Hey Guidobaba, don't be like that, I know you're goodly really or Phat wouldn't be so kind to you. Chiro's just trying to show you that one can basically go about life trying to do what's right - they might even acknowledge their sins. They might be sorry for them. That surely counts. It carries weight with me, if a person is basically a goodie. And I trust that it therefore carries weight with God, no matter what the bible specifics read.
The bible is just a Guido-guide, not Jesus Christ.
Yet it's not clear that an atheist cannot be a sheep. Indeed, to my mind, the allusion is that if you love people, take care of them etc.., then you're a sheep. If you don't believe me, please read about the seperation of the sheep from the goats, and have an open mind.
Either the author believed that it was clear that only a believer could be a sheep, because "only a believer does good"
theology, or the author is infact saying that anyone who does those things is a sheep. Since we don't know, we simply cannot infer that disbelievers in particular, burn forever. I personally think that if Christ was good enough to die on the cross, then he's trustworthy enough to accept atheist sheep. I trust he will do this, personally, if he exists.
I can't believe that people burn forever just for being born and finding themselves in this odd existence and then dealing with it. No way. Sooner or later, you'll see that the Gospels carry the "gist" about Christ, but that there was many Gospels, some accepted, some unnaceptable. All that matters is that the four give us a guido-guide. They are not super-duper accurate facts, but just accounts by witnesses.
Since God gave atheists minds capable of reason, then it's logical to assume that those atheists who study the bible as something literally true, will find many contradictions and atrocities unworthy of the real creator. Therefore I think it's best for a believer to put their full trust in Christ rather than the bible.
This doesn't have to be a wishy washy faith - but infact, a clever one, and an honest one. That's all. It doesn't matter what people say about that, or if they label as liberal. They can label me as anything, I still know that I have this theology because of the cleverness of my own intellectual musings.