Salvation by faith and works : intellectually ridiculous?

Brian writes:Jesus suffered for a paltry 3 hours on a cross, it is hardly inspiring.

Brian writes:God was certainly feeling very guitly about something, why else would He try to make up for all the evil deeds He has done?

Brian writes:If there was some sort of celestial social work department, Yahweh would be put in jail long ago and all of His children taken into care.

Ringo writes:Remember the parable of the prodigal son (which I tried without much success to explain to iano)? The son turned his back on the father. The father never turned his back on the son.
When the son returned to his father, he was effectively "born again" - i.e. his life with his father began again, from scratch.
But in the father's eyes, his son was always his son.
Similarly, We are born the children of God. We are always His children, even if we turn our backs on Him. If we turn toward Him again, we are "born again" - our lives with Him begin again, as if we had never done wrong.

Iano, in OP writes:My time here has exposed me to people who hold the view that salvation is achieved by something other than just faith in the finished redemptive work of Jesus Christ (salvation by faith alone). These views, although they vary alot all seem to put salvation in our hands to a greater or lesser extent. In essence, our choices determine our destination. Example 1
One may be judged simply on our performance in relation to two golden rules given by Jesus: love God, love neighbour as self - irrespective of what we have believed about God or Jesus or anything else in the Bible.Example 2
Salvation may consist of a more complex route: when a person believes, they receive the Holy Spirit as a guide/assisting power as to how a person should obey Gods laws fully. Whilst the person receives guidance/power, they may chose to disobey and the extent of the disobedience/adherance determines their eternal destination.Logical conclusion from self-influenced salvation
Irrespective of the nature of self-influenced salvation the following seems inescapable. In the end, God will have to draw a line between who has conformed/obeyed/loved him and others or at least tried to, sufficient to enter heaven - and who hasn't. No one would I hope, say that they obey all Gods laws at all times. One may say one tries to do so to the best of their ability but that appears to be leave open the possibility for any level of trying - surely if one fails then one has, per definition, tried as hard as one can at that moment yet failed.
God is in a position to measure everything up and to draw such a line. This raises the spectre of the person who just scrapes into heaven and the person who misses it by a gnats whisker obtaining those positions even though on Gods paper they are nigh on neck in neck.Intellectually ridiculous?
Given that say: 60 billion people have lived and died thus far, we might suppose that the very last occupant to earn Hell may have looked at a woman with lust in his heart for a total of only 0.1 second more than the person who just scrapes into Heaven - other sin/not obeying/not loving God and neighbour being equal.Is this not lunacy?If not, can anyone explain the mechanisms of (partially) self-dependant salvation which excludes this intellectual insult. Assertion is okay so long as it contributes to completing the mechanism.

Jar writes:I believe that salvation has been given to all, everyone, believers and non-believers, Satanist and Muslim, Atheist and Agnostic, Buddhist and Taoist. GOD will judge each individual on how they behaved while alive. And GOD will make some judgement.But the criteria will be on what someone actually does, or even more importantly, what someone does not do. Loving GOD is not a matter of what you believe, it's what you do. This is the message found throughout the Bible, and has been shown here at EvC consistently when those who try to build the case for Faith only by quotemining and others bring in the rest of the material found adjacent to the quotemined section.