This past Monday evening, my wife and I and a few friends went to the Southern New Hampshire University arena to hear Jordan Peterson’s “We Who Wrestle With God” lecture tour—an aggressive 52-event enterprise crammed into just four months.

I first became interested in Peterson after listening to the audio version of his 2018 book 12 Rules for Life. It was narrated by Peterson himself, and although I later bought the paperback version of the book, the printed words alone simply could not convey the heart and fervor of Peterson’s voice.

So I was eager to hear Peterson speak in person, and it was indeed a fascinating experience.

First off, Peterson is just fun to watch and listen to. Wearing a suit jacket bizarrely decorated in black, red, and yellow—evocative of his self-designed artwork featured on Maps of Meaning?—Peterson paced as he talked. He began by saying, “In 2017, when I was lecturing for . . .” thus drawing us into an anecdote he never finished, because the mention of Harvard reminded him of the shameful way in which Claudine Gay had prevaricated in her answer about the wrongness of calling for the genocide of the Jews. This tributary of thought flowed into another, but we were happy to be along for the ride because Peterson was confident where the current was taking him, which was the deep, undeniable importance of the sacred myths that lay at the foundation of Western culture.

These “myths”—by which Peterson means not “unfounded beliefs” but rather “narratives that shape our identity”—are enshrined in the Hebrew Scriptures, the first ten verses of which Peterson proceeded to use as launching pads for philosophical and psychological musings. You may not like what Peterson says, but can you not envy the eloquence with which he says it?

If there was a driving, undercurrent of thought throughout the entire lecture, it was that we must know and cherish these ancient and sacred stories if we are to understand our individual and our collective identity.

This brings me to an important feature of Peterson’s influence I have read about and noticed personally. His lectures and books have moved people—notably young men—who had dismissed Christianity as silly and irrational, to give it a second look.

It reminds me of what G. K. Chesterton humorously confesses in the his book Orthodoxy. He compares himself to a lone sailor, setting out from his home country of England to discover new lands. In the vast and wild ocean, he gets turned around and washed back up on the shores of England, which he believes to be a yet-undiscovered island. There he experiences both the thrill of thinking he has discovered a new territory, and then, mingled with a touch of embarrassment, the relief of being back home.

So it is with many people who find Jordan Peterson after leaving the homeland of Christianity. They lose themselves in the sea of chaos, and—to add a twist to Chesterton’s analogy—get hauled up by the ocean liner of Peterson’s intellectual rigor, courageous stance, and fatherly exhortations. Then they realize that the ocean liner is not going away from their home island, but back toward it.

But here I offer a vital caveat: and that is that Peterson can take them only so far. To extend the maritime analogy, Peterson’s ship can take them to the waters around the island of Christianity, but it lacks the little dinghy to take them to the shore of Christ.

What I mean is this: Although Peterson has penetrated deeply into the foundational myths of our culture, and discovered them to be enshrined in our sacred writings, and although he sees Christ—indeed the cross of Christ—as the central point of the biblical narrative, he does not preach the gospel, without which no one can truly become a Christian. His message about the meaning of the cross is most clearly expressed in the opening pages of 12 Rules for Life in which he explains his understanding of “the cross” as the place where one’s individual existence is “suffering and transformation.” He writes,

How could the world be freed from the terrible dilemma of conflict, on the one hand, and psychological and social dissolution on the other? The answer [is] this: Through the elevation and development of the individual, and through the willingness of everyone to shoulder the burden of Being and to take the heroic path. We must each adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society and the world.

The distinction might be subtle but it’s like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. The gospel is primarily a declaration of something that Christ has done for us: Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3). Peterson, insofar as I can tell, views the work of Christ on the cross as archetypical of the fully mature human being who, “shoulders the burden of Being,” and invites us to imitate him.

It is true, of course, that Christ calls us to take up our cross and follow him. But though he preaches Christ as example, Peterson is silent about the heart of the Christian proclamation, which is Christ as substitute. To “preach Christ” in the New Testament understanding of the kerygma is to proclaim the events of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, as well as their meaning for us. As the Spirit-Anointed Son of God, Jesus is the Protector-King, who, having borne the penalty for our sin, invites us to trust and follow him. That is what makes the gospel good news.

Having given this vital clarification, I remain optimistic about Peterson’s influence. He speaks courageously about the damning effects of excising Christian underpinnings from our culture, points people to Scripture, and speaks highly of Christ. Anyone who can prompt someone else to take a second—or third, or fourth—look at my Lord Jesus Christ has my gratitude.

So, although Peterson doesn’t lower a dinghy from his ship to the shore of Christ, he at least gets people closer to the island, and I am happy to send little boats out to people. 

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