Peterson’s message is not sufficient to rescue anyone–including him–from God’s righteous judgment. But it has proven a strikingly effective antidote to the spiritual chaos men face in today’s world. The church should take notes, even as we pray Peterson follows the meaning he preaches to its true source.

I recently wrote something on Facebook to the effect that I would rather my boys (ages seven and five) listen to Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson’s lectures on The Lion King than many sermons and small group lessons I’ve heard addressed to men in church. Given that I am a Christian and Jordan Peterson is not, this may seem like an odd thing to say. But I don’t think it is. Peterson’s ongoing appeal, especially among young men, is a loud reminder that our spiritual needs are not limited to salvation, and that sometimes a thoughtful unbeliever can have a better grasp of those needs than most Christians do.

Since he rose to fame in 2017, Peterson has been an enigma for religious readers. On the one hand, he gives moral counsel it would be tough for anyone to disagree with: “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.” “Do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, or arrogant.” “Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.” Proffering this and similar advice in his bestselling books, Twelve Rules for Life and Beyond Order, he has become what one writer called “a societal father figure.” In a time of growing aimlessness, despair, nihilism—and yes, fatherlessness—his message centers on finding meaning, taking on responsibility, and overcoming adversity. These are all themes that appeal on a visceral level to disaffected men.

Yet Peterson’s ambiguity about religion understandably troubles some Christians. He quotes Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung more readily than Jesus Christ. He says he’s not willing to place himself “in a box” by professing orthodox faith. He certainly doesn’t give altar calls. Even so, people regularly say his work saved their lives or gave them new purpose. For those accustomed to proclaiming the gospel as the solution to human sin and misery, this apparently redemptive effect of Peterson’s message can seem odd or even threatening. After all, we Christians have the answer to the world’s deepest problem! If Peterson is offering something different and apparently quenching people’s spiritual thirst, doesn’t that make him a false teacher—a peddler of a self-help gospel?

The answer really lies in whether Peterson is, in fact, peddling a gospel. He doesn’t seem to think he is. Rather, he is teaching readers and audiences what he has taught patients as a clinical psychologist for decades: how to be a human well, how to create order out of relational chaos, how to aim one’s passions toward a purpose, and how to navigate difficult and confusing lives without falling prey to despair. In doing so he is offering all who pick up his work a life-giving alternative to the anything-goes mentality of our age, and is teaching a truth all too rarely acknowledged in Christian churches: that conversion is not the answer to every problem we face, and that pursuing this-worldly meaning is core to how we are created.

Learning from Nature

Peterson teaches people (especially men) how to be human well because he doesn’t believe our nature is malleable. He believes it can be understood, and that thriving comes from following the “maps of meaning” laid down deep in our subconsciousness and even our bodies. This is why he famously begins Twelve Rules for Life by explaining what the endocrine systems of lobsters can teach us about our own minds. Though it’s easy to crack jokes about this or get lost in his evolutionary jargon, we shouldn’t miss Peterson’s point: human beings have a hardwired nature, and living in accordance with that nature—even through acts as simple as standing up straight with your shoulders back—can reduce misery and improve our characters. You will not learn any of this at an altar call, nor in simplistic admonitions to be “Christlike.” Young men in particular, searching as they are for the blueprints to the good life in a world that tells them to draw their own, need more detail than that.

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