Let us pray that God sends His Spirit to reveal the truth about His Son to Jordan Peterson.  He is no doubt a brilliant thinker and a needed voice in the public sphere where reason and logic are so often lacking. However, my hope is that Christians who are enamored with his articulate reasoning regarding modern day social issues and family values aren’t so captivated that they can’t rightly discern his error regarding Christ and Christianity.

My fascination with Jordan Peterson goes back a few years now. Here are my impressions of what he believes about Christianity based on my exposure to his videos and his book, 12 Rules for Life.  See links throughout the article for sources that inform that is article.
Jordan Peterson is a Clinical Psychologist and a prominent University Professor (Harvard University and University of Toronto) who has risen to prominence due to his public stand against political correctness, the use of genderless pronouns, and his interview regarding the gender pay gap.  That coupled with his Science-based Conservative leaning views around marriage, family, and personal responsibility has made him a darling among Politically Conservative Evangelicals.  He considers himself a Christian and the subject of God and his beliefs comes up in many of his interviews.
While I’m not here to cast aspersion on Peterson, a brilliant thinker who I love listening to,  I am pointing out that his unorthodox views about Jesus lead to a radically different understanding of how a Christian is made right with God and therefor how a Christian lives.
Peterson isn’t sure if Jesus rose from the dead.  He only believes His Spirit lives on in as much as “spirit” refers to continuing influence, saying “it’s had a massive effect across time.”  When asked about the Divinity of Christ, he questions what is meant by Divine. Peterson defines the Logos as divine, but then defines divine as “of ultimately transcendent value” and that “it’s associated with Death and Rebirth.”  We see in all of this, that the words “spirit,” ”logos,”  and “divine” don’t refer to a personal deity but rather to ultimate ideas.
In Peterson’s varying descriptions of Christ throughout his videos he jumps from ancient heresy to ancient heresy, the content of which is beyond the scope of this post.  But suffice it to say, he questions the Orthodox views of the Trinitarian formulas for God as well as the two natures in one person of Christ.  The impact of denying the Calcedonian formulations regarding Christ in this way is manifold.
Peterson talks about people increasingly embodying the Logos, holding up Buddha and Christ as those who have.  For Peterson, the implication for the Christian Life is that one can reach this higher plane of spiritual reality through suffering and seeking “the light,” although as he admits this is obviously near impossible.  In this scheme Jesus Christ is an example of what to become.  To Peterson, who believes Jesus is a historical figure, that is less important than what he symbolizes, the process of taking up one’s cross, suffering, death, and rebirth.   His 12 Rules for Life provide great life tips and advice, but repackages Christianity into a works based system for “salvation” (a process by which through suffering and hard work one more and more improves their life thereby embodying the Logos) which is absent of the essential Christian concept of Grace.
Note: His book is not meant to be Theology, but a Self-Help guide. In that it is very good.  It is a great book that is needed.  However, it does delve into Theology and Scripture quite a bit, and in that it easily can devolve into a works-based system.
As a clinical Psychologist, Peterson’s theology is heavily influenced by Carl Jung who he readily references in many interviews.  It is Jung’s archetypes that forms the basis for Peterson’s insights (some of them very good)  and classes on Genesis and Exodus.
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Why do authorities exist? It is because we live in a sinful and fallen world, and without authority everyone would do “what is right in his own eyes,” resulting in chaos. Those who will not be constrained from within by the living presence of Jesus Christ, must be restrained from without by the state, acting under God’s ultimate authority, in order to “promote the general welfare,” in the words of the Constitution’s preamble.

The late philosopher-theologian Francis Schaeffer taught me to always begin a discussion with a definition. The reason, he said, is that different people define the same word in different ways. Dictionary.com defines authority as “the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues or disputes; jurisdiction; the right to control, command, or determine.”
The word determine has its own definition: “to settle or decide (a dispute, question, etc.) by an authoritative or conclusive decision.” Interesting how the word determine appears in the definition of authority and authority appears in the definition of determine.
In modern politics, one has authority if he (or she) wins an election. It is conferred upon the elect by our Constitution. But this authority lasts only as long as the person continues in office. When the term is over, the authority expires. Scripture commands us to be “submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work” (Titus 3:1–2). At once this is a witness to others and an acknowledgement that all authority is from God, which He establishes to suit His purposes. No higher an authority than Jesus said so when He stood before Pilate and said, “You would have no authority over me at all if it were not given to you from above” (John 19:11).
In perhaps the most profound statement on the Christian’s relationship to government, Paul wrote, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment” (Rom. 13:1–2).
There are limits to submission, such as when civil authorities order one not to preach the gospel, or when a Christian is ordered to do something ungodly (Schaeffer used the example of a Christian nurse who is ordered by the hospital for which she works to participate in an abortion. He said she must refuse even if it costs her the job). For centuries Christians have debated whether they should submit to illegitimate authority, such as a dictatorship. Paul wrote under a Roman dictatorship, so does the question answer itself? Does that mean Christians were acting rightly when they hid Jews from the Nazis? Were they rebelling against God when they lied to the Gestapo? Greater minds than mine will have to answer that one. I would have hid them, lied to the Nazis, and let God sort it out at a later time.
These things are sometimes easier to process in theory than in practice.
In our efforts to shape culture according to an Authority in which the world does not believe, too many Christians have it backwards. We ask others to submit to God while rebelling ourselves.
Divorce is one example. Statistics indicate as many Christian marriages are breaking up as those in the unsaved world. This is because too many of us choose to ignore Paul’s admonition to submit “to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph. 4:21). By submitting to one another, we put the interest of the other person before our own and acknowledge the claim of the Higher Authority — Jesus Christ — to whom we all must submit either in this life, or certainly in the life to come.
Submission is more powerful than “lording it over” someone else. Some years ago while visiting with an editor at a Florida newspaper I was trying to persuade to take my syndicated column, I met a young Christian on the staff who told me he was thinking of resigning because no one paid attention to him on the editorial board. He said he was thinking of going into “full-time Christian service.” The phrase has always made me gag because all Christians ought to see themselves in full-time service for Christ, regardless of their profession.
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Ruth stumbled upon a doll in an “adult” store where consumers were known to buy gag novelty gifts for bachelor parties. In fact, the doll was based on a German cartoon character that ran in the comics of a Hamburg newspaper. Drawn by an artist named Reinhard Beuthien, the character was called “Bild Lilli,” and she had a reputation for seducing wealthy men.

Moviegoers far surpassed industry expectations this past weekend as “Barbie” pulled in north of $155 million, earning the distinction of being the biggest film debut of the year thus far.
Our team at Plugged In has done its usual heavy lifting in reviewing the movie, and parents and anyone interested in watching the film would be wise to access their exhaustive and thorough analysis.
The “Barbie” doll franchise dates back to 1959, and so for many of us of a certain age, there has never been a time when the toy didn’t exist on store shelves. Many a woman has no doubt warm and nostalgic memories of the childhood staple. My sister had a few and my wife fondly remembers the “Barbie Condo” she received one Christmas.
But Saturday’s Wall Street Journal mentioned something of the doll’s origin that was both downright disturbing and maybe even revealing.
Husband and wife team Elliott and Ruth Handler, along with Harold “Matt” Mason, started “Mattel” toys out of their Southern California garage. Their first big product was a “Burp Gun” which sold very well thanks to the fledgling company’s sponsorship of Disney’s “Mickey Mouse Club” – a children’s variety show that ran in the afternoon on ABC television. Both the show and the gun were big hits with kids.
But it was on a European vacation the summer after the company’s first year of operation where the Handlers landed upon the idea for the Barbie Doll.
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