Jordan Peterson’s wife is praying the rosary and it is helping him. Dr. Jordan Peterson has become a global phenomenon. His book, Twelve Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos has sold millions of copies. His YouTube videos have over 40 million views and millions more, with editors taking clips and reuploading them. With his students and colleagues at Harvard and the University of Toronto, Dr. Peterson has published over a hundred scientific papers, transforming the modern understanding of personality. At the same time, his book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief: The architecture of Belief revolutionized the psychology of religion.

Peterson has studied evil for most of his adult life and is well informed on the atrocities of communism, fascism, and nazism. As a psychologist, he was most interested in what lead people to follow these great evils and to examine why individuals, not simply groups, engage in social conflict, and to model the path individuals take that results in atrocities like the Gulag, the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Rwandan genocide.

In the Twelve Rules for Life, Peterson explores the origins of evil. In the book and his talks, he posits that an analysis of the world’s religious ideas might allow us to describe our essential morality and eventually develop a universal system of morality. While he is ambiguous when asked about his personal religious beliefs, he has become a vocal advocate for understanding the Biblical narratives and is known for juxtaposing them with contemporary psychological science and research.

He has dialogued with believers such as Bishop Robert Barron, Jonathan Pageau, and atheists such as Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty. When asked if he believes in God Peterson famously responds by saying:

I try to act as if God exists

Peterson’s perspective is that many religious people profess a belief in God, but their actions reflect an apathy towards any real sense of what true faith might mean. This would put him in stark contrast with the protestant community that ironically awaits his declaration to be a Christian. Many protestants see stated Belief as the only requirement to being a faithful Christian, something Peterson often criticizes as he did here in the conversation with talk show host Dennis Prager. Christians would or should side with Peterson, who says to believe means you “act it out you take up your suffering and carry your cross.”

In the same interview, Peterson tells Prager a Jew that he believes Catholicism is as sane as people can get

Recently both Jordan and his wife Tammy have battled life-threatening ailments. Tammy from cancer and Peterson from complications with anti-depressant withdrawal. They are both refreshingly transparent about their personal life, and the humility that each expresses is seldom found in today’s self-aggrandizing society. In the video below Peterson shares with Bishop Barron how Tammy has found peace in praying the rosary.

Peterson is not shy from discussing religion as can be seen in this interview he is talking with host Dave Rubin a gay married man and atheist and Ben Shapiro an orthodox Jew that Catholicism is the bulwark against the fragmenting of Christianity