If Jesus Should Ask -

It’s amazing how people flippantly and casually express the idea that they are good people, and therefore they fully expect to go to heaven when they die. If Jesus should ask any one of these people, “Why should I let you into heaven?” they would reply, “I’ve been a good person all my life - or at least I sure wasn’t as bad as some people.”

True enough, you probably could have been worse - maybe a lot worse. Even though you didn’t live up to your own code of ethics, at least you weren’t a Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot. Of course there is a long, long way from a being a mass murderer to someone who is technically good. For example, consider this:

The average person experiences about 10,000 thoughts per day. If you’re an especially good person only about 1% of those will be angry, or lustful or contemptuous or covetous or bigoted or hypocritical thoughts. That’s about 100 sins in a day and you haven’t even opened your mouth.

Depending on the study, estimates of how often the average person lies is from three lies for every ten minutes of conversation to eight lies per day. Over an average lifespan that's about 128,000 lies - That's the average pretty good person when you do open your mouth.

Or let’s talk about wrong behaviours. Again, you’re a pretty good person so you only commit three sins of omission or commission in a single day. You don’t return the extra dollar in change that the clerk mistakenly gave you. You look at porn when your spouse is out at a meeting and you ignore the guy whose grocery bag broke, even though you easily had enough time to help. It’s only three sins which makes you one of the better people on earth. Only three sins a day makes 7,000 sins a year and you live 70 years.

One day you die in a car accident and Jesus says, “Why should I let you into heaven?” and you say, “Because I’ve been a good person all my life - or at least I sure wasn’t as bad as some people.” So Jesus opens his books and sure enough, you weren’t as bad as some people, only 70,000 active sins, 128,000 lies and 2,555,000 sinful thoughts.

Good luck with that.