

In the harsh desert environment they would come to rely on themselves, and on God, rather than on their slave-masters, and so become fit to found a new nation. It was in the desert they were forged as a new people and given laws for living by God, through Moses, including the Ten Commandments. The desert was the hardest of hard schools.

I came across this interpretation in the foreword to a book called Twelve Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson.

The foreword is by Dr Norman Doidge, author of the best-selling The Brain That Changes Itself, and I think his explanation for why the Jewish people had to spend so long in the desert would appeal greatly to Peterson himself, because Peterson believes life is intrinsically hard and full of challenges and you had better be prepared to meet them. This is why he offers Twelve Rules For Life.

Academic

Jordan Peterson, for those who aren’t aware of him, has become an internet phenomenon over the last couple of years, but especially over the last few months. He is a Canadian academic and clinical psychologist who began putting his plain-speaking lectures online and quickly began to gather a huge internet following.

He attracted controversy last year when he said he would refuse to obey a Canadian law requiring people to use the preferred gender pronoun of transsexual people. If a man said he was a woman and wanted to be addressed as such, Jordan said he would do so out of politeness, but not because the law compelled him. He was striking out for free speech.

But this controversy actually distracts from what he is really about, which is telling people how to live in a hard world. To this end he draws on his own experience as a clinical psychologist and on his reading of century after century of other people writing about the same thing. To this end, he draws extensively on the Bible.

Peterson is an agnostic. The Bible to him is a collection of stories, but it is also a book of ancient, inherited wisdom which arises almost spontaneously out of the deep structures of the human mind. To him, ‘myths’ (as he sees them), are not false but are stories that explain the meaning of life to us. Again and again the peoples of the world, going back millennia, tell themselves stories that explain the world and the nature of existence to themselves.

We are story-telling creatures. We remember stories far more readily than we remember abstract lessons in philosophy. The best stories (or ‘myths’) are laden with meaning and Peterson approaches the Bible in this spirit.

Again, this is why Doidge’s explanation for the 40 years in the desert would appeal so greatly to him. Here we have a story which tells us something both simple and profound: it is extremely difficult to break out of bad habits and learn the lessons necessary to leading a fulfilling life.

What’s interesting about Peterson is that he does not set out to be liked or to be popular. He simply says it as he sees it, and if you like it, good, and if you don’t, well, so be it.

Watching Peterson on YouTube, and reading his new book, and listening to him talk about the Bible, I started to wonder in my mind what kind of bishop he would make. Such a person would be absolutely anathema to many of the current trends in theology and spirituality which boil down to a sort of ‘I’m okay, you’re okay’ approach to life. That is to say, if you are happy where you are, then that is fine and I’m here to help you should you ever need it.

A Bishop Peterson would pour scorn on this. He would want to know, objectively speaking, what your situation is. Are you really happy, or are you just pretending? Have you developed all kinds of illusions and bad habits that prevent you becoming the sort of person you ought to be, and what God would want you to be?

He would want to lead you to the right pasture, and not to what you think is the right pasture. Therefore, he would want the cohabiting couple to marry, and the distressed married couple to work out their differences. He would want men and women to raise their children together and stay together. His most constant message is to young men – ‘grow up’ – and young men do not shy away from this challenge. Instead they flock to him because he is a leader.

A Bishop Peterson would speak his mind. If he was interviewed on radio or television he would not seek to curry favour or offer any apologies for what he believes. (To see what I mean look up on YouTube his Channel 4 interview with Cathy Newman. It has been watched millions of times.)

A Bishop Peterson would be controversial and compelling. He would be popular and unpopular, and he would accept his unpopularity as the price to be paid for speaking your mind in a world that seeks to censor speech, especially politically incorrect speech. Much of what Christians believe (or are supposed to), now falls into this category and therefore most bishops avoid it for fear of causing offense.

A Bishop Peterson would believe there is far too high a price to be paid when you seek at all times to avoid sounding offensive; you become inauthentic and you win no-one’s respect. Far better and more authentic to say what you believe. But don’t say what you believe unless you can articulate it properly or you will simply make a fool of yourself and demoralise your own side.

A Bishop Peterson would be a prophetic figure, speaking the truth without fear or favour. There is little enough of that around at present, and this is especially true in a Church that has decided to present a ‘nice’, mostly inoffensive Gospel to the world. A Bishop Peterson would see this for what it is; untruthful. He would set out to speak the truth and suffer the consequences.

Curiously and paradoxically, doing so would also attract both respect, and a following.