FARGO – An unknowing passerby to the Scheel’s Arena on Feb. 21 might have assumed the sprawling line of people outside indicated a high-interest athletic event was about to begin. Few likely would have guessed that, instead, a Harvard-schooled Canadian psychologist wearing a two-tone suit—blue on one side, orange on the other—was about to take the stage.
Dan Johnson, 33, was among the 3,500 who joined the throng that evening to hear from Dr. Jordan Peterson, a man to whom Johnson became well-acquainted mainly by watching YouTube videos.
“Prior to going, I’d probably listened to at least 150 hours of him online,” Johnson said, noting that he’d found himself going down the Peterson “rabbit hole” in 2019, when the former college professor began gaining notoriety for his controversial stances on cultural issues.
Peterson came to Fargo as part of a tour for his forthcoming book, “We Who Wrestle with God.”
Johnson, a Catholic, said “you can’t always overtly share your faith,” but Peterson has helped him through this dilemma. “He seems to make a theist argument…on things that are culture war-esque, but without referencing God.”
Peterson doesn’t claim to be religious and uses a more pragmatic, philosophical approach, he said, which tends to be a draw for the non-religious.
Alex Wock, 32, first noticed Peterson when he became embroiled in controversy over cultural issues. “He’s the kind of person that goes against the grain, and I admire that. We don’t see that often anymore,” Wock said, noting the relatively young crowd.
For a time, Wock lived in Las Vegas, where “woke ideology” permeated. “It’s understandable that we shouldn’t discriminate, but some people take that too far, and it ends up being that you can’t say anything that could hurt anyone’s feelings—and what that is changes by the second.”
Being raised in a strict Baptist home, Wock said, he came to question hypocrisy in the church, and now falls into “the gray zone” on both religion and politics. But he found Peterson’s pontificating on Old Testament stories, and bringing culturally significant meaning to them, engaging.
“His lecture reminded me of when I was a kid, listening to a sermon, but more on the lecture side,” he said, noting that Peterson made the stories more digestible.
Wock also admires Peterson’s refusal to back down to unjust pressure, noting his mentioning how one person standing up for truth can turn a society around. “He’s the guy standing out, not getting snipped,” he said, even though many are trying to take him out.
“I still watch old YouTubers, and I’ve seen them go down, and get doxed, receive death threats and all that,” Wock added. “People are losing their mind. Then you see people like Jordan Peterson standing against the whole tide of—let’s just call it the tide of evil—and they’re encouraging us to do better than we are.”
He’s the eccentric father everyone deserved to have but few people actually got.
Mo Chouman, 20, an aviation student at the University of North Dakota and self-described monotheist, made the trip to Fargo midweek to hear from Peterson, who first came across his radar at 13. “My interest has been off and on, but every so often, he’ll re-enter the limelight with something he has said or done.”
Chouman said he appreciates Peterson’s willingness to engage in difficult topics and believes it’s healthy for young people to hear different perspectives whenever possible.
“In a way, he secularizes faith, and makes sense of it, providing logical anecdotes and conclusions, and he’s willing to engage in debate and conversation, which is important,” Chouman said, adding, “Democracy dies in darkness.”
Chouman speculated that the decline of faith in young people might be partly due to an overabundance of information, which prompts more questions; questions faith leaders aren’t always able to adequately address. Additionally, young people are less optimistic about life in general. “When faced with adversity, it can become hard to cling to faith. Hardship doesn’t inspire confidence.”
Ultimately, though, faith can’t be proven. “For the Church fathers, the earliest Christians, a miracle was anything that evoked wonder,” Chouman said, and faith is more nuanced than one can grasp through logic alone.
Lynette Noyszewska, 46, who was there with her husband, Andrzej, may have been in the minority as a woman attendee, but she was by far the only female. Johnson guessed about 20% of the arena comprised women.
“We did a study on his book ‘12 Rules for Life,’” Noyszewska said, along with having watched quite a few of his videos. “A lot of times he makes a lot of sense, and then sometimes he doesn’t make any sense at all—almost like a St. Augustine,” she said, referencing the influential 4th-Century theologian. “But I just love his boldness in speaking truth, despite being persecuted. He believes so much in the truth, he doesn’t care.”
Noyszewska recalled a controversy that had erupted when Peterson was at a university and was threatened with being canceled when he said he’d rather go to jail and starve than acquiesce. “We just don’t see that in our leaders anymore, whether political or church leaders.”
Peterson has inspired her to be bolder in her own life, and not ashamed of her Christian beliefs, she said. She especially appreciated his message in the story of Noah, revealing that “even good people will make mistakes, and that it’s important to give each other dignity in spite of those mistakes.”
Noyszewska said she was pleasantly surprised to see Peterson’s wife, Tammy, on stage at the start, sharing a bit of her own wrestling with God. “I was struck by her humility and her openness about her choices in life, and her whole journey toward God.”
Johnson said that after hearing so much of Peterson online, he especially enjoyed the off-the-cuff Q&A at the end. “You could tell he actually cared about the person, about society, and that he wants people to be good, and be accountable.”
Even if you don’t agree with everything Peterson says, Johnson added, it’s hard to deny he isn’t attempting to be a force for good, “especially when you listen to him talk about someone with whom he is diametrically opposed. He’s beautiful at being able to find common ground.”
Johnson said he attended the event somewhat as a tribute to Peterson’s personal impact, including as owner of Total Balance Fitness. “He’s dramatically molded how I think and perceive the world, and being able to see what he does through my normal Catholic lens has also been helpful for my faith, to be able to articulate my thoughts to others.”
Johnson falls short of agreeing with everything Peterson says, and noted how he tends to be “all over the place,” but on this point, it’s hard to argue otherwise: “He’s very good at landing the plane.”
[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on March 2, 2024.]
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