Nick Shirley

 

Nick is the 23 year old, self-described independent journalist (right-wing influencer to his leftist critics) who uncovered some fraudulent front building scams run by some of the Somali community in Minneapolis.

I subscribe to his Facebook account and I agree with most but not all of his listings there. He is obviously a born-again, evangelical Christian, likely a staunch Protestant, perhaps a fundamentalist. Here is what he posted today (2/22/26) on Facebook, a meme which I wish to disagree with at least in partL Nick: “Good people don’t go to heaven. Forgiven sinners do. Salvation is by grace, not goodness.”

Let me unpack this by starting with a digression. Jordan Peterson, for years has not said yes or no as to whether he believes that God exists, let alone accepting Christ as his personal savior, and I think Peterson is evasive (One should never be evasive concerning Jesus or any good deity, lest they take offense and punish one in this world, and perhaps hurl one into hell, for we are to get hot or get cold or Christ will spit us out of His mouth.) for four reasons.

First, Peterson, as a subtle intellectual, a professor and original thinker, and an accomplished, recognized social scientist, is dispositionally averse to surrendering his ego, his pride, laying his whole ego and personhood fatalistically like a humble child at the feet of Jesus or another kind deity, allowing them to do the thinking for him, to run his life. The surrendering of the intellectual’s consciousness to God is something the intellectual is reluctant to do, and I do not believe that is what Jesus wants: we can be proud, willful, think for ourselves, and as much as we can run our own affairs, and Jesus is fine with it as long as we are working for Jesus and advancing His agenda of love, spiritual and moral goodness in the world.

Second, Peterson the scientist, may be a monist believing only that the material world exists, even though he dabbles heavily into interpreting—with much success and expertise--the meaning of sacred texts, mythological stories and metaphysical puzzles. He can’t quite nudge himself to believe that the world is dualist, and that the existence of a spiritual realm might well entail existing, present, operating and benevolent deities who run that realm. Therefore, he might consider Jesus to be a wise prophet, but not the Son of God.

Third, Peterson the metaphysical moderate—the middle is the way—as I am a metaphysical and theological moderate—even if he did believe that there is a spiritual realm, that there are benevolent deities, may not believe that there is only one benevolent deity (Jesus) or that if there are 2 or more benevolent gods and goddesses who exists and who may be worshiped alongside of instead of solely worshiping Jesus (I believe Jesus is the son of the Mother and the Father, and that he has many good deities of both genders, who are His siblings symbolically and perhaps literally, and that He is fine with people worshiping only Himself, or other deities too or inclusively with Himself.).

Peterson is much influenced by Buddhist thought and Taoism, so his metaphysical moderation makes it hard and perhaps impossible for him to commit to identifying Jesus as his exact and perhaps only route to salvation, but I do not think Jesus is as extreme as He seems to be in the Bible, or that He insists the only path to heaven is through Him alone. He may be the best path to take, but His path is not the only road to heaven.

Jesus in the New Testament sure sounds all or nothing, or we will burn, but part of that can be explained away as God detesting evil and liars, so God hates the evader, the most inveterate liar, who will not take a side. If could be that the one who speaks his truth or the Truth about Jesus as not being God, not being the only route to heaven, or denying the spiritual realm exists, that firm stance once the person repents after death and goes through Purgatory, he might get to heaven or even out of hell faster that the evader. If Jesus makes his judgements about our eternal assigned destiny along these lines, then his admonishment to humans demanding they—concerning accepting Christ as their savior or not by getting hot or cold is less about embracing fanaticism than rejecting evaders from truth-telling and clear communication of the sinners acceptance or rejection of what Jesus offers, and a clear, final assessment as to the divine nature of Jesus holding or not. As a metaphysical moderate, I consider fanaticism to be directly manifesting evil in the world, I submit. I believe that Jesus does not want us to be hot or cold because fanatical choice and commitment are the Christian ideal, so much as Jesus is fiercely, angrily coming down on evaders and their fence-straddling dodges as they hem and haws, both living a lie and telling a lie which insults and infuriates a trenchant good deity like Jesus who hates and punishes liars and those addicted to evil-doing more than anything else to be prioritized.

Four, Peterson repeatedly insists that whatever God is, God is moral goodness. I think he makes a profound point here. I think he is right and means what he says, that we can identify God not with words, names or definitions, or by just surrendering our souls to Jesus to receive His freely given grace of eternal life, a profound gift.

Rather we only believe in God, we only can know that God is present, we can only define God, and only believe in God when we live a very, very ethical life; for only that mode of existence allows us to know God, know ourselves, and allows us to name and define God and ourselves. For Peterson, God literally is love and we as individuals are only good and godly and with God and serving God when we are love and kindness, practicing excellent self-care, excellent other-care, excellent care of the deity we worships, and His or Her world, nature and the creatures of nature. This is what Peterson is saying and He should not be evasive, but spell out his view here, and I like how he defines who God and Jesus are.

Only as moral giants of love can we can define God and that is expressed ostensively. God is of perfect or near-perfect spiritual goodness and moral goodness, and the two cannot be separated.

For Peterson ,if good deities exist, and Jesus is one of them, then salvation is gained by the individual for herself as matter of grace and good works coextensively; one cannot be one without the other, and Peterson not letting evangelicals like Alex Shirley off the hook, they who downplay or dismiss the importance of perfecting oneself morally. If the Christian denies the important of earned, merited moral goodness achieved, then that cannot be the one true faith, for Jesus as a lover of truth and love will want us to be both believers and moral to be fit to enter the kingdom of heaven

Peterson should just come clean and tell the Christians that he is not one of them. I sense something similar with Robert Lawerence Kuhn with his strict agnosticism as to whether the consciousness is a hard problem with the answer to what consciousness is lying somewhere between eliminativism and panspsychism.

Kuhn too seems evasive, finally admitting that consciousness is more than eliminativism tor reductive physicalism but is something like property dualism. Kuhn likely is an atheist and a material monist, but then he should not be evasive about it, and just admit that he is an atheist and monist, that dualism is not how the world is, so there is no god to worship. Both Kuhn and Peterson may be agnostics which is acceptable to Jesus than their being evaders, for Jesus hates evil and liars or evaders above all else, so being evasive and agnostic because one is not willing to take a stand for fear of losing popularity, or influence or offending someone is dangerous to one’s social standing, so the evader is risking losing his immortal soul as an unprincipled evader, a pure liar, for he has offended God mightily.

Now let me answer Nick’s evangelical assertion. Good people go to heaven and only good people go to heaven, or have a chance to go to heaven, but, at the same time, and as exclusively and exhaustively, even if this seems absurd or contradictory, the good person must have a powerful faith in some good deity like Jesus and unequivocally accept that deity as her savior.

She is both good and a believer by believing in and choosing to reach out the good deity, by demonstrating to God her willingness be to accept God’s grace as a gift of eternal life offered freely and without merit to all that ask for it. Thusly, the person can know salvation. The moral goodness is the ethical part, the left hand part and spiritual goodness, the gift of faith allows the person to receive God’s free gift of faith, is the right hand spiritual part, and the moderate combining of these polar opposite needs allows the person to enter heaven. Then the saved, forgiven sinner achieves or is granted freely salvation by both her faith in the deity and her willingness to receive the deity’s grace and by her achieved, merited moral goodness, both critical to her being allowed to enter the kingdom of heaven.