Good People Go To Heaven

Do good people go to heaven? This is likely the very most popular view of all religions. Good people go to heaven; bad people go to ... well, not heaven. Various religions differ about what "heaven" might be. Various groups differ about what "not heaven" might be. But essentially the most popular perspective, be it Jewish or Hindu or Buddhist or Islamic or even Catholic, is that good people go to heaven. Pope John Paul II said that good people will be saved. The measure of salvation, in most people's perspective, is sincerity.

The devout, non-Catholic Christian would raise a hand in dispute. "No, no, only Christians go to heaven." I suspect that this is because devout, non-Catholic Christians aren't paying attention or thinking or something. Maybe they're responding to a different question. I say this because it is absolutely true that good people go to heaven. "Wait," you protest, "'No man comes to the Father but by Me,' Jesus said!" Yes, absolutely. So what am I suggesting?

We've all heard the classic dilemma, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" The answer is really quite simple: They don't. Oh, unpleasant things happen all the time, and to people that we admire and respect, but there is a problem here. Our definition of "good" is skewed. So Paul, quoting the Psalmist, writes, "There is none who does good, no not one" (Rom. 3:12).

You see, the Pope, as much as we might respect him, was not quite right when he said that good people will be saved. The truth is that good people have no need of salvation. Good people go to heaven because they deserve to go to heaven. The biblical standard of "good" is "perfect as your Father in heaven" (Matt. 5:48). Those people who succeed at being good, at meeting the standard, go to heaven when they die. Of that there is no doubt. And, that no one meets that standard there is no doubt as well.

We've substituted a poor standard for "good". We've substituted a relative standard. "Good" to us is "better than bad". It is "not as bad as other people" perhaps, or "not totally evil." And, to be fair, it's because "good" is a relative term. A "good" dog and a "good" man do not have the same requirements. If a man merely did what a good dog did, most of us would not classify him as "good". It's relative. That's why God had to specify what He meant by "good". Sure, you may be better than others. You may not be as bad as a murderer or child molester or some such. But "better than a child molester" falls far, far short of God's standard of perfect.

The world's religions try to offer us hope by telling us that good people go to heaven. It's a nice idea as long as you keep the standard low enough. If you use God's standard, well, we're in trouble. Perfection is lost after one, single error, and I think we're all pretty far from "one single error." So the world's religions and the popular perspective is nice as long as you have no standard. When you do, there's trouble for everyone. It is this trouble that makes Christianity stand out from the crowd and the answer to this trouble that is at the heart of the Christian "Gospel" -- the Good News. Ignoring the problem won't make it go away, but the Good News sure is good when we begin to acknowledge the magnitude of the problem.