How many people who believe in a system of salvation by works have thought about the practical implications of this belief? I hope this article will challenge anyone who holds to this view to examine it more deeply.

What separates religious belief from secular philosophy? Religions believe that this life is essentially a test, which must be passed (or not), in order to receive rewards (or demerits) in a life to come. Each person is accountable, and there is no way to escape this accountability. Each person who lives a life is accountable during life, but most especially at the end of life, for deeds (i.e. works) performed while alive. Deeds done in life earn a person merit or demerit towards the next life. This basic pattern can be found in all religious beliefs, and the pattern is the difference between religion and secularism. The secular philosophies, such as secular humanism, believe the human race creates its own meaning for life without any accountability to external evaluations; without question, a person's works are vitally important for the secular version of salvation, but there is no element of external judgment or a life to come.

In various religions, judgment can be an impersonal universal algorithm, as it is in Hinduism and Buddhism, where the soul is put through a computation that evaluates a soul's karma and directs the soul to another existence. Judgment can be at the bar of God, as it is in the Judeo-Christian beliefs. The life to come can be more of the same, as it is in reincarnation systems, or a final paradise or damnation.

The specifics differ, but the pattern in the same. Because the pattern is pervasive in religion, most people believe in what is called "salvation by works", the idea that the deeds performed by a person during this life are judged in some way to determine what happens after death.

Two closely related questions must be asked of any salvation by works system. What works are enough? and What weight is assigned to each work? Anyone who believes in salvation by works ought to have a firm answer to both questions, since the person's life is at stake.

What works are enough? The most basic question is what it takes to be saved (given any religion's definition of what "saved" means) by works. By what system are works ranked to determine salvation? This question must be answered to give people a sense of what is required from them, so they will know if their works are sufficient for salvation.

Possibilities include:

• Perfection. Any bad works automatically disqualify a person from salvation.
• A letter grade. The percentage of good works out of total works is calculated, much like on a school test the number of correct answers out of all questions is calculated. The percentage is given a letter grade (A, B, C, D, F). The person's individual works either earn a high enough grade for salvation or not.
• Graded on a curve. This means grades are computed, but then compared to all others. All individual letter grades are calculated, and the final grade is issued based on how the class did as a whole.
• Pass/fail. Some criteria is predetermined by which a person passes or fails, and works are judged by this criteria. This would be a subjective judgment on the part of whoever is doing the judging.
• Majority of good works. In the total of good works and bad works, there must be more good than bad.
• Plurality of good works. The majority view assumes each work is either good or bad, which may not be true, because many works are totally neutral (like checking the mail or drinking water). Instead of a majority of good works, perhaps a person needs to have only a plurality (one category being larger than any other).

The two major world religions, Christianity (including Judaism) and Hinduism (including Buddhist versions), both say the standard is perfection. This is interesting because the two religions are the dominant views under which most of humanity operates, and absolutely opposite in how they explain the universe; so if both say the standard is perfection (although for different reasons), that leaves little room for other religious views on salvation.

Islam is the only religion I am aware of that says a majority of good works is sufficient for salvation.

Conventional wisdom in America, including that of many who would identify themselves as Christians, is that people are graded on a curve. (People frequently compare themselves to mass murders or other heinous people and decide that their own works aren't that bad.) Americans consistently show this belief in various surveys I've seen.

(Note: I do not know of any religious system which uses grading on the curve, but it does raise interesting ethical questions since, with this scheme, each person's best interest is to encourage others to be as bad as possible to skew the curve. Because many Americans believe they are going to be graded on the curve, this may explain why popular culture is filled with icons of badness, such as out-of-control sports stars, gangsta rap, and television sitcoms, because each person can look at the badness of these icons and feel like the curve is being skewed. It would also explain why Americans tend to delight in the moral downfall of the upright, such as preachers or honest politicians, because those sorts of people wreck the curve for others.)

What weight is assigned to each work? Given that some works are "good", and others are "bad", how good or how bad is one work in comparison to another? We have an innate sense that some good things (e.g. dying for one's country) are better than others (e.g. cleaning up litter), and some bad things (e.g. embezzling money) are worse than others (e.g. getting too much change back and keeping it). Unless we know, however, what rank is assigned to each work, we can't know where we are on the ranking system we have chosen from among the possibilities. Imagine going to college and getting no feedback on the grades earned in any of the courses required for graduation, until after graduation: no one would know if they would even graduate successfully or not, and would have no idea where they stood. It's only through the knowledge of where the student stands in working towards earning the major that progress can be made. To live an entire life and not know where a person stands on the progression towards salvation seems unfair, if the universe is meant to be absolutely just towards all.

No religion answers this question in much detail. Roman Catholicism makes a distinction between "venal" (forgivable) sins, and "mortal" sins. Within each category, there is no particular ranking (that I am aware of). (As a Protestant, I find it hard to see where they get this distinction, since Christianity insists on perfection.) The Koran is silent on the weights of good or bad works (with a few special exceptions like death in jihad), which is in keeping with their view of an arbitrary God. Hinduism and Buddhism stress that some good works can cancel out some bad works, but are curiously silent about how this system is implemented in practice. (It is difficult to believe a murderer can somehow absolve himself of his bad works through, say, meditating.)

Analyzing what is "good" or "bad" about a work quickly leads to paradoxes and impossible trains of convoluted logic filled with exceptions and conditions. Some works, like murder, are clearly bad. Other works, like getting down a kitten stuck in a tree, are clearly good. In many cases, the determination of whether a work is "good" or "bad" is almost impossible, as these examples show:

• Driving a fuel-efficient car is a good work; driving a fossil-fuel burning car at all and perpetuating a system of out-of-control global resource consumption is a bad work. Especially when most of the countries which sell us fossil fuels to burn are brutal dictatorships and sponsors of terrorism. (But what choice do people have but to burn fossil fuels, when society is built around their consumption, even if people work to effect change, such as electric cars or public transportation? If works are out of a person's control, do they count as good or bad?)
• Being responsible with the family money is a good work; shopping at Wal-Mart to save money while helping perpetuate the "race to the bottom" and destroy the jobs and livelihood of others in society is a bad work. (Unless, of course, you think Wal-Mart's goals are good. There is no consensus opinion.)
• Cold-blooded murder is a bad work; but murdering Hitler in cold blood before his rise to power would be a good work; but who can possibly say ahead of time that Hitler will become Hitler? (Who, also, could say that while Hitler as we know him might not have arisen, the same basic conditions would not have obtained anyway, such as anti-Semitic pogroms, given the period in which Hitler flourished? A murder might have stopped Hitler qua Hitler as we knew him, but it likely would not have stopped a Hitler figure from emerging.)
• Voting for a candidate is non-deterministic. No candidate is perfect, and any vote is a trade-off where the voter hopes progress would be made on issues of importance where the voter and candidate agree, and not too much damage would be done on issues of disagreement. (Because the voter is responsible for putting the candidate into office, are bad works perpetrated by the candidate blamed on the voter?) There is also no guarantee that, once elected, the elected official will do what was promised as a candidate. How can anyone say the vote is a good or bad work?

With examples like these, the idea that each work accretes good or bad karma, or that recording angels add the work to the "good" or the "bad" tally in some cosmic book of deeds, seems absurd. This is, likely, why most religious writings do not try to classify works in any great detail.

The motive behind a work, versus its efficacy, is also an important detail in deciding what counts as a good or bad work. Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount that motive, not just externals, is the important determinant of good or bad works. If a person has evil intentions but does good works, is that person "good"? Will works done out of a bad motive (name recognition, a guilty conscience, etc) be counted as good? A religion like Islam concentrates on efficacy, emphasizing the external works themselves regardless of their motive. Motive doesn't even enter into it. So, what is the definition of a "work", the motive which gives rise to the work, or the deed itself? If someone never commits physical adultery, but downloads gigabytes of pornography, is that person faithful?

(Note: In Hinduism, as can be seen in the Gita, even "good works" are bad works. The definition of salvation in Hinduism is the extinction of individual consciousness. Given that, even doing what other religions call "good works" is actually bad, because in doing these works a doer is volitionally doing something, and that implies individuality, perpetuating the false and deluded dualism that causes suffering in the world. So, in one sense, "good works" are better than "bad works", but both must be put aside to achieve oneness with God. Occupying oneself with "good works" in Hinduism is actually the wrong thing to do if the motive is union with God. In the Gita, a struggle can be seen on this topic, both encouraging people to do the works they have to do in life, but also saying this will not get them to their goal, but no ultimate resolution is arrived at.)

There is also the question of whether good works can cancel out bad works. No system of justice mankind has ever known would allow this: the murderer being absolved of the crime by a judge on the day of the trial because of other good works performed since the murder happened. The idea in some religions that later good works somehow cancel out previous bad works does not square with the innate sense of justice within people. More good works do not absolve people from the need to pay for the bad works they have already done. (E.g., no one has ever been absolved of paying penalties for cheating on income tax payments because that person has subsequently given money to charity. If the person has reformed and changed, it is applauded, but the judge will still require that person to pay the penalties and accrued interest on the original cheating. One does not cancel out the other.)

My conclusion after many years of studying salvation by works is: The Christian message best explains our universe. God has established a standard of perfection. But as we try to meet it, even good works are tainted by the fallen, sinful nature of mankind, so we are unable to be perfect. We find we are unable to save ourselves by living up to God's standard. We need a substitute, someone who will take the rightful punishment for the bad works we have done, and that substitute is Jesus. Without a substitute, we are fully responsible for our own bad works, and must pay the penalty. The standard God has set for us is perfection (because he is perfect, and this is his universe); but because we have fallen from that standard, God provided a way for us to be saved by the gift of his grace through Jesus who took our punishment. This view explains the standard of perfection, why we can't live up to it even if we want to, the need for accountability and judgment, and a gracious way to be saved from our bad works.

Other religious beliefs make the assumption that people are able to perform good works and save themselves. At the same time, they never express a way to accomplish this, and through the long record of history, no one has been able to achieve perfection or anything close to it. I am inclined to think these belief systems are not accurately portraying the human condition. Otherwise someone, somewhere would have stumbled upon the way to do only good works.

Secular belief systems have never been able to create any sort of meaning for mankind. All they produce are parodies of meaning, such as totalitarian states and American consumption culture, that leave people devoid of meaning. We are simply unable to believe the idea that there is no ultimate accountability for life beyond ourselves, and go forward from that belief to create a meaningful world to live in.