Crossing the Jordan (Part 5): A Book Review of Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life”–Self-Respect, Adam and Eve, and the Burden of Responsibility

In his book, 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson’s second rule is, “Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.” Basically, it means you should take care of yourself, respect yourself, and see yourself—despite all your faults and fears—as someone worthy of a good life. If you do that, then you will make better choices and treat yourself in like manner. The fact is, Peterson tells us, people tend to take better care of their pets than themselves because when it gets right down to it, they really don’t see themselves as worth much of anything. If you want to bring order and meaning into your life, Peterson says that you have to realize that your life is worth something and that you are the one responsible for help yourself be the best person you can be.

Now that rule really seems obvious, and perhaps a bit pretentious—something that Stuart Smalley might say. But the intriguing thing in this particular chapter (for me, at least) is Peterson’s discussion of order vs. chaos, as well as the Adam and Eve story.

Order and Chaos
Early on in the chapter, Peterson says that the three main things human beings experience in life is order, chaos and consciousness. Simply put, one’s life pretty much consists of being continually confronted with chaos and trying to make sense of that chaos. Everyone at some point in their lives, especially around the time of the college years, has said something to the effect of, “I just don’t know what I should do with my life.” That kind of sums up what Peterson is talking about: faced with the daunting challenge of life, what are you going to make of your own life? You are a conscious being. You are faced with a world of uncertainty, and the challenge of your life is to carve out a little place of order for your own life.

Now, one of the things I like about Peterson’s book is the way he writes when he describes things. Here is how he describes order and chaos:

Chaos: “is the domain of ignorance itself. It’s unexplored territory. [It] is the despair and horror you feel when you have been profoundly betrayed. It’s the place you end up when things fall apart; when your dreams die, your career collapses, or your marriage ends. [It] is where we are when we don’t know where we are, and what we are doing when we don’t know what we are doing. [It] is the formless potential from which the God of Genesis 1 called forth order using language at the beginning of time” (35-36).

Order: “by contrast, is explored territory. That’s the hundreds-of-millions-of years-old hierarchy of place, position and authority. That’s the structure of society. …Order is the floor beneath your feet, and your plan for the day. It’s the greatness of tradition, the rows of desks in a school classroom, the trains that leave on time, the calendar, and the clock. …Order is the Shire of Tolkien’s hobbits. …Chaos is the underground kingdom of the dwarves, usurped by Smaug, the treasure-hoarding serpent” (36-37).

The thing to realize, though, is both order and chaos are necessary parts of life, and thus the challenge is to find the right balance between the two in your life. Too much order and stability get you into a rut and you never venture out to learn new things. Too much chaos can overwhelm you. You need enough chaos in your life to spur you on to learn and grow, and you need enough order in your life to provide a space where you can actually do something with what you’ve learned. As Peterson says, “To straddle that fundamental duality is to be balanced: to have one foot firmly planted in order and security, and the other in chaos, possibility, growth and adventure. When life suddenly reveals itself as intense, gripping and meaningful; when time passes and you’re so engrossed in what you’re doing you don’t notice—it is there and then that you are located precisely on the border between order and chaos” (43).

Uh-Oh! Misogyny is On the Loose!
No, it actually isn’t. But one aspect of Peterson’s discussion of order and chaos has caused some people to accuse Peterson of misogyny. In his analysis of the book, Greg Boyd points this out as problematic to him as well: Peterson says that in various religions and mythologies, order is normally associated with the masculine, whereas chaos is associated with the feminine. Positively, order brings stability and security; negatively, if pushed to far, order can bring the systematic hell of the concentration camp. Positively, chaos is the source of creativity, ideas and birth; negatively, chaos can that overwhelming darkness in one’s life that consumes you.

Again, Peterson’s basic point is fairly simple: both order and chaos are a part of life. If balanced, both can provide stability and creativity in one’s life. That makes perfect sense to me. Furthermore, as a Literature major, nothing Peterson said was particularly shocking. What he says about order being portrayed as masculine and chaos as feminine can be seen all throughout ancient literature. Therefore, it simply boggles my mind that some people can accuse Peterson of misogyny when he is simply describing something that is known and accepted in ancient literature. He’s not saying, “Women are bad, and men are good.” He’s not saying, “Order is always good, and chaos is always bad.” Any honest reading of the chapter makes it pretty clear: both are necessary parts of life; if lived in balance, both provide vital ingredients for a healthy life; too much of either one can lead to disastrous results.

Therefore, the criticism by some against Peterson on this point is just nonsensical. It makes about as much sense as complaining, “Why do bad guys in movies usually wear black, whereas good guys wear white? If you say that is the case, then you must be racist.” Simply stating traditional, metaphorical ways of describing various aspects of reality in art, literature and religion isn’t misogynistic, sexist, or any other “-istic.” It’s description of metaphor in art, literature and religion. I’m sorry, but the only people who get bent out of shape over descriptions like these are those who have allowed rigid ideology to impede their ability to simply see things objectively and rationally.

Adam and Eve
In addition to his discussion on order and chaos, Peterson also gives a fascinating discussion on Adam and Eve. He correctly points out that Adam and Eve in Eden are portrayed as naïve children, and that when they took the forbidden fruit they came to a self-conscious awareness of their own weakness and vulnerabilities. In that respect, what we often call “the fall” is actually a necessity to eventually gaining full maturity. If that sounds a bit shocking and heretical, then I’d invite you to read Ireneaus, the early Church Father who basically said the same thing in his exposition of Genesis 3. Basically, the story of Adam and Eve is a description of the story of each one of us as human beings.

Simply put, it’s not good to stay immature infants. God wants us to mature into adult human beings who are capable of reflecting His image by our own free choice. And the cold, hard fact is, in our attempt to grow up into full image-bearers of God we are bound to stumble and fall—we’re originally immature and infantile after all. And, as strange as it may sound, we need to accept the fact that God has deemed what is being described in Genesis 3—and indeed the journey of each and every one of our lives—is ultimately necessary for us to reach that full maturity He desires. Or as Peterson states, “It is far better to render Beings in your care competent than to protect them. And even if it were possible to permanently banish everything threatening—everything dangerous (and therefore, everything challenging and interesting), that would be only that another danger would emerge: that of permanent human infantilism and absolute uselessness” (47).

And again, in the garden, the man and woman “exercised no choice. God knows, that’s easier. But maybe it’s not better than, for example, goodness genuinely earned. Maybe, in even in some cosmic sense…free choice matters” (56). We all are inherently immature and we all inevitably sin, no doubt often because (if not always) of our own immaturity. And thus, we—like Adam and Eve—find ourselves in exile from the garden. The purpose of our lives, therefore, is to find the way back to the garden, no longer as infants, but as fully mature image-bearers of God.

In this vein, Peterson alludes to my favorite poet, T.S. Eliot, and his poetic work, The Four Quartets, specifically the poem “Little Gidding,” when he writes,

“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.”

Application
Understanding the Adam and Eve story in this way—as a story about each one of us losing our infantilism, becoming self-aware, and being faced with the inevitable challenge of life to exercise our free will to become fully-mature image-bearers of God—has a profound impact on how we see the challenges in our own lives.

Peterson notes that although we tend to assume most people are egotistical and filled with pride, the fact is most people are usually are very self-conscious and actually have a low opinion of themselves. Simply put, most people are deeply wounded creatures who feel like they are about to break under the tremendous burdens of life. They are plagued with self-doubt and a sense of being unworthy. I know I certainly feel that way 90% of the time. That is a basic reality most people face—that is the first part of the basic reality we see in the Adam and Eve story.

What we have to remember, though, is that there is a second part to the reality of being human—namely that we are created to be image-bearers of God. Peterson puts it this way: “…you have a spark of the divine in you, which belongs not to you, but to God. We are, after all…made in His image. We have the semi-divine capacity for consciousness. Our consciousness participates in the speaking forth of Being. We are low-resolution versions of God. We can make order from chaos—and vice versa—in our way, with our words. So, we may not exactly be God, but we’re not exactly nothing, either” (60).

What that means is that you, despite your faults and feelings of insecurity, are nevertheless created for a purpose—to bear God’s image and reflect His goodness in His creation. And that is a tremendous responsibility. If I could, I’d put it this way: to be in God’s image means to bear the responsibility of harnessing the chaos of life into life-affirming creativity and order. Yes, that can be a daunting challenge, but that what human beings are created to be—and the only way to be a true human being is to do just that.

Of course, the biblical story is clear: in and of ourselves, we can’t do that. That is why Christ came: to show us the way to do it, and to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, empower us to begin doing just that. It certainly takes faith to take that initial step to see yourself as worthy enough to take that up that responsibility and bear the burden of being God’s image-bearer. But once you realize your own worth, and the destiny and responsibility God intends for you, you realize that ultimately there really is only two choices: Heaven or Hell. Or as Peterson puts it:

“Once having understood Hell, researched it, so to speak—particularly your own individual Hell—you could decide against going there or creating that. You could aim elsewhere. You could, in fact, devote your life to this. That would give you a Meaning, with a capital M. That would justify your miserable existence. That would atone for your sinful nature and replace your shame and self-consciousness with the natural pride and forthright confidence of someone who has learned once again to walk with God in the Garden” (63).

Or as T.S. Eliot says at the end of “Little Gidding”:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning.”