We Who Wrestle with God Summary: Jordan Peterson’s Biblical Wisdom for Modern Life

An exploration of foundational Biblical text. Unlocking Biblical Archetypes: Deep Dive into Jordan Peterson’s We Who Wrestle with God

Discover the profound insights of “We Who Wrestle with God” by Jordan B. Peterson. Explore how Biblical stories shape Western thought, offering timeless guidance on chaos, faith, morality, and redemption. Uncover psychological and spiritual lessons to navigate modern challenges with meaning and purpose.

Ready to transform your understanding of ancient wisdom for today’s world? Continue reading to uncover how Jordan Peterson’s unique perspective on Scripture can empower your personal growth and help you find order amid chaos. Dive deeper now!

Genres

Personal Development, Philosophy, Religion, Spirituality

Introduction: A contemporary guide to Scripture.

We Who Wrestle with God (2024) guides us through the Biblical stories that shaped and continue to define Western civilization. Highlighting the psychological and cultural meaning of these foundational texts, it examines themes of rebellion, sacrifice, suffering, and forgiveness, offering readers tools to navigate the chaos of modern life while embracing timeless wisdom.

There are many ways of reading the Bible. Some interpreters focus on literal meaning; others hone in on the historical reality of its stories. Then there are those who read it for guidance on living a righteous life.

Jordan Peterson belongs to the latter camp. Whether Jesus rose bodily from the dead, he says, isn’t the kind of question he can competently answer. Nor is it especially significant to his personal wrestling with God. What interests him are Scripture’s “meta-truths” – truths that remain meaningful regardless of the historical accuracy of the events depicted in its narratives.

Getting to these deep truths, he suggests, requires work. The Bible’s antiquity means that its moral lessons are often shrouded in symbolism and cultural context that can feel distant to modern readers. This is where Peterson’s expertise as a Jungian psychologist becomes essential. With myths, symbols, archetypes, and stories at the heart of his work, he is uniquely positioned to unravel the veiled psychological layers of Scripture and reveal its enduring relevance.

So whether you’re a seeker, a skeptic, or somewhere in between, this summary offers valuable insights into the human condition and the eternal quest for meaning. Let’s get started.

It’s humanity’s mission to tame chaos

Genesis, the first book of the Bible, uses a particular Hebrew word to describe God’s acts of creation: bara, which means to create something out of nothing.

The verb, which can only be used with God as a subject, appears in three passages: when God creates the elements, when God creates all living creatures, and – most momentously – when God creates man in his own image. The God of Genesis, then, is a creator who confronts the void – an architect who brings order out of chaos.

But this order isn’t rigid or static. It pulses with potential – charged with the possibility of growth, transformation, and renewal. God’s creation is a new day.

Consider, by analogy, what happens when you wake up in the morning. Your attention doesn’t fix itself upon the banal objects that surround you: the dresser, mirror, and wardrobe remain the same each day. Instead, it takes flight into the future as you consider the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead of you. Just as your consciousness alights on the potential that resides in new beginnings, God sees the order He creates in terms of possibility – a world not just of being, but of becoming.

Imagine a simple object – a bottle or a pen. Its immediate purpose seems predictable: the bottle holds liquid; the pen writes. But in moments of urgency, these objects transform. A bottle smashed in a rowdy bar becomes a deadly weapon. A pen becomes the means of preserving life when it’s inserted into the trachea of someone who’s choking.

In the same way, God’s creation is full of latent possibilities, shaped not by chance but by divine intention. Guided by love, He aims for all things to not only exist, but to flourish. The life he foresees for His creation moves ever upwards from the good to the very good.

Creation culminates in the making of the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. Cast in God’s image, the first human beings, like all humans who follow them, are avatars of their creator. They possess the divine spark that will allow them to fashion order from chaos and to bend possibility toward the good. Humanity, then, has a mission: to mirror the creative process of its Maker, fashioning a world that thrives and ascends.

This optimistic conception of humanity is at the heart of the story we are told in Genesis. It reminds us that, like our Creator, we are called to confront the void, to shape possibility, and to participate in the continuous act of creation.

Human rationality cannot fathom the sacred

In Genesis 2, God establishes the paradisal garden of Eden. Humanity is granted dominion over this world: Adam and Eve are free to explore and use everything it offers, with two conditions. They must maintain the garden and they must not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God’s warning to Adam is stark: “the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

There are two central trees in Eden: the tree of life, which grants eternal life, and this second tree, which brings death. Both are symbols of God’s order. Access to one is intertwined with the prohibition on the other: the fruit from the tree of life may only be taken by those who forsake the fruits of the tree of knowledge.

Genesis 2, then, adds to our understanding of God: He is both the creator of humans and the spirit that warns against human overreach. This overreach – the desire to know and control all things – is rooted in the cardinal sin of pride. God’s warning concerns truths that are too sacred to be touched by human hands and human minds.

Take the idea of morality, for example. While morality is an intrinsically human endeavour, it consists of human actions and thoughts, Genesis reminds us that it rests on non-human foundations. Human rationality can’t penetrate down to its base layer – we can only assume its truth. In other words, we must believe in the Word: the teachings, laws, prophecies, and narratives given to us by the creator. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ will liken this foundation to the rock upon which a wise man builds his house. The foolish man, by contrast, builds on sand. And what are fallible, partial, and ever-changing human judgements if not shifting sands?

The desire to subject everything to human scrutiny and rationality, Genesis warns, is an act of prideful hubris: it raises the human above the divine. It is also existentially calamitous. When we refuse to take anything on faith, we become indecisive: if every path is equally valid, if there is no hierarchy of meaning, we remain stuck at crossroads, unable to decide on the right way forward. For both individuals and societies, the result is a mix of anxiety, hopelessness, and cynicism that feeds into mindless pleasure-seeking and a nihilistic lust for power.

Only faith in the goodness of God’s order, Genesis shows us, can keep us from descending into this abyss of doubt and confusion.

We encounter the divine through work

Adam and Eve do eat the forbidden tree’s fruit. God casts them out of the garden. He curses the ground beneath their feet. “Thorns and thistles” will grow in abundance and it will require “painful toil” to make it yield the plants upon which mortal man and woman now depend.

After the Fall, it is work that defines the human condition. Toil is God’s punishment for humanity’s disobedience, but it serves a divine plan: it is His way of cultivating virtue in us.

Working means doing what needs to be done. But we can only do what needs to be done if we suspend the powerful appetites that seek to possess us. When we choose to work, we are sacrificing instinctual pleasures and forgoing immediate gratification. We enter into a contract with our future selves – the beneficiaries of today’s labor – and the wider community in which we live. This contract rests on mutual understanding and a shared commitment among individuals to support each other’s well-being. It is, in short, a form of service.

We also have to forgo all the other things we could be attending to. If we don’t achieve a unity of purpose, we’re loggerheads with ourselves and incapable of serving anyone. As the Gospel reminds us, neither a kingdom nor a house divided against itself can stand. It’s the same when we try to serve multiple aims: we are paralyzed by confusion, anxiety, and aimlessness.

But which single purpose should we serve?

The answer reveals itself when we are truly attentive. Imagine gazing into the starry sky on a dark, clear night far from the city lights. The awe you feel as you consider the infinite expanse above you makes you feel small – insignificant, even. But that feeling is a reminder that you are in the presence of something greater. And to encounter this greater thing is to realize that greater exists. This sense of wonder awakens what is best in us; it calls us toward the divine, encouraging us to strive for higher meaning and purpose.

To answer this call, however, we must be willing to pause, listen, and embrace it – just as Moses did when he stopped to witness the burning bush. He recognized it as a sign from God, a moment that revealed his destiny: to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. We all have our own burning bush – some moment in which our calling announces itself to us. To heed the call is to discover a life of opportunity, adventure, and inexhaustible truth.

We become what we practice

After their escape from Egypt, the Israelites wander in the wilderness for forty years. During this time, Moses ascends Mount Sinai, where he receives the Ten Commandments – the laws that establish the covenant between God and His people.

But the Book of Exodus, which tells this story, centers around a disaster.

Moses is delayed in returning from the mountain. The Israelites become impatient and demand that Aaron, Moses’s brother, create a golden calf for them to worship. Women sacrifice their golden earrings to cast the idol, an act that mirrors the kind of offerings upon which communities are often built. Yet this sacrifice serves the gods of materialism and instant gratification – akin to the love of money that the Bible later condemns as the root of all evil.

God tells Moses what is happening among his people – an act of blasphemy sufficiently serious enough for him to consider destroying them. Moses rushes back. Furious, he smashes the stone tablets inscribed with the Commandments. He incinerates the golden calf and grinds what is left into powder. He pours this bitter substance into water and makes the Israelites drink it, literally forcing them to swallow and digest their transgression.

God decides not to destroy the Israelites and urges them to continue their voyage into the promised land, but he withdraws from them, delegating leadership to an angel instead. God’s partial departure serves as a warning: turning away from the sacred damages our relationship with conscience. When we worship false idols, whether materialism or fleeting pleasures, we drift away from God’s guidance and lose our way.

This theme recurs throughout Scripture. Jeremiah describes those who reject God as “foolish people without understanding,” unable to see or hear. In the Gospel of Matthew, the message is reinforced: “Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive.” When we habitually turn from the divine, we become senseless and blind to higher truths.

The lesson of this story is clear: we become what we practice. Habit, in short, shapes perception. Our attention fixes itself upon the kind of things we repeatedly do and say. If we often act badly, we will inevitably lose sight of the good. Our inner moral compass won’t point to true north. As individuals, we become alienated from our conscience and calling. At the collective level, we experience the Death of God: the divine disappears from our community.

Redemption is at the heart of God’s message to us

Our final story comes from the Book of Jonah, one of twelve books in the Old Testament covering the lives and deeds of twelve “minor prophets.” Jonah, one of these prophets, is commanded by God to travel to Nineveh, a city of 120,000 souls in today’s Iraq. The inhabitants of this city have fallen into wicked ways. Jonah is tasked with delivering God’s warning: if they do not repent, they will be destroyed.

Jonah, however, is reluctant. Instead of going to Nineveh, he boards a ship for Tarshish, a port city on the other side of the Mediterranean. But God sends a violent storm. Realizing that this is no ordinary storm, the sailors reason that someone aboard the vessel has displeased God. Jonah confesses and is thrown overboard. The ship is saved, but Jonah is swallowed by a huge fish. For three days and nights, he remains in the belly of this beast praying to God. At last, God commands the fish to vomit the reluctant prophet out.

Jonah finally makes good on his pledge, travelling to Nineveh to deliver God’s message. The sermon he delivers is remarkable for its shortness. In Hebrew, it contains just five words: “Forty more days, Nineveh overturned.” There’s a suggestion here that Jonah’s message is meant to be hard to understand: he’s setting the Ninevites up for failure. But Jonah’s plan doesn’t work: the city’s inhabitants don sackcloths, begin fasting, and repent. Seeing their sincerity, God forgives them.

Furious, Jonah withdraws into the desert and tells God that he refused to travel to Nineveh because he knew that He would spare these “evil pagans.” He then asks God to strike him down. God refuses. Instead, he decides to teach Jonah a lesson.

First, he causes a vine to grow around Jonah, shading him from the fierce sun. Jonah is ecstatic, but it’s short-lived. The next day, God sends a worm to devour the vine. Jonah falls into despair again and repeats his wish for death.

God’s response is the final word of the book: Isn’t it strange, He asks, that Jonah mourns the loss of a vine he neither planted nor tended, yet feels no compassion for a city of 120,000 souls? Aren’t humans more valuable than vines, even if they have fallen into wicked ways? And isn’t it my right as your creator to feel compassion for lost souls and show mercy to those who repent?

These questions are not just for Jonah – they are for us, too. The story delivers a timeless message: God’s love extends even to those we consider our enemies. And if God can show compassion for the lost, then so must we.

Conclusion

In this summary to We Who Wrestle with God by Jordan B. Peterson, we’ve explored the idea that humans, created in God’s image, share His ability to bring order out of chaos. However, we must remain vigilant against prideful overreach. Rationality, though a powerful tool, is meant to serve rather than rule, and it must honor the boundaries of the sacred. When we lose sight of this truth, we risk drifting away from the divine, severing our connection to both conscience and calling.