I've taken the idea of God seriously for a very long time, and I've said on multiple occasions that I try to act as though God exists, and that's essentially my definition of belief, when people say, "Do you believe in God? Belief is a multidimensional word, and one question is "What do you mean by belief? And for me, the proof of belief is to be found in action. And I decided that I would act as if God existed a long while back. And, of course, I'm imperfect at that.
Peterson continues,[T]he missing praxis in Western Christianity [is] if you want to be a Christian, let's say if you think that's necessary, it's not exactly obviously what you should do. You should go to Church, but that's not enough, I don't think. I find it useful to contemplate the highest good on a continual basis. I'm trying to keep myself oriented in that direction. It's a religious orientation fundamentally. It's an overwhelming orientation, but there's no escaping the questions of the ultimate meaning of life.
Peterson challenges us,....Who would have the audacity to claim that they believed in God if they examined the way they lived? Who would dare say that? You think to believe in a Christian sense—and this is why Nietsche said there is only one Christian, and that was Christ. To have the audacity to claim that means that you live it out fully. And that's an unbearable task, in some sense, to be able to accept the structure of existence, the suffering that goes along with it, and the disappointment and the betrayal, and to nonetheless act properly, to aim at the good with all your heart, to dispense with the malevolence and your desire for destruction and revenge and all of that, and to face things courageously and to tell the truth, to speak the truth and to act it out. That's what it means to believe. That's what it means. It doesn't mean to state it. It means to act it out. And unless you act it out, you should be very careful about claiming it. And so, I've never been comfortable saying anything other than I try to act as if God exists, because God only knows what you'd be if you truly believed. I mean, if you think about it in some sense, that’s the central idea in Christianity is that if you were capable of believing, it would be a transfiguring event, a truly transfiguring event. And I know that people experience that to one degree or another, but we have no idea of what the limit of that is. And we have no idea what the possibility is within each person if they lived a life that was maximally courageous and maximally truthful. You know, because maybe your running at 60% or 70% or 20% and at cross purposes to yourself. God only knows what you'd be if you believed. And so, I try to act like I believe, but I'd never claim that I manage it.1