Jordan Peterson, an Uber driver, and a ex-atheist walk into a 14,000-seat arena

I waited in line alongside a woman with a cane wearing a cross necklace and a group of teenage boys in board shorts. A blind man was led along by two other gentlemen past a well-dressed lady in petite black heels and her suit-wearing date. A toddler held her daddy's hands as we entered into the arena and were met with the overwhelming smell of funnel cake.

The Dickies Arena in Fort Worth can hold up to 14,000 people. As I took my seat, bright screens in every direction advertised the upcoming entertainment: Disney On Ice, Dierks Bentley, Justin Timberlake.

“So what brings you to the Jordan Peterson tour?” I asked the man next to me over the sound of classical music mingled with popcorn-munching that flowed through the air.

“I got some things I want to wrestle with God about,” he said and gestured to the projection of the tour's title on the front screen: We Who Wrestle with God Tour.

“And the best part is,” he told me, “I 'cash flowed' the whole thing. No credit card.”

He was an Uber driver who had worked extra hours to afford this night out because he thought, “I ought to do something for myself.” He’d found Jordan Peterson’s videos online and realized that “a lot of what he was talking about is the way I was raised.”

A live musician took the stage. As he plucked the first notes on his guitar, my new friend next to me leaned over to my husband to say that he got off early and went to Buc-ee's before this.

His easygoing demeanor and untucked polo shirt defied the typical nose-in-the-classics intellectual stereotype you might expect at an academic lecture. He had not brought his pocket "Poetics," nor did he try to assert his own intelligence with a nonchalant reference to one of Dostoevsky’s lesser-known works. He never said “penultimate,” “epistemological," or "a priori." Instead, he sipped his Diet Coke and tapped his foot along to the music

As more and more people filled the arena, my husband leaned over to me and whispered, “We are all here to hear a man ponder.” We laughed at the idea. In a few months, Justin Timberlake would pack this same arena and bring the ladies to their knees with another rendition of "SexyBack." But tonight, we were gathered to listen to a lecture about God from a Canadian psychologist.

Jordan Peterson took the stage with the charisma of a soft-spoken elder trying to make a crucial decision for his tribe. His hands were pressed in front of his lips as he paced, speaking extemporaneously and pausing to think for a length of time that would make any professional speaker blush.

As Peterson mused aloud over women's attraction to men who can dance (a tangent well worth exploring, in my opinion) I had to ask myself, “Why are we all here?”

What was it about this 61-year-old clinical psychologist’s exploration of the Bible that had drawn Texans out in droves on a Monday night?

I couldn’t imagine we were there for the spectacle – for the thrill. Peterson is an engaging speaker, but his presentation is still essentially a lecture – 90 minutes of what he calls "the theater of the mind."

Were we there for advice, or inspiration? Arguably a man who writes a book called "12 Rules for Life" is offering a kind of "self-help." But Peterson's presentation lacks the flashy stagecraft, dramatic epiphanies and dopamine-releasing rituals that accompany most motivational speakers.

Besides, I had “helped” myself quite enough, actually. I’d taken the latest personality tests, adopted some “Atomic Habits,” gave up sugar, and tried cold-showers. I worked out everyday, did calming breathing exercises, and kept a tightly organized personal planner.

But there are some things even a good Pilates session and the “power of positive thinking” can’t fix. I remembered what my seat neighbor had said: I got some things I want to wrestle with God about. Then it hit me: like the man sitting next to me, I wasn't there for the high-falutin' thrill of mental gymnastics. I was there because I had some sh** to work out.I wasn’t there for self-help. I was there for God-help.

The online portal to submit a question for Jordan featured a way to “upvote” different comments to push them to the top of the feed. Here are some of the questions people were asking:

“Is there any way to have an absolute moral structure apart from religion?’”

One audience member wrote, “I struggle with my sexuality. I don't want this life for me. I'm a devoted, conservative-leaning Christian, I don't know what to do. What are your opinions?”

It wasn't that long ago that he was a teenager disillusioned by the church and drawn to New Atheist leaders like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. For many curious young people, New Atheism was the satisfyingly rebellious answer to religion's seeming inability to address the hard questions.

Those same seekers, after some time and deeper thought, also found the proposal of a godless world to be unreasonable and hollow.

Enter Dr. Jordan Peterson, a man who has never publicly confessed adherence to any particular faith and yet travels the world teaching about Abraham and Moses to packed stadiums as if he’s Billy Graham.

As he said in the lecture that night, “We've come to a time when we have to understand what the stories our culture is predicated on actually mean." In his opinion, the Bible is that story, and with it, we've created “arguably the greatest culture on earth. … If you want to keep the culture, keep the story. If you want to keep the story, you have to keep God.”

As I shuffled out of the arena with my chocolate-chip cookie wrapper, I heard a man behind me offer the pointed observation that Jordan, a somewhat religiously ambiguous man who had paced the stage in a suit jacket patterned with the faces of saints, “is more Christian than most Christians.”

I thought about my husband again and the hours of conversations we’d had as he’d listened to Jordan Peterson’s lecture series on the book of Genesis.

We had talked about Cain and Abel and the nature of evil, the power of words to speak life into existence, and the idea that men are created in the image of God. They were the conversations I’d been desperate to have since we’d met in college but never knew how to start.

I suppose that’s one of the reasons I love Peterson, because he gave me the gift of those conversations — and not only with my husband, but with people everywhere.

Even if Peterson hadn't claimed to take the Bible literally, he’d taken it seriously. He’d pursued the ancient writings with the vigor that the intellectual class typically reserved for Darwin and Freud. For me, his influence shattered the false separation of intellect and faith.

If only I could only go back to my college theory courses, raise my scared little hand, and say, “That’s really fascinating that Nietzsche said 'God is dead,’ but how does that hold up in the face of the Genesis account?”

With the wind of Peterson’s high-level biblical analysis at my back, I would tell every professor that I would be bringing both my God and my reason into class, thank you very much.

But there was no Jordan Peterson when I waded the godless waters of academia, not yet.

Today there are “Jordan Petersons” popping up everywhere. They're blowing the dust off their old Bibles and saying, “Hey, before we throw all our norms and ethics down the memory hole, why don't we give this God guy a shot?” Honestly, what do we have to lose? Or, even more honestly, do we have any other options?

If we had other options, would we still have men like Jordan Peterson? Or are men like him only forged in times like these?

My husband and I had parked at a church down the street. As he opened the car door to let me in, I noticed the stream of fellow audience members passing under the steeple. The modest silver cross was only barely visible by the dim glow of streetlights.

“He did build us perfect. Then Adam and Eve ate the apple...”

Obviously god built them with defects otherwise they wouldn’t have eaten the apple.

“And to answer the usual next question: if God forced us to be good, then we would be mere robots.”

Well is it better to be sinners or robots.

If what pleases god is for us to be good, why would he build someone who is bad and insults him, and then he has to go to the trouble of punishing him?

Doesn’t make much sense does it? Or is God a sadist?

Or maybe he created us for his entertainment?

>> Obviously god built them with defects otherwise they wouldn’t have eaten the apple. <<

He built them with free will.

>> If what pleases God is for us to be good, why would he build someone who is bad...? <<

He didn’t build us bad. He built us with free will. Some of us misuse that gift.

>> Well is it better to be sinners or robots? <<

Neither, it is better to be a saint.

>> Or maybe he created us for his entertainment? <<

Do people have children because they want to be entertained?

>> why would he build someone who is bad and insults him, and then he has to go to the trouble of punishing him? <<

God does not punish us; He allows us to experience the natural consequences of what we do. If we understand the way the world actually functions, we can avoid acting in a way that results in bad consequences, which is not to say that we will never suffer, because other people will do bad things and bad things will happen, but the difference between what happens inside to someone who does evil and someone who avoids doing evil is very great. This is why two people to whom the same thing happens may react in very different ways.

“He built them with free will.”

Why? Would you build a robot with freewill and let him run amock?

And more to the point, why did he create us in the first place? What’s in it for him?

“Some of us misuse that gift.”

Well, he knew that, so why do it? That’s like giving a gun to some hot headed punk.

“Neither, it is better to be a saint.”

OK, then build us as saints. It’s not like he couldn’t do it, right?

“Do people have children because they want to be entertained?”

Most people have children’s because they think it will provide them with joy, a sense of full financial and a connection to the future. Many do it for help in old age. God doesn’t get old.

“God does not punish us;”

Really? Eternity in hell and brimstone is not punishment?

I don’t mean to be snarky with these comments/questions, but the biggest gift whoever created us gave us was the brain and the power to reason and to question that which we find contradictory and even nonsensical, and thus make sense of the world.

And I don’t think whoever created us minds me asking these questions. What do you think?

I appreciated this comment Right Brother.

There is one supreme judge. One whose opinion is the only one that matters. That supreme judge is that woman herself and all the religions of the world, and all the ideas of the world, including Almighty God Himself must que up before her to be judged one at a time. I wonder if this God guy will be weighed and found wanting.

“And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened, and the dead were judged...”

>> And I don’t think whoever created us minds me asking these questions. What do you think? <<

While I am not sure that we can reason ourselves into belief or faith, it is very important to consider one’s doubts.

For example, the reason I believe in God Himself is that I have prayed about my questions and clarity has come — it is hard to explain how this happens but it is clearly not from me, because how could I give myself an understanding I lacked?

So, I think God is happier that you are asking the questions than if you just shrugged and gave up.

>> Why? Would you build a robot with freewill and let him run amock? <<

Would you rather be a robot? Or maybe more importantly, would you want your good friends and loved ones to be robots?

Sometimes I read so much stuff on FR and elsewhere and then I feel like the world is really in that handbasket. Then I go out and see real live people, maybe just at the store, and I remember that so many people are actually rather nice.

And if I were a robot, I would not care. I would not care if other people were nice; I would not care if people loved me or liked me for who I am, I would not be able to appreciate a sunset, or enjoy anything.

Are you friends with people who suck up to you? Who are just friends with you because of who you know or what you can do for them or because you have money? Eh, I don’t really like people like that.

God wants to be with people who love Him for Himself, who do what He wants because they love Him. And in return, what He wants us to do is what will develop us into the best possible selves we can be.

But there are people who hate God, who do not want to do what He wants us to do, and who want, in effect, to be their own gods. They are not punished by being in Hell, they choose Hell. They would be in more agony in Heaven where they would be in the continual presence of Him Whom they hate.

>> OK, then build us as saints. It’s not like he couldn’t do it, right? <<

Sure He could do it, but then we wouldn’t be saints. Would you want to marry a robot who has been programmed to say what you want to hear and can not deviate from that programming?

No... really, it all boils down to love. Archbishop Fulton Sheen said (paraphrased from memory) that the difference between communism and Christianity is that with the former we follow an idea, but with the latter, we follow a Person.

“Would you rather be a robot?”

It’s not what I would rather be. That is not my choice, what I am is what the creator created. The question is, what would serve me better as the creator. If I was creating something that I want to adore me and to fulfil my desires I would definitely create a robot that did exactly that.

And I don’t believe we have free will. we have the ILLUSION of free will, but at the end of the day we are slaves to our biology (genes) and our environment. How we behave is dictated by that, so in essence, god created each one of us as a different robot (and defective robots at that, since we often disappoint him). As an aside it makes no sense that a supreme being can be disappointed - he’s the one that makes everything happen, right?

More later...

>> The question is, what would serve me better as the creator. <<

Aristotle proposed, and the Catholic Church agrees, that we can know by our own thinking that an Intelligent Designer exists *and certain other things about the ID.*”

One thing we can know about God is that we are not Him. We do not have His point of view.

So... apparently what serves Him better as creator is different from what would serve you were you in the position of creating species.

And that’s ok... as long as we remember Who actually has the power to create universes and galaxies and stars and planets and species and people.

>> ...at the end of the day we are slaves to our biology (genes) and our environment. <<

In that case, why do we feel we have done wrong? Why do we decide to and succeed in reforming ourselves?

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