Clinical psychologist, lecturer and author Dr. Jordan Peterson bases his insightful analysis on the Bible for his latest book.

In “We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine,” released Nov. 19, he argues that the stories in the holy book can help anyone through life, regardless of their religious stance.

“If you can’t see the wisdom (in the Bible), you haven’t thought about your own misery… That’s what you need to understand: the books are about you,” he said. The Post’s Rikki Schlott in an exclusive interview.

Here he explains how young people can bring order to the chaos of modern life, using the religious text:

This book is an impressive tome. How long did it take you to write it?

That’s hard to say. I probably started working on it in a sense when I was 13. So how long is that: 50 years?

When did I put pen to paper? For this particular book, it was after the publication of the last one (in 2021), but I wrote three at the same time.

A lot of it came from traveling and lecturing, as I used the lectures to develop the ideas, and sometimes I recorded them and used the transcript as a template for a chapter. It has been radically rewritten because a lecture and a book are very different, but it took three years.

You have a remarkable ability to get young people excited about things they might not find sexy at first, like making your bed. How do you get young people stimulated by a subject like serious as religion?

We have an identity crisis in our culture. Clearly, the culture war is an identity crisis. And yes, this is a book about identity.

It is about the identity of the divine and its relationship with men and women and culture.

The reason I say make your bed is because you can probably do that. Maybe your life is chaos, just hell, like the Israelites in the desert, and you don’t know where to start. Well, you can organize your sock drawer and make your bed. It is a symbolic offering in the morning.

I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s still true: that’s a repeat of the opening scene in Genesis, where God brings order out of chaos. That is what you are called to do because you are made in the image of God. Bring some order to the chaos.

In the book I argue – and it is very exciting to know – that the most adventurous way forward, which is also the most meaningful way forward, is the way that involves voluntarily taking on the maximum amount of responsibility. That, by the way, is the symbol of the cross.

Without responsibility there would be no adventure. There’s nothing at stake. And if there’s nothing at stake, there’s no meaning. So this is an invitation to adventure.

It is also a call to the deepest layers of memory. Plato and Socrates believed that all learning was remembering. Well, there’s truth in that. It’s remembering who you are.

You are Abraham. You are Moses. You are Sara. You are Adam. You are Noah. Who else would those stories be about?

I believe that if you lived your life, you would be all those characters. All these things would happen to you, because everyone is going through a time of storms, everyone is inhabiting the Tower of Babel, everyone is committing the sin of pride.

Now everyone has a call to adventure. Everyone must stand up against tyranny and slavery. That’s all part of the human experience, and that’s why I’m explaining it to you.

Do you think a lack of spiritual foundation is partly responsible for the epidemic of anxiety and depression in our society?

It’s all a lack of spiritual grounding. It’s as if humans have gotten the upper hand over the overbearing technologists (in Silicon Valley) – that’s exactly what’s happening in the Tower of Babel. In that story, everyone procrastinates and no one can communicate.

Well, obviously we can’t even agree on what a man or a woman is. Words have lost their reference. That is an indication that you are in a Tower of Babel. Will that cause misery? Certainly.

What’s the way out? Well, we talked about it. You have to know the stories. They orient you. For when you say ‘God is dead’, in Nietzsche’s terminology, the unifying ethos collapses and the world becomes meaningless. What happens is that the world becomes a hell, and hell is characterized by suffering.

Well, what is the antidote to mortal suffering? That’s a great question. That’s what the Bible stories are about.

Young men have been demoralized and young women have been seduced down the garden path, and the way out of their self-conscious misery is to accept responsibility.

Without that responsibility there would be no adventure. There’s nothing at stake. And if there’s nothing at stake, there’s no meaning.

You can degenerate into your infantile self-gratification, but… if everyone has their own needs, that’s so sad. It’s like: who are you? You’re just a bottomless pit of consumption.

No wonder you’re fat and miserable. You know, it’s terrible. It’s a horrible view.

With what attitude do you hope a religious skeptic, agnostic or atheist will approach your book?

See, when you read, you try to separate the wheat from the chaff. That’s what a critical reader does. A critical reader does not find something that bothers him or her and then throws the book away.

Reading is research. This is how you approach a text. You collect what is relevant and useful, and you throw away the rest and use your critical judgment. If you are wise, you will do well, because you aim upwards and you want to learn.

You are all the characters in the story. That’s what you need to understand: the books are about you.

But even if we say the opposite: it’s not about you. Who is it about then? Even if you’re an atheist, let’s just say people wrote the book. Okay, then it’s about us – and that means it’s about you.

That’s a pretty scary realization.