psychology
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By In Books, Culture, Family and Children, Interviews, Men, Podcast, Politics, Scribblings

The Importance of Earnest Being

The digital ink spilled over Canadian clinical psychologist and author Jordan Peterson by now could fill a metaphorical ocean, but I want to venture what I think may be an unexplored cause of his popularity: his lack of guile or pretense.

Anyone who has spent any time in comment box debates or hasn’t been living in an undersea cave since the 2016 presidential election knows the tone of news commentary, opinion writing, and even journalism has taken a nasty turn. Of course, if you had asked someone following the 2012 election whether the partisan rancor in America could get any worse, he might have shrugged and said, “I don’t see how.” That person is probably hiding in a dark place right now, embarrassed by his lack of imagination.

Image result for jordan peterson beard

It’s not enough to disagree with someone, anymore. If a person favors a different policy, has come to a different quotient after dividing the benefits of his or her political party by its drawbacks, or even fails to subscribe to an ascendant gender theory of more recent provenance than my five-year-old daughter, such a person is not merely wrong. He or she is too stupid to be classified as a vertebrate (in which case we mock), or else irredeemably wicked (in which case we call him or her a Nazi or a Cultural Marxist). These mutually exclusive attacks are alternated from day to day, often against the same people.

But what if not just merely wrong, but pitiably wrong–even deceived–were still serviceable categories? What if instead of automatically sorting ourselves into warring ideological or partisan factions hurling insults and abuse at one another, we called a ceasefire, met on neutral ground, and admitted, “Hey, I am just playing the part I thought I was supposed to play, but I don’t really think you are a venomous arthropod. Let’s calm down and figure this out.”?

That’s where Jordan Peterson seems to be coming from. (more…)

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By In Culture, Family and Children, Theology, Wisdom

The Doctor Is In

Alastair Roberts (PhD, Durham) is one of the participants in the Mere Fidelity podcast and is also the contributing editor of the Politics of Scripture series on the Political Theology Today blog. He blogs at Alastair’s Adversaria and tweets using @zugzwanged. This post was originally posted on his blog and reposted at Theopolis as ‘What Pastors Could Learn From Jordan Peterson’

Last night, along with a few online friends, I watched this debate on the meaning of life between William Lane Craig, Rebecca Goldstein, and Jordan Peterson, hosted by Wycliffe College. While watching it, and reflecting upon Peterson’s work more generally (about which I’ve written in the past), I was struck by some of the lessons that preachers can learn from Peterson. (more…)

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