Dr. Jordan Peterson Answers: “Is the Bible True?”

The Bible is true in a very strange way. It's true in that it provides the basis for truth itself.

The Bible is not just true historically and symbolically and morally and spiritually, it's also true prophetically. It's also true corporately. Truth leads to human flourishing. Hey everyone, Dr. Josh Axe here, and welcome to the Growth Lab. On today's video, I'm going to be showing you a video from Jordan Peterson where he answers the question, is the Bible true?

And his answer might surprise you. So let's watch this video here together.

The Bible is true in a very strange way. It's true in that it provides the basis for truth itself. And so it's like a meta-truth. Without it, there couldn't even be the possibility of Truth. And so maybe that's the most true thing. The most true thing isn't some truth per se. It's that which provides the precondition for all judgments of truth. I can't see any holes in that argument.

Wow. And so what Jordan Peterson said is not only the Bible true, it's truer than true. It's the foundation upon which all other truth is built. And to give you an example of this, you know, the Bible defines things for us that were never defined before. For instance, what is love? You know, today we could be watching a TV show and the narrative there is that love is a feeling or emotion.

But the Bible tells us, no, what real love is, it's a commitment. It is a decision that you make to love somebody. You don't have to feel it or not. And so the Bible is the first book that really laid out and told us that. Also, it's what Western civilization is built upon. One of the things I've heard him say in another video is that the Bible is meta-truth.

And so it's also true not in just one way, it's in multiple ways. Now, I want to talk about truth for a minute because this is so important for us to grow and live the best lives possible. There's this idea today that truth could be relative, so there's multiple truths. So for instance, an apple could be an apple for one person or not, not another.

And you hear people say things today like, find your truth, or it might be true for you and not for me. But the reality is there is a single truth in life. There is gravity. Whether you think there's, whether you decide to say, well, I don't believe in gravity, it's still there.

So here's the idea that's so important, and, and he covers this in other videos, is that truth leads to human flourishing. In, in the beginning, when we start reading in the book of Genesis about the Garden of Eden, we, we hear about a flourishing garden. All right? And Adam and Eve are called to tend towards the garden.

Now, I want you to think about it in this way, that if you wanna live your best life possible, You need to help the earth flourish, but you also need to help yourself flourish. And so what the Bible does, when you pursue the truth and you live out the best and ideal truth, you're going to flourish and thrive in life. So here, think about it this way.

Let's say you eat a bunch of junk food constantly, okay? Candy bars and soda and everything else. And, and you believe that that's the best way to live. Well, you can believe that, but because it's not true, You're not going to flourish. You're gonna be sick. Your body's gonna be diseased. It's going to suffer. It's going to rot away and die like a, like an unhealthy plant. Okay?

Versus if you believe that, hey, eating a lot of vegetables, a lot of organic foods, a lot of these things is going to help me heal, and you do it, well, you're going to be flourishing. So you can actually see here how if you live out the truth, your life will be so much better for it. And so part of the message in Genesis is, hey, Adam and Eve, I want you to take this garden.

And turn the entire earth into a paradise. And not only that is— that's part of God's plan. God is like, I want you to flourish as well. I want you to be the best you can be. And so once after the fall, God gives humans— he gives it to Moses and the Jewish people who eventually give it to others, and then the Christians take it and expand upon that.

But the idea there is the Bible teaches us the truth, the best way to live that allows for human flourishing. And so it's the basis for truth itself.

And so a lot of times we think, well, I'm going to learn the truth through theories, or I'm going to listen to opinions of people, versus you can go right to the Bible and discover the absolute truth on almost any single topic, and where you can at least extrapolate that truth and then Use it for different areas of your life.

For instance, if you have questions about marriage, the Bible has great advice. If you have questions for relationships, the Bible has great advice. So with marriage, it says, you know, husbands are called to die for their wives and to serve them, and, and wives are called to submit.

And so there's this sort of dynamic there of advice on— the Bible tells you on what, you know, men are called to die and serve, women are called to, uh, submit and nourish the household. And so there's that advice there about marriage, there's advice about relationships, there's The 10 Commandments, which is the basis for law today in the whole judicial system.

And so the Bible gives truth for if you have questions about gender or your identity or your life purpose, you can find that truth in the Bible. And I wanna mention this as well. Not only is the Bible true when it comes to subject matters about morality, it's also true historically.

When you look at the Bible and you, uh, cross-examine it compared to Roman history or Egyptian history, you'll see there it lines up perfectly. So the Bible, a lot of times we call them stories, they're actually historic events that are true. So the Bible is true historically, it's true symbolically.

When you look at the cross, uh, it, it, it's not only— not only did the event happen where Christ was crucified, there's a level of symbolism in the Bible that rings true that we understand without even being told what exactly is— without being even told the whole story. We see it true morally.

You know, again, the Ten Commandments or the Noahide laws or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount saying, listen, not only are you called to love your neighbor, you're also called to love and pray for your enemies. And so Jesus takes it up a notch, a whole notch in terms of, hey, what is the highest level of morality? The Bible is true spiritually. It's not only a book about material things.

It's a book about dreams and visions and the spirit of people. And so it was really one of the first books where people realized that we've got, you know, we're not just flesh and bones and blood. We are spiritual beings that are called to live for eternity. Right. The Bible is true prophetically. Did you know the Bible has predicted and predicts many, many, many future events?

In fact, in the Book of Daniel, Daniel has a dream and prophesies that there are going to be kingdoms of Macedonia and Persia and Rome, and they all fall. And hundreds of years later, or throughout time, they started to fall. The book of Isaiah predicts the coming of Christ.

And so we see the Bible is not just true historically and symbolically and morally and spiritually, it's also true prophetically. It's also true corporately. One of the things I love about the Bible is you can read about something in the book of Exodus where the Israelites are wandering in the wilderness.

And that's true for the Jews many, many years ago, but it can also be true for groups of people today where you can really relate there of saying, hey, I'm in an Exodus season, I'm in a wilderness season in life. And it can be true individually, like maybe you personally are going through a wilderness season or you're feeling oppressed.

And the Bible gives guidance and truth about How to act in that situation via prayer and faith and justice and doing what's right. And last here, the Bible is true foundationally. You know, it's true that the principles in the Bible were true yesterday, they're true today, and they'll be true tomorrow.

Whether it be, you know, principles like, again, love your neighbor or sowing and reaping, or many of those biblical principles that we see Are so important when it comes to finding truth. It matters because if you wanna live your best life possible, you've got to embrace the truth. You know, I think a lot of people today say, well, I, I wanna find whatever truth lines up with what I already feel.

So for instance, let's talk about politics. Well, maybe you're on the left or maybe you're on the right politically, and so you're just trying to find things to make yourself right in what you believe is true. But that won't lead to human flourishing. What will lead to human flourishing is saying, I don't care if it's a left ideology or right ideology.

I want to find the truth about what's going to lead to the best life possible. So if someone, you know, so if some political party or somebody is telling you that, hey, there are hundreds of genders, well, the Bible tells you there's 2, right? It says it's, you know, and it talks about marriage. It talks about all these things. And so if you want to know what truth is, stop listening to opinions.

Stop just watching the news and go to the Bible, because as Jordan Peterson talks about, it's the precondition for all truth. Another example of this is, is that, you know, how do we know what love is? Well, the Bible tells us, and that's the book upon which all other great books are written. C.S. Lewis has written many books, and all of his great, great books are based off of biblical principles.

And so just another example there of, of, of the Bible being the foundation for other great books have been written. Even Shakespeare, in fact, most of his ideas ideas there are biblical narratives. You like the movie The Matrix? That entire movie has a biblical narrative that runs out of Neo sacrificing himself for, you know, for the, for, for the good of humanity.

And so we start to see this in many movies. There are biblical narratives about sacrifice and resurrection and the hero's journey and the wisdom and so much more. Well, hey, I want to ask you, what do you— what are your thoughts on Jordan Peterson's view here that the Bible is not true. He says it's truer than true. It's a meta-truth, and it's the foundation of truth itself.

Hey, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what you believe the Bible is. Do you believe it's true, or do you believe it's truer than true, as Jordan Peterson and I both believe?