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Jordan Peterson, Calling Men Back To Church

There is a masculine itch and there are people out there scratching it. Even Jesus scratched it. But for some reason, the church stopped. I’m Joel Fieri. This is Christian Podcast Central. Before we get into it, like, comment, and subscribe down below. Stay tuned.

If you caught our previous podcast, you know that I talked about the podcast from Christianity Today called The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill church, talking about Mark Driscoll’s church in Seattle, how it rose to prominence and fell rather dramatically. And examining the causes of that. If you haven’t seen that, we’ll put the link below. It’s worth checking out.

I’ll also put the link to my podcast, where I talk more about the fall and how I felt that from my limited experience, that Mark Driscoll didn’t have enough accountability in his life, which is important for a Christian leader and for a man, especially. But today I want to discuss what not only the podcast mentioned as a big factor in the rise of Mars Hill, but also what another article described that I want to tell you about.

Recently, I came across an article by David French in the French press. It’s entitled Why A Masculine Ministry Rose and Fell. And he talks about Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll. And he starts off the article in a very interesting way. He doesn’t talk about Mars Hill. He talks about an experience he had in an Uber when he was traveling and he had an Uber driver who was a veteran.

It was a long ride. And so in the process of it, he talked to the veteran, found out where he served and how he was doing, how he was adjusting to society. And the young man said at first he was not adjusting very well. He was having a lot of struggles, like many of the veterans do when they try and re-enter society as civilians. He was drinking too much.

And the article mentioned an interesting line: he feared that he had done the most significant thing in his life before he was 25 years old and he was basically lost now. And so David French asked him, “Well, how are you doing now?” And he said, “I’m doing much better.” And so he asked him, “What was it that turned you around? What helped you?” And this Uber driver said to him, “Do you know who Jordan Peterson is?”

And David French said, “Yes. I know him very well.” And then the young man said, “Well, Jordan Peterson saved my life.” David French said, “Really? How did he do that?” And very profoundly, the young man said, “He told me to clean up my room.” If you don’t know who Jordan Peterson is, you really should. He’s a big personality and influencer on the internet these days.

For the past five years or so, he’s gained prominence. He’s a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, which I had never heard of. I didn’t figure Toronto has an university and maybe the Harvard of Canada, I don’t know. But he’s a big deal there. He publishes or posts his classes online. He goes to lectures. He’s on TV shows. He became a big hit when he put a liberal reporter in her place years ago. And ever since then, he’s kind of been on fire.

He also wrote a book called 12 Ways to Change Your Life that’s been a huge best-seller. And in that book, he says things like, if you want to change your life, clean your room, tell the truth, or at least stop lying. Get your act together before you go and change the world. Things like this. Things that young men want to hear. He scratches the masculine itch for right and wrong.

Young men, especially in today’s society, where their masculinity is discounted and even vilified as toxic or not needed, flock to his lectures. They buy his books. They watch his YouTube videos. He’s not the only one. There’s a couple more. There’s lots of them out there that are with the same kind of messages. But there’s two that are also big that you’ve probably heard of. If not, you need to know about them.

One has Ben Shapiro, who’s the editor of The Daily Wire. Different, probably just as smarter or smarter than Jordan Peterson. Maybe the smartest guy out there. But he’s a young, baby faced Jewish guy who with machine gun precision and speech talks truth. And he talks about right and wrong. He goes on college campuses. He has a huge podcast.

Young men flock to his lectures and they watch his show because he scratches that masculine edge for truth and right and wrong. Now, the third guy I want to talk about is different from the other two. His name is Joe Rogan. And you probably know who Joe Rogan is. If not, you need to. He’s an old actor. He was in NewsRadio, my second favorite sitcom of the nineties.

He was also on a show called Fear Factor. And now he has a huge podcast where he sits. He’s a martial artist, a big, rough, kind of foul mouth guy who sits there and talking to other big, rough, foul mouth guys, mostly, but some aren’t. And what do they talk about? You guessed it. Truth and right and wrong. Men love his show. They watch it religiously.

These three guys, who are secular. Joe Rogan is an atheist. Ben Shapiro is a Jew, who’s a religious Jew, but he doesn’t come across as religious. He has a secular news channel. And Jordan Peterson talks about Christianity a lot. He’s a searcher, but he’s not a pastor. None of these are religious leaders or faith leaders. Far from it.

But what they do is they look men in the eye through a camera or at a lecture and they tell them the truth and they talk about right and wrong. They speak to men. They scratch that masculine itch. That used to be what evangelical leaders did and the evangelical church alone did in society. Through most of my life, the institution that has most clung to the truth of God’s word and the principles in it for society has been the evangelical church.

While all the other churches, we talked about this before on this podcast, the other mainline denominations and other faith groups long ago abandoned the truth of the word of God. They abandoned those moral principles because they were too difficult for them. They wanted to be accepted by the world that rejected those ideas. They thought if they could soften their stance on truth and stance on a moral God who had moral expectations of people, that they would somehow be more accepted by the world and therefore gain a voice with the world.

But the world doesn’t want to hear the truth behind that. So eventually these faith groups abandoned that truth and they created this false dichotomy we have now and it’s seeped into the evangelical church of truth versus love. Do we speak truth or do we speak in love? As if the two are incompatible. They’re not. We need to speak the truth in love. Truth is the mission. Love is the modifier. They’re both equal.

But over the last couple of decades, with all the societal pressure and all the caving of the other faith groups, the evangelical church has pretty much stood alone. And the pressure has been enormous for us to soften our stance on truth and go for, again, this false dichotomy of speaking love. But what that’s done is it’s caused us more and more Christian leaders have abandoned the truth of the word of God. The young men that Jesus called as his disciples, he scratched their itch.

He said the truth will set you free. Truth is what sets you free. I’ll make you fishers of men. You will go out and you will win men with truth. That was Jesus’s model. We need to get back to that model. Christian leaders and us as Christian individuals need to re-establish our place in society as the ones who speak the truth of the word of God. If we do that and if we add to it the moral expectations of that God for society, if we talk about truth and we talk about right and wrong, we will win many of those men that are looking to these secular voices and following these secular voices.

They will listen to us and we will win many of them to the kingdom. If we win young men to the kingdom with the principles of truth and right and wrong, if they come to the saving knowledge of Jesus through that message, we will win society for the kingdom of God also. We, as evangelicals, as Christians, need to get back to being the ones that scratch that masculine itch. If we can do that, if we can win some of these young men to the kingdom through the saving grace of Jesus Christ, we can win the world. But we need to get back to people of truth and people of right and wrong. I’m Joel Fieri. Thanks for listening.