Recently, I reached out to one of my Christian friends who has actually found Jordan Peterson's work to be helpful for her mental health at one point. I passed this discussion along over private communication, and since she has a rather unique writing style that is different from my own, I think I will let her words speak for themselves. I have her permission to pass this along to all of you.
I am finding this highly amusing for several reasons.
So far, there's a lot of talk about whether we should or should not listen to Jordan Peterson and almost none about how we should go about evangelizing Jordan Peterson and people like him.
J. P. has seen God, though he does not know it. He has seen God as few Christians have seen him, as the Standard by which good and evil are judged. This vision terrifies him, and rightly so. Should he fully accept the existence of an Intelligence behind this Standard, and an Interested Intelligence at that, he would have to admit something else. He knows that he is weak, that he does not measure up to the Standard. It's something that a lot of Christians ignore because they focus on God's love. J. P. looks at God and sees the glory displayed from Mt. Sinai.
What I don't think J. P. understands is that, if the Bible is history, that means something more. If Jesus is fully God and fully man, then He and only He could live up to His own Standard. If this is so, then the crucifixion takes on greater significance as the ultimate sacrifice. The Perfect One who did no wrong suffered in our place, and why? Because God loves you in particular, Jordan B. Peterson.
Honestly, the fact that Michael Knoweles and other Christians at the daily wire have not told him this is a great failing on their part.
If I had to guess, and I've already done a lot of guessing, I'd guess that Jordan is afraid of the glory of the law. He knows he does not measure up and feels that he has to be better before he goes before God. Knowing in the back of his mind that he can't be better is what keeps him from fully accepting the existence of God at all.
And this is a story that has been told before.
Well, that was delightful. I almost want to join that group that seems so keen to talk to Jordan Peterson. What do you think the odds are that they plan to pester him into conversion?
By the way, if you want to tell them what I've told you, feel free.
After reading this, I went to look into the situation with trying to contact Peterson to talk to him.
We could invite him to a handpicked private group on CF ?
That's a big maybe. The issue would be contacting him in a discreet enough way, and usher him into the private group without having him being harassed on his way to the group and on his way out. If the news leaks to anyone that isn't a part of the group, you have his fans joining the forum (like my friend) to defend him, you have him getting in contact with other members who may harass him and misrepresent Christianity to him, and so on with all of the problems.
As tempting as it would be to just ride the wave and accept the chaos, that's probably not feasible for the moderation team on CF to handle. They still have to enforce the forum rules, even if a bunch of people don't read them because they are excited to see Jordan Peterson and rush to make accounts. In addition, that's not financially feasible. Recently I was working with a forum webmaster client - income from a forum site like this one is somewhere between $300 and $500 a month, and some of that has to cover hosting, domain, and other subscription services that websites like these need to keep running. I can't imagine that
@doughtz has enough money to cover a speaking fee for Jordan Peterson, for example.
Celebrity Talent International said:
An example fee to book Jordan Peterson is in the starting range of $75,000-$149,999.
If you have your heart set on this forum as a venue, even for a small group, the admins of this forum would need to reach out to Peterson on his website contact page:
Contact – Jordan Peterson I don't think we have enough clout as individual forum members to do anything. This isn't our website.
However, when researching that, I found another opportunity that may be interesting:
Peterson has posted his series' on Genesis and Exodus, as well as numerous other videos, on the Daily Wire. Perhaps partnering with them in a "Christians talk to Jordan Peterson" style video could be a deal that the Daily Wire would accept.
Another option is that some of us could pony up for a subscription to the Daily Wire and review those Genesis and Exodus series over here from a Christian perspective in order to get the attention of that media organization, and push it back at DW and Peterson through social media. We could review his social media videos on Christianity as well, as long as we include video descriptions in the first post. What's wrong with his perspective? What does Jordan Peterson get right? What biblical truths from church history apply?
Because while Peterson isn't claiming the name of Christ, he's talking about the Bible and he has a large audience. Challenging his media presence could generate a lot of interesting discussions here on CF. If we become part of the conversation that surrounds Jordan B. Peterson, I believe that is our best chance of landing the intended result of having a private group of members talk with the professor.