According to the New York Times, Jordan Peterson is the most influential intellectual in the Western world right now. Your book “12 rules for life” is an international bestseller. However, if you sympathize with a fundamentalist brand of Christianity, you may not like it. Peterson presents himself as an agnostic when it comes to the question of God’s existence.

Similarly, I suppose that what the author considers a lasting revelation in the book of Genesis will irritate non-religious readers who see the Bible as something that is neither timeless nor true.

I suspect that Peterson’s popularity stems from his attempts to address the concerns and thinking of another type of reader. I am thinking of those who seek a deep understanding of life and who, coming from a Christian family culture, nevertheless question the religious beliefs of a previous generation.

rules of life
I would say that it would be difficult to make an exception to any of the prescribed rules of life. For example, ‘Stand up straight with your shoulders back’. ‘Treat yourself as someone you have a responsibility to help.’ ‘Pursue what is significant (not what is convenient)’. Unfortunately, it is not obvious that everything that is written about each specific rule is really relevant.

He gives examples of where we must take responsibility and honor moral obligations. And speaking of human difficulties, he brings sharp thinking to find a better way forward in our lives. How your life improves by making sacrifices, by giving, by listening, and generally being a part of something bigger than yourself. However, in my opinion, he does not really explain how his helpful observations relate to the theology he espouses.

There are many ideas that seem to veer off in their own directions. This is probably part of the reason the book doesn’t flow and is difficult for the reader. Despite a ‘rule’ per chapter, the book lacks structure.

Being
Peterson seems more comfortable with the notion of Being than with that of God. This idea of ​​Being is said to be different from objective physical reality. However, he uses the term Being rather loosely. In general, it refers to the totality of human experience such as emotions, dreams, revelations, perceptions. Some of these are negative, chaotic, even harsh. Sometimes, however, he speaks of Being as an essential goodness that is also characterized as an irreducible truth that is relevant to everyone now and in the future.

I would suggest that the theologian Emanuel Swedenborg’s idea of ​​the spiritual world adds clarity here. According to this, there is a universal reality of love and wisdom that is the source of all good. It flows in all life. This is an essence of divinity that Swedenborg calls God. This spiritual energy is channeled into our world and inspires health, beauty and compassion. However, it can be reversed, by human beings, reversed so to speak, so that their opposites also appear, namely sickness, ugliness and contempt.

holy writing
Peterson argues that the early chapters of Genesis are written as a metaphor describing human psychology rather than actual events in history. In other words, they describe why our destiny is so tragic and ethically tortuous. He sees these chapters as a narrative sequence almost unbearable in its depth.

The spiritual message and the psychological relevance of the image of God in their way of thinking is all true. He points out, however, that this is the case whether or not there really is a God. The message is that we are no longer one with what he calls God and nature, and there is no going back. He thinks that the original people represented by Adam and Eve were in a state of perfection, their kindness being bestowed rather than earned.

He says that the story reveals, in Adam’s shameful hiding place, our unwillingness to walk with God. (This sorrow, he says, is our frailty and propensity for evil.)

This seems to be in keeping with the idea that our human soul is drifting away from divine source reality into the illusion of self-centeredness.

Peterson also sees the entire Bible as structured so that everything that follows the Fall – the history of Israel, the prophets, the coming of Christ – is presented as a remedy for that Fall.

Also, I would say that the Bible provides a prophecy of the awakening of the soul and the return to reality.

Evil
The book implies that the human capacity for depravity and despicable behavior legitimizes the notion of ‘original sin’. This, he acknowledges, is very unpopular in modern intellectual circles. In my opinion, the notion of original sin is wrong, although I would say that sin is quite real. But only if we consider it as our blockage of the divine life flowing to us by willingly going against it. We do this when we go against our inner awareness of what is deeply meaningful.

The use of the word voluntarily is in line with the idea of ​​human free will. Being inwardly free to choose between good and bad influences, we are responsible for our own conduct. Thus, as Peterson points out, although many, perhaps even most, adults who abuse children were abused as children, most people who were abused as children do not abuse their own children.

conclusion
People like or hate this author. Those who favor nature over nurture, individual free will and self-responsibility, as well as a tough attitude toward muddled thinking are more likely to accept it. But I think there’s a lot of value here as well for people who have a less conservative outlook. Much more than I can mention in this short review.