Shouldn't you get to heaven for good works?

[brandonjennings]

So an average catholic who does minimal service, is very rich and minimal good works but goes to mass every week, according to catholics get in to heaven over atheists who live great lives and help in the community and devote there life to surface.

Am i getting that right? sounds pretty lame

 

[Fr.Charles_Grondin]

Let’s start off with a different question:

A great humanitarian is drowning. An equal distance away your own child is drowning. You only have time to save one of them. Who would you save?

I think the answer for any parent is obvious. You would save your own child. You would do so despite the fact that the other person has more “good works” or “merit.” Works and merit only get someone so far, ultimately our relationship with one another is what’s important. That’s not to say we couldn’t come up with some extreme examples that would lead to the opposite effect, but in common everyday life it should be no surprise that relationships are the most important thing in life. The idea that a personal loving God who we are taught to call “Abba” (father) would be cold, distant and merely weighing scales like a cosmic moral accountant “sounds pretty lame” to me.

Another good example is from a parable that Jesus tells:

"Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here immediately and take your place at table’? Would he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished’? Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’”
Luke 17:7-10

Being “good people” is what we are expected to be. To a certain extent there isn’t really any merit in doing the right thing, its what’s expected of us. If two individuals get into a fist fight, do we give them credit because they didn’t kill each other? Or do we recognize that while murder is a greater evil than fighting, neither is good behavior?

We all fall short of how we *should *live. Sin affects the great humanitarian as much as the “minimal service” person. Both fall short of the goodness expected of them in one area or another. The problem is that we want to be the judge of which areas of sin are more or less important. That judgment must be left to God. Human judgment can be corrupt, selfish, and unjust. We need to let go of our pride and recognize that God is the measure of all things and not man.