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Canadian psychologist and author Jordan B. Peterson recently sat down for a lengthy conversation about Jesus and storytelling with filmmaker of The Chosen, Dallas Jenkins.
During the almost two-hour podcast interview, Peterson confessed that the only Jesus movie or TV show he's watched is The Chosen.
"I was watching it with my wife and she had undergone quite a profound religious transformation not too long before we started watching The Chosen," Peterson told Jenkins. "I was watching her watch it and seeing her response. The first response I had was relief. The relief was, 'Oh, I can watch this,' because I'm very sensitive to propagandistic intent; I don't like it at all. Even a bit of it is a turnoff for me."
While Peterson has yet to claim he is a Christian, he is well-versed in studying the Bible. Jenkins, who has believed Jesus is the Son of God since he was a child, shared his deep yearning to share the gospel in a way that is relevant to people and unpacks the Bible in a realistic and relatable way.
"I listen to some of you talk and I go, that's fascinating but my job, my calling, my interest and my skill set is to tell it as a story. Because I'm a storyteller, I'm attracted to the emotional as much or more than the intellectual," says Jenkins.
Jenkins shared with Peterson that he has been thinking about what life was like with Jesus on Earth since he was a little boy.
"Ever since I was a little kid I would hear Sunday school stories and thought, what would it have been like to sit with Jesus around a campfire? What was it like to be a sibling of Jesus and argue with him and then his parents become involved and they always side with Jesus because he's never wrong?"
Jenkins shared that storytelling runs in his family genealogy, noting his father published over 200 books.
"You see with Christ's parables frequently an amalgam of those two approaches," says Peterson. "He'll tell a story and then the disciples, for example, will say, 'Thank you but we don't really get it.' Then he'll lay out the explanation. I've certainly found in my lectures that the most effective way of driving a point home is to tell a story and provide an explanation."
The whole interview can be seen on The Daily Wire or Peterson's website. The Chosen Season 5 is set to be released by Easter 2025.