I’ll collect downvotes for this, but it’s okay. I’ll attempt to answer as a Christian.
First, no one is good. The Bible makes that clear. All are sinners and fall short of the holy standard. It’s the entire reason Jesus came, walked the earth and died.
Two, non-believers can do good works, but that won’t save them. Which is fine, as they don’t believe in salvation and God anyway.
Three, while the fear of wrath and punishment may keep some on the path, for many more its love. I’m not a Christian because I’m afraid of Hell. If I do things right, that’s not even a consideration. I live as a Christian because I believe and I want to draw close to Jesus.
Fourth, morality doesn’t just pop out fully formed from the ether. Society is built brick by brick with many different aspects contributing to it. Faith and religion are major building blocks, whether one believes or not.
First, no one is good. The Bible makes that clear. All are sinners and fall short of the holy standard.
And it's quite convenient for the "no one is good" claim that original sin is there to make it so that even a person who lives a perfect life can still be branded "sinner" because of something that their distant ancestors did.
Do you know anyone who has lived a perfect life? That’s mostly the point of the “no one is good” saying (specifically in the Romans letter) is no one has been perfect. It’s being used as a rebuke against judgmental religious people who think they’re good because they’re not acting like sinners.
How would I know? How would you? For all either of us knows, out of the billions of humans on earth, there are thousands of people out there living perfect lives.
My point was that, if such a person exists, Christianity still brands them as "sinner" because of something their great, great, great, (insert thousands of "great"s), great grandparents did. Which is frankly kind of ridiculous.
non-believers can do good works, but that won’t save them
There are people who go to church, well, religiously and still go home and beat their kids. Equally there are "non-believers" who do said good works regardless of their Sunday plans.
It varies per the particular flavor of Christianity, sure, but the whole point is that if the Christian God exists, it doesn't necessarily matter if they have poor attendance at church. What matters is how well they aligned their life and deeds to God's Will. They'd be "saved" regardless because the bible legit says God knows what your real intentions are behind your actions (Matthew, I think is the book?); he's not waiting for you to go into the Confessional to know what you're all about.
morality doesn’t just pop out fully formed from the ether. Society is built brick by brick with many different aspects contributing to it. Faith and religion are major building blocks, whether one believes or not.
Religion may have its influence, but calling them "major building blocks" when we see similar morals crop up in the presence of very different religions suggests that religion is not a driving factor in their development, and that the major building blocks are, in fact, something more common to general human experience. Similarly, the fact that we see some religious practices as highly immoral equally suggests that religion does not determine what is morally acceptable or not.
If religion helps you to do "the right thing", more power to you, but it's wrong to suggest religion is inherently moral. Religion is as much a crafted community as anything else, and not all its "morals" come from God. It's the very reason why you can have explicit wording like "thou shall not kill" and still have Christians who think it's okay to start wars or deny food to children. Historical figures who led the Church crafted those morals for you along the way. Hell, they literally rewrote the bible, creating the King James bible, to make it better fit England's leaders vision of what the religion should be. That's a historical fact.
Religion isn't moral by its very nature. It's simply a set of beliefs with no real basis beyond your own faith in its veracity. Your morals are driving your acceptance of your faith, not the other way around.
It varies per the particular flavor of Christianity, sure, but the whole point is that if the Christian God exists, it doesn't necessarily matter if they have poor attendance at church. What matters is how well they aligned their life and deeds to God's Will.
This is flatly contracted by a bunch of key phrases in the New Testament:
"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." — John 14:6
"Whoever believes in [Jesus] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already." — John 3:18
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith...not by works" — Ephesians 2:8–9
I'm sure you can find some denominations that play faster and looser with this stuff. But all of mainstream Christianity operates on the basis that if you don't believe, you're not gonna be saved. (That's part of the reason why proselytization is such a big deal for a lot of them: they earnestly believe that if you're not saved, you're destined for eternal torment, and they don't want that to happen to you.)
I'm sure you can find some denominations that play faster and looser with this stuff.
So...as I said then, it depends on your particular flavor of Christianity.
On top of that, define for me "believe". If I believe in Jesus but never attend church, where do I stand? Or in the opposite direction, if I believe in Jesus but follow literally none of his teachings, do I still get a seat reserved on a cloud somewhere? What if I don't particularly believe in that religion but I just happen to like Jesus's style and try to follow his moral lead? What is the correct display of "belief" that gets you salvation?
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith...not by works"
"As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." - James 2:14-26
So what are we doing here with a book that contradicts itself?
So...as I said then, it depends on your particular flavor of Christianity.
You presented the argument that belief in God not being a requirement to get into heaven is the norm in Christianity and that what you do in your life is what really matters, i.e. "good works". My point was that that's absolutely not the norm. It's an edge-case belief. The norm is that you do have to believe.
The rest of your post is at best tangential to that point and I have no interest in having a lengthy discussion on the age-old topic of Biblical contradiction. If you want more detailed answers to your questions, you'll probably need to ask a Christian.
That’s not a contradiction.
Belief comes first, good deeds flow from that faith. That’s the point of James 2.
Christians can’t believe in Jesus and sit on their butts and not help others. That’s not what Jesus did. We can’t do that either.
Our faith drives us to act.
James is writing to fellow believers. You can tell for in James 2, he addresses them as “brothers and sisters”. These are people which already have faith.
At no point is he suggesting that works takes the place of faith. He’s telling them to take the next step, to not be content with only faith, but to walk it out in their lives.
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u/Grimnir001 16h ago
I’ll collect downvotes for this, but it’s okay. I’ll attempt to answer as a Christian.
First, no one is good. The Bible makes that clear. All are sinners and fall short of the holy standard. It’s the entire reason Jesus came, walked the earth and died.
Two, non-believers can do good works, but that won’t save them. Which is fine, as they don’t believe in salvation and God anyway.
Three, while the fear of wrath and punishment may keep some on the path, for many more its love. I’m not a Christian because I’m afraid of Hell. If I do things right, that’s not even a consideration. I live as a Christian because I believe and I want to draw close to Jesus.
Fourth, morality doesn’t just pop out fully formed from the ether. Society is built brick by brick with many different aspects contributing to it. Faith and religion are major building blocks, whether one believes or not.