I have been listening quite a lot to Jordan Peterson. In the beginning, I was quite impressed. So impressed that I emailed and linked his 12-rules lectures my nephew who immediately bought the book. But he also called me and said: He reminds me of a maniac. I knew what he meant but I was still taken by storm by Petersons’ ability to keep his audience spellbound. In Jordan Peterson, I found a brave spokesman for controversial opinions I shared but could not express so sharp as he could. But as time went on and my first love had flattened out I began to doubt what a first thought I saw.
When you listen to Jordan Peterson’s interpretations of the Biblical stories, he openly admits that he puts them within a mythical, psychological context. He does not take the stories for face value. In Petersons thought, they have another meaning. All the miracles must have another meaning than written: Calling the dead back to life, walking on water, the virgin birth of Jesus etc…all pure nonsense as a literal reality, because – in the minds of modern man – such crazy stuff is impossible.
But that is okay as long as you KNOW that this is what he is doing. The tricky thing about him is that he often twists and turns what the wording in the Bible and directly misquotes it in order to reach his conclusions. I tell you, when you know the Bible, what I do, you can see his a very clever trixter.
And here is my point: If I can prove to you that Peterson does this trick again and again, can you then follow me if I say that he is deceiving you in many other aspects – not only on biblical aspects but in many others? You see, Jordan Peterson skillfully juggles with an enormous amount of literature. He jumps from Dostoyevsky to comics, to Jung, to Freud, to Babylonian mysticism, to the Bible, to loads of world-famous literature, to historical events, and back again…all in a few sentences. It is only very few people who can put a finger on it because it goes fast and is springled with self-evident truths. Most of us have only read a fraction of what he has. But at least I have one advantage: I have been studying the Bible intensively for more than 17 years. I have a very accurate image inside of what the Bible says. It is very difficult to fool me by twisting and misquoting scripture. Immediately there is a red flag coming up in my mind. And such a red flag jumps up again and again when I listen to Jordan Peterson. It is not a red flag when he has a totally far-out interpretation of scripture if he is just QUOTING correct. Or I should say that this is another kind of red flag.
I know very much by memory and every time Peterson misquotes it I immediately know it.
Let me give you two example:
In the video Jordan Peterson on the Belief in God he quotes Mark ……like this:
A rich man comes up to Christ and says good “good leader, good Lord”, and they asked him a question about how it is that he should be a good person. And Christ says: “Don’t call me good there’s no one that’s good but God”. And you know that’s worth thinking about. I mean the one person [Christ] that in principle in our ancient stories had the right to make some direct connection between himself and the divine was unwilling to do it when challenged…
Okay, let’s unpack this. The scipture Peterson is quoting from to is Marc:::::::::::. But it doesn’t say what Jordan says. Jordan quotes as if Jesus is saying “dont call me good”. But his is not doing that. What Jesus does is that he asks the rich man “why do you call med good?” and then goes on to say “there is only one wh
Jordan’s point is that even Christ, even Christ, will not have them to think of him that he is good, because only one is good, and that is God. So what is Jordan Peterson doing here: He is trying to make us believe that the texts says that Jesus is nither GOOD niether GOD. That is total destruction of the protestant foundation!
But wait a minute. Jordan Peterson is deceiving you. And I am convinced that this is not done by a mistake. I believe that this is done purposely because if Jordan had quoted correctly he could never have reached his conclusion. On the contrary, the scripture says the exact opposite than Jordan concludes
I will explain later why I believe that. But let’s see exactly where Peterson does the trick on us. He quotes Jesus by memory and says:
And Christ says: “Don’t call me good, there’s no one that’s good but God”
But the Bibles he refers to says:
Why do you call me good, there is none other but God who is good
Can you see the difference? Jordan says “DON´T call me God”, the Bible says: “WHY do you call me good”Jordan: DONT CALL ME GOOD.
And why is that such a big difference?