Jordan Peterson at the Cross: A Journey of Faith?

There is a recent YouTube video by Jubilee Media called “Jordan Peterson vs. 20 Atheists,” and it has gained significant attention. For those who are not familiar with the name, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson is a Canadian psychologist who rose to prominence as an intellectual figure online after opposing Canada’s Bill C-16 in 2016, arguing that it infringes on free speech. At that time, aside from clinical practice, he was also a university professor at the University of Toronto.

From that, people looked him up and discovered that he has hundreds of hours of lectures posted on his YouTube channel. People soon realized that he is not a conventional psychologist. He still talks about the things that psychologists talk about, with all the empirical data, academic journals, and medical literature to back them up (he is also one of the most cited psychologists in the world), but his thinking is also infused with ideas from philosophy, mythology, and religion.

Around this time, his worldview had been largely inspired by the Daoist model of Yin and Yang, which he framed as Order and Chaos. To him, the best way to be is to dance at the border of the two. We need Order for stability, but we also need a little bit of Chaos occasionally to rejuvenate things. Staying too long on either side will result in imbalance and trouble. That was the basis of his philosophy, and virtually anything that he talked about has its root in that view.

Peterson, however, is also interested in Christianity, more than any other religion. Sure, he talked about Buddha several times, but Christianity gets significantly more attention. He has hours and hours of video of him presenting his analysis of Biblical stories.

For many, the way he approaches Christianity seems so sophisticated that people, atheists and former Christians alike, started to reassess their stance on Christianity. The general reaction was that they never thought about Christianity that way, and perhaps it is not that Christianity is silly, but rather it is their own understanding of it that is shallow.

Many ended up becoming Christians because of him. Many also returned to Christianity because of him (I was in the latter group). But one thing that confused people at that time (and it continues to this time, hence this article) is that he himself never formally adopts Christianity as his “belief.” Why the quotation marks? That is the crux of this writing.

Fast forward to present time. Peterson is now a celebrity thinker. For the past few years, it seems he is increasingly like a Christian rather than a Daoist. He has several lengthy discussions with Jonathan Pageau, an Orthodox Christian thinker and Robert Barron, a Catholic bishop. He also hosts a dedicated show on DailyWire+ that examines some of the books in the Bible with other thinkers and scholars, including the two just mentioned. In fact, his wife, Tammy, became a Catholic and he accompanied her throughout the process. His daughter, Mikhaila, has also embraced Christianity. This all reinforces the public perception that Peterson is deeply immersed in Christianity.

In the YouTube video mentioned at the beginning, Peterson was invited to a debate with a unique format: one person sitting at the center surrounded by twenty or so people with opposing views. That one person will present a claim, and one random opponent, by way of who can reach the chair fastest, will try to debate him until the allocated time ends or until he is voted out by the majority.

Here, Peterson was representing Christianity, which is an odd choice considering there are other prominent (and actual) Christian thinkers and bishops. In fact, the original title was “A Christian vs. 20 Atheists” before it was changed.

The atheists in this show were all familiar with Peterson, knowing how he seemed to be fully invested in Christianity yet never admits to being one. It then became the main weapon of some of them to attack him. It would be too long to cover what they talked about here, but in the comment sections, many are criticizing Peterson because, to them, he sounded evasive and couldn’t give a clear “yes” or “no” answer on the seemingly easy question of whether he was a Christian or not. Many, though, don’t understand how Peterson thinks.

The thing about Peterson is that he is a “meta” thinker in the vein of Carl Jung. If you are familiar with Carl Jung (his concept of archetypes, the collective unconscious, etc.), then the association that was just made already gives you a pretty good idea of how Peterson thinks. Peterson is a higher-order thinker, approaching things from an abstract realm, while most people are first-order thinkers, seeing things empirically. When Peterson encounters a topic, he doesn’t just see what’s on the surface, but he tries to trace the unseen, complex metaphysical structure of that topic.

The question of his faith, then, inevitably became the unofficial topic of that debate: is Jordan Peterson a Christian? Spoiler alert: he is not. And I will give my explanation on that and frame it, naturally, in the context of Christianity.

To Jordan Peterson, it isn’t what you say you believe that determines your beliefs, but what you do that reveals them. This view is not uncommon, as it is also expressed in Matthew 7:16 (“by their fruits you shall know them”). However, Peterson is more uncompromising in his approach and applies it to himself. Though he aligns with — probably not all, but many — Christian values, he doesn’t call himself a Christian because he believes he doesn’t embody the term sufficiently. (He has expressed this numerous times, notably on the Joe Rogan podcast, where he said that claiming to be a Christian is “a hell of a claim to make,” implying, in line with his broader view, that it’s a claim that is very hard to live up to.)

For him, in the context of faith, someone truly “believes” in something when their actions are entirely coherent with their stated beliefs. To Peterson, belief is an unseen structure that supports a person’s psyche, translating into corresponding, visible manifestations — how you act, how you talk, how you present yourself, etc. If what you do contradicts your claim, then, to him, it doesn’t qualify because it means the underlying structure in your psyche isn’t really what you claim it to be. To him, someone’s god is whatever he puts at the top of the hierarchy of importance (is it really God? Or perhaps it’s money? Reputation? Prestige? Etc.). If the actions don’t match the claim, it means that person has a competing god in his psyche. Thus, he exercises caution in claiming belief and expects the same from others.

This reflects an odd kind of humility: on one hand, he feels he doesn’t deserve to be called a Christian because his actions don’t imitate Christ enough; on the other, it hints at pride, as he places the entire burden of being Christlike on himself — an impossible task.

For someone who delves deeply into Christianity — perhaps even more deeply than many pastors — it’s surprising that he seems to miss one key aspect: God’s personhood. He clearly must have known about it, but he doesn’t seem to internalize it as he often treats God as an indifferent Ideal that only passively observes who, among us, can best emulate Him.

But that’s impossible. One cannot become Christlike entirely through one’s own effort. It’s a collaboration between human striving and God’s grace. We reach upward through our imperfect efforts, and God, seeing our genuine intent, reaches down to help. Only through this dynamic can transformation happen.

Thus, claiming to be a Christian despite imperfection is more than acceptable (provided the claimant shows an intent to do good despite their failures), because it reflects faith that, one day, they may embody Christlikeness as fully as possible.

So, if Jordan wants to advance his pursuit, it is no longer through an intellectual effort — as he seems to have sufficiently pushed it to a level few achieve — but through a simple act that most Christians have embraced: surrender. To God. To that Fundamental Value he deeply respects. This means sharing part of the burden with God and letting God help him, as Christianity, at its core, is a relationship between the Creator and His creation.

This is really a curious oversight for the cohesion of Peterson’s philosophy. In his work as a psychologist, he emphasizes the importance of relationships and their extension in society (e.g., his focus on reciprocity), yet he fails to extend this view all the way up to his conception of God, despite his affinity for the one religion that explicitly uses a relational model, despite knowing that in Genesis 1:26 God said, “let Us make man in Our image,” and despite knowing that Christians call their God “Father.”

It seems, then, that Peterson lacks a unifying grand theory, as his idea of relationships operates on a different track from his conception of God. This is striking, given his intellectual rigor and his insistence on coherence between faith, proclamation, and action.

Whatever is causing this — whether his over-reliance on rationalism, skepticism toward religious dogma, or something else — I hope that one day he is willing to take that leap. Not because I insist he become a Christian, but because it seems the necessary climactic act for the journey he himself has chosen to undertake. This is, ironically, the act that he advises us to do: “Every bit of learning is a little death. Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn as something better.” (From 12 Rules for Life).

That quote encapsulates a core idea of one of the things that Peterson teaches: we are the heroes of our own life journey and that we must confront our greatest obstacle to reach our fullest potential. This is virtually identical to the more formalized version found in Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey”, as both drew their inspirations from Jung’s concept of Individuation.

In that journey, the hero must enter a dark cave to confront the thing he fears most. This is often symbolized by a dragon. If the hero succeeds in overcoming it, he emerges transformed into a better version of himself.

Peterson now stands at the entrance of that cave. He lingers a bit too long near it, and it seems time for him to finally enter. This cave is rather special, however, because what awaits him inside is not a fire-breathing dragon, but a cross.

Will he, then, be willing to let his old self die and become something new? To shed his rational armor, confront the Divine, and find out? Only time will tell.

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For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do… For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing… What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:15–25)