By now, you’re probably aware that Jordan Peterson has broken the internet again. Yes, the curmudgeonly self-help guru who, in his current iteration, markets himself as an authority on the Bible and God while consistently dodging any attempts to clarify to what extent he believes in either has entered the debate arena.

The debate arena in question is captured in a video titled “1 Christian vs 20 Atheists”— or at least that’s what it was called for about four hours. When Peterson, true to form if not to intellectual honesty, refused, mid-debate, to embrace the designation of Christian — or, for that matter, of non-Christian — Jubilee (the sponsors of this clickbait mess) were compelled to rethink the title, eventually landing on the more accurate “Jordan Peterson vs 20 Atheists.”

I feel their pain. Having carefully watched the video in full multiple times, I had a similar problem. 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.”

In fact, at no time is it clear exactly what position Peterson is defending, and that’s more than a little problematic in a debate. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Bull in the Ring

Jubilee’s stated mission is to “provoke understanding and create human connection.” They ostensibly achieve this through a video series called “Surrounded.” A bit like the old football drill “bull in the ring,” guests ranging from sportswriter Skip Bayless to political pundit Ben Shapiro sit in the center of a circle of people who are their ideological opposites. In Peterson’s case, picture 20 atheists who are eager to tilt at Peterson and earn social media glory. And tilt they do. The format calls for them to literally run for an empty chair facing Peterson. The first one there is given a few minutes with the impossible-to-nail-down psychologist.

My cynicism says that none of this is designed to “provoke understanding” and “human connection.” On the contrary, it is curated for an audience more accustomed to scrolling social media for quick dopamine hits than for content that requires sustained linear thought. To that end, the participants do their part and seek gotcha! moments with questions often reminiscent of “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” and “Can God create a rock so big that he can’t move it?” It is intellectual blood sport, served up for our voyeuristic pleasure.

At the end of it all, Peterson, it is alleged, was a “bully,” “got destroyed,” “was owned,” etc. Jubilee’s introduction portrays Peterson in this light. But I generally got a different impression. Many in this gathering were, as I have said, smug — weren’t we all at this know-it-all age? — and Peterson, testy at times, quite rightly demands they address him with respect. Those who felt themselves bruised mostly had it coming. As for being “owned” and “destroyed,” Peterson’s missteps were entirely of his own making. Indeed, his errors were very much on-brand for Dr. Jordan Peterson, Theologian-at-Large.

Take, for example, Peterson’s exchange with Danny. In a made-for-social-media sound bite, Danny, like so many before him, tries to pin Peterson down on the question of his Christian belief:

“Either you’re a Christian or you’re not. Which one is it?”

It is a fair point. It is my point. It is Richard Dawkins’ point. It is a biblical point. Peterson has been sitting on the fence for entirely too long, and Danny tries valiantly to knock him off it. But he does it with all the snotty charm of David Hogg. Consequently, Peterson dismisses him with an equally snotty, but devious, reply:

“I could be either of them, but I don’t have to tell you.”

The scene repeats itself when Parker asks Peterson if he believes in an “all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good notion of God.” Again, a fair question. The correct answer for any Christian is yes. Peterson obfuscates: “What do you mean by ‘believe’?” as if this boy were speaking in tongues. Parker, like Danny, never gets an answer, and like Danny again, he leaves clearly frustrated.

It doesn’t end there as members of the circle keep running to the empty chair, but with less enthusiasm as the program wears on, perhaps because they sense, as do we, that they are wasting their time.

Ian, full of anger, targets what many atheists see as their headshot on Christianity: Old Testament violence. I love this question. It presents a wonderful opportunity to discuss sin, the holiness of God, and to introduce the audience to a God who is not the cosmic Santa Claus many assume Him to be.

But Peterson, in his most honest moment, admits he has no answer.

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.

These participants, kids mostly, are typical of a demographic for whom I feel much compassion. Having engaged many just like them, atheist and otherwise, on campuses all over the world, I love their eagerness to discuss big ideas and their lack of pretension. Where adults are often jaded and insincere, they are seldom either. When you are unfair, harsh, or just having a bad day, they have reserves of forgiveness when such wells have long since run dry in their elders — especially when they know you love them. But the discovery that their parents or teachers do not believe the very doctrines they would presume to teach them is intolerable to their earnest natures. The late Columbia University classicist Gilbert Highet, whose lectures are the stuff of legend, put it this way:

The young dislike their elders for having fixed minds. But they dislike them even more for being insincere. They themselves are simple, single-minded, straightforward, almost painfully naïve. A hypocritical boy or girl is rare, and is always a monster or a spiritual cripple. They know grown-ups are clever, they know grown-ups hold the power. What they cannot bear is that grown-ups should also be deceitful. Thousands of boys have admired and imitated bandits and gunmen because they felt these were at least brave and resolute characters, who had simply chosen to be spades instead of diamonds; but few boys have ever admired a forger or a poisoner.

If forgers and poisoners dwell somewhere near the bottom of a youth’s Inferno, a guy who won’t answer the question of whether he believes in the divine subject of his book and lectures surely resides nearby. Peterson, disingenuous to the last, would neither confirm nor deny that he holds any theological position except the one that is most advantageous to him in a given moment. No wonder we can feel the contempt of people like Danny and Parker. I share it.

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.

Desiring to better understand this demographic, I conducted a multi-year study of high school- and college-age atheists. The results, published in The Atlantic, showed that very few adopted the atheist identity for intellectual reasons in spite of repeated claims to the contrary. With most coming from broken families, feeling alienated, bitter, and hurt, their reasons were usually emotional.

I recall a lecture I was giving at a university at the invitation of the Secular Student Alliance (SSA), an atheist group, and a young man asking me, with wounded eyes, what I thought about divorce, a topic not in the same zip code as my presentation. A cup of coffee later, and I find a hurt boy who feels abandoned by his parents and the God of his Sunday school lessons.

There was the young woman who told me she did not want there to be eternal life because that meant her abusive dead father “was still alive somewhere, and that terrifies me.” It was then that I introduced her to the cheery doctrine of hell.

And the high schooler who told me his atheism was “purely for intellectual reasons” but then, after hours of conversation and a flood of tears, spoke of sexual molestation and self-hatred. He gave his life to Jesus Christ.

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.

In two separate heartbreaking exchanges, Zina takes Peterson to Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection, and whether belief in him is necessary for salvation. This is where Peterson ought to be taking her, indeed, all of them. But, no, it’s the atheist who goes to the heart of the issue. Zina wants to know what she must do to be saved:

“So, can we repeat once again what you believe makes someone Christian?”

Peterson: “There’s many things, but one of the most fundamental is that you believe that the cosmos itself is founded on the principle of voluntary self-sacrifice, best founded — let me offer you a contrary example. So, I could assume that power rules, and so that my assumption would be if I can make you do it, I win …”

What?

There are not “many things” that make someone a Christian. This is Christianity 101. It’s John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” It’s John 14:6: “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” But Peterson says none of this and goes spinning off into Deepak Chopra oblivion.

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.

‘Semantic Fog’

There is, I think, a practical rather than a deep spiritual or philosophical reason for Peterson’s prevarications: He wants a back door. To that end, he atomizes every question that he either does not want to answer or cannot answer, sometimes every word, as if no dialogue can occur until the sentences have been diagrammed. And when his interlocutor, desperate to move him toward a resolution, finally says, “So, you mean X?” Peterson will respond with something like, “Yes, but it’s more complicated than that.”

Contained in the atomizing, the terse “I don’t have to tell you” retort, and “it’s more complicated than that” is his conversational escape pod should the questioner poke too many holes in his incoherent worldview. When he senses danger, he can always say that your question is unclear, it’s none of your business, or you misunderstood him. As Greg, thoughtful and respectful, told Peterson in just such a moment: “I just feel like you kind of retreat into this semantic fog.”

Semantic fogs are the sine qua non of any Peterson presentation. And it is why Jubilee’s rebrand — “Jordan Peterson vs 20 Atheists” — is so spot-on. Whatever god Peterson represents, it isn’t the God of the Bible. He is a believer in a god (lowercase) who looks remarkably like Jordan Peterson. But the most damning verdict of all came from a student named Cade:

Jordan Peterson, I credit, [with] turning me into an atheist. … If the average person followed what Jordan Peterson said, they’d realize that fundamentally Jordan Peterson is not a Christian … and operated on bad faith. …

How sad.

Many years ago, I was chatting with the late Christopher Hitchens on the phone. He was, as I recall, in London on his way to a debate with someone who, he said, postured as a Christian but didn’t really believe any of it.

“Wish me well. You’re with me on this one,” Hitchens said.

I was. And I’m with the atheists on this one, too.