Live Not By Lies: A Meditation on Jordan Peterson’s Eighth Rule

Tell The Truth, Or At Least, Don’t Lie

Solzhenitsyn wrote, “One man who stops lying can bring down a tyranny.” Dr. Peterson is that one man, and he’s teaching millions of listeners to tell the truth, or at least, not to lie. Jo Rowling is that one woman and she has taught millions of readers to tell the truth in the face of the ‘Dolores Umbridges’, the ‘Cornelius Fudges’, and the ‘Rita Skeeters’ of the Muggle world. But telling the truth exacts a heavy price. 

A couple of years back, Jo Rowling stepped off her pedestal by posting on Twitter what was until five minutes ago one of the eternal verities and unchanging scientific realities: that a man cannot become a woman, nor can a woman become a man. Last year, Dr. Jordan Peterson was banned from Twitter for “deadnaming” Elliot (formerly Ellen) Page, a biological woman and famous actor who had had surgery to “transition.” 

Both Tweets caused an online uproar. Were Jo Rowling and Jordan Peterson deliberately being “mean” for clicks? Or were they warning the world about a great evil they saw coming into our world and the pain and devastation that evil was causing? Why should Dr. Peterson risk his clinical license and his hard-earned reputation, and why would Jo Rowling risk her status as the most beloved author in the world, by using their platforms to speak counter to the current discourse? 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian, teacher, and twentieth-century martyr to the Nazi regime, famously wrote,  “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” Neither Jo nor Dr. Peterson are moral lightweights. The Harry Potter series is, at its core, a modern retelling of the age-old battle between Good and Evil. Dr. Peterson’s lifework, as laid out in Maps of Meaning, has been a deep study of how to turn from Evil and choose Good. 

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Both Dr. Peterson and Jo Rowling have made it very clear that it is not evil for a fully informed and consenting adult to make any decision they like about their body, as Ellen/Elliot Page did. But while we are free to make decisions for our own bodies, we are not free from considerations of the effect our influence may have. I recently watched a YouTube video of a young woman who, directly influenced by Elliot Page, “transitioned.” She has since come to regret her decisions and is detransitioning, but the damage inflicted upon her person is permanent. 

It is evil for adults who have made fully informed consensual medical decisions for themselves to influence vulnerable young people, who are not able to consent, to believe that “they are born in the wrong body” and “they will kill themselves if they cannot transition” and that all they need to feel better is “gender-affirming healthcare” with “fully reversible hormones and medications and surgeries.” The very words, “gender-affirming care,” are a lie. No; they are an anti-truth. 

Healthcare does not entail the medicalization of a healthy body but the use of medicine to restore the body to the functions it was born with. “Gender-affirming care” is well documented to take away, not to restore, natural bodily functions such as the ability to reproduce and experience orgasm. For more information, see my research paper and bibliography.

Our world is upside down. In our current culture, “deadnaming” and “misgendering” are felt to cause a good deal more harm than irreversible surgeries with high rates of painful complications and irreversible hormone treatments that are not FDA-approved and are documented to cause physical harm to the human body. 

This is the evil that Dr. Peterson and Jo Rowling are speaking and acting against. The response to those two from activists show the truth of the words a wise man taught me a long time ago: “Lies need an army to protect them but truth can stand all by itself.” 

I was brought up on the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, three young men whose story is told in the Old Testament book of Daniel. Their ruler, King Nebukkadnezzar, set up a golden image and commanded all his people to fall down and worship it when they heard the sound of “all kinds of music.” The punishment for not falling down and worshiping was that anyone who did not bow would be cast into a “burning, fiery furnace.”

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship the image because they trusted that God, whom they worshiped, would deliver them; “and if not, He is still good.” They were indeed cast into the burning, fiery furnace, but they were not consumed by the fire. A servant of the King reported that he saw “four men, loosed from their bonds, walking in the midst of the fire, and the fourth was like the Son of God.” They refused to live by lies, and they were preserved from the fire. And God Himself walked with them in the furnace. 

Gender ideology has become that golden image to which every knee must bow. And those who don’t are thrown into the burning, fiery furnace of cancel culture. Jo Rowling and Jordan Peterson have both experienced that furnace to a tremendous degree. But transsexual people like Blaire White and Buck Angel have also experienced that furnace for speaking up against gender-affirming care for minors.

Young people like Chloe Cole, Laura “Funk God” Becker, ShapeShifter, and Prisha, who are speaking publicly about the harm their transitions caused their bodies and minds, are getting thrown in. Medical professionals like Jamie Reed and Miriam Grossman, who share insider insight into the realities of “gender-affirming care,” are thrown in to join the rest. 

Johnny Cash so eloquently sang about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, “They wouldn’t bend, they wouldn’t bow, and they wouldn’t burn.” And neither will any of these truth speakers. 

If every one of us would tell the truth, or at least refuse to lie, about gender ideology, we could bring down the current tyranny that is causing such unimaginable pain and suffering. 

Don’t bow down. Stand up. 

Author’s Note: If you have enjoyed this essay, look for the continuation of my meditations on the Twelve Rules.