Titling this article has proved more difficult than writing it. I considered everything from “21 Smug People Talk About A Subject None Of Them Understands, Least of All Jordan Peterson” to “Jordan Peterson Debates The Existence Of A God, But Not One Any Of Us Have Ever Heard of.” //

Brian, an outlier insofar as he appeared to be in his 40s, asks a timeless question: What is the purpose of life? Proverbs 3:5-6, Matthew 6:33, and Mark 12:30-31 are all helpful here. The Westminster Confession of Faith has something to say on the matter, too.

Peterson instead offers a program for self-improvement as if life were just one big gym membership.

Kumari wants Peterson to explain sin and hell.

If ever there was a time for Peterson to give a coherent answer, this was it. He talked of “improvement” as a means of avoiding hell. Neither the words of the Christian vocabulary — repentance, forgiveness, grace, redemption, restoration, etc. — nor their meanings were ever brought to bear. Peterson does speak of sin, but only as “miss[ing] the target,” which he proceeds to do completely.

There are very reasonable answers to all these questions. But Peterson, as lost as anyone in the room, knew none of them. Instead, one by one, twenty atheists were sent away with nothing for their souls.

And it’s souls I am concerned with here. For the Christian, these are issues of eternal significance, not clever repartee. //

I have debated and dialogued with many atheists — Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Shermer, Peter Singer, etc. — and more than a few Muslims on the question of God in venues ranging from CNN and Hyde Park to Al Jazeera and a Seattle concert hall, and my opponents all had this in common: They were very clear on the fact that they were atheists or Muslims. There is genuine integrity in that. For my own part, I made it very clear that I was there, not to win an argument, but to win their souls. So, I find it nauseating that these young people, however misguided they might be, owned their convictions while Peterson played coy. //

You simply cannot engage this age group flippantly as Peterson does. They are too sincere for that. They are too ready to put legs to their professors’ crackpot ideas.

A humorous but true story to illustrate my point: Years ago, my students, seeing that I collected rocks from historical sites, made note of the fact and decided to act. Shortly thereafter they were bringing me marble they had chipped off the Parthenon, pieces of the Great Wall of China and the Palace of Versailles, and even a cobblestone they had pulled right out of Red Square (no small feat, I can tell you). I had unwittingly created a class of vandals!

Too often, however, the results are less amusing. The ranks of Antifa, BLM, and every civilization-destroying revolution since the dawn of time are full of young people like those who “surrounded” Peterson here. If you would teach them, you must be prepared to lead them to truth. To do otherwise is morally irresponsible. And this raises a question:

To what, exactly, was Peterson trying to convert them? Deism? New Age mysticism? Jordan Petersonism? Certainly not Christianity. //

But Zina won’t be put off. Wanting to know if her soul is in danger, she circles back and tries to get a straightforward answer: “What I’m saying is that your interpretation of the Bible — if you cannot tell us again if these historical events happened or not, that can be a deciding factor if someone is damned to hell for eternity or if they go to heaven, right?”

Peterson: “I don’t concern myself so much with that particular question.”

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, the curtain was drawn back on all of Jordan Peterson’s theological ramblings to reveal a man who knows not a damn thing on this subject worth a moment more of Zina’s time. His seemingly agonized stream-of-consciousness talk about God and the Bible is just so many donuts in the parking lot, leading his audiences absolutely nowhere. Remember, from a Christian perspective, the goal is the cross of Jesus Christ. It isn’t to make you religious or spiritual or to give you warm and fuzzy feelings about God or an appreciation for the Bible as a religious text. Hell will be full of such people. The objective is nothing short of the cross. Eternal life. And as Zina discovered, Peterson can’t get you there.

As an old seminary professor of mine used to say, “If your audience cannot see Jesus at the end of your teaching, you get an F.” So, where was Jesus in any of this? His name was mentioned twice in 90 minutes, and it’s more than a little telling that it wasn’t Peterson who did it on either occasion; it was Zina, and Peterson moved the discussion away from him with all possible haste.

Zina later made this astute observation: “Jordan Peterson’s framework for understanding Christianity is probably not the one that the Bible intended us to use.”

It fascinates me that Peterson offers himself as an authority on the Bible while missing its central message so comprehensively. The Book of Job, a Peterson favorite, contains a warning that he apparently missed. It comes from the Lord in the last chapter of that book, and it’s a reminder to us that any who dare speak of him had better do so accurately:

“My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right.”

Almost nothing Peterson says about God is right. That should give his audiences pause, if not Peterson himself.