Common Ground: Salvation

Before I became Catholic, my husband and I would go to each other's church service together every so often. It would be my church service at the non-denominational church in the morning and then his service at the Catholic campus center in the evening. I'll never forget the time that I heard essentially the exact same message at both services about how we get to heaven. Both the pastor of the protestant church and the priest of the Catholic church said that no one on their own can get to Heaven. No amount of good works will ever make it possible. At the same token, it is not enough to just say that you have faith. True faith will be reflected by the life you live after coming to that faith. For example, a Christian of sound mental state (I add the mental state qualifier because I know all too well how profoundly a mental illness can affect a person) will not say "I believe" and then go kill someone or rob a bank or purposefully insult/threatening people because that they are different. As Christians, we are called to live like Jesus. That means going out and helping those in need in some way, whether they believe and live like Christians do or not. It means loving everyone and not judging- both in terms of things within this life but also anyone's eternal destination. That means not judging someone based on their clothes but also not judging someone by saying/thinking/insinuating "They are going to hell because (insert reason here)" or "They are going to heaven because (insert reason here)". Christians can't make judgements about a person's soul because no one knows them like God does. Someone could have the most holy outward appearance but be living in unrepentance with incredible amounts of sin on the inside (see Jesus' description of the Pharisees in Matthew 23). Likewise, someone could appear to have a sinful life but really be incredibly holy on the inside.