Does the "heart" outweigh your actions in order to get into heaven?

Question

so if a person treats a person bad, but in their heart they didn't mean it...will they still go to heaven? I don't get it...people can do whatever they want as long as their heart is right.....???

Answer 1

Knowing that something is wrong and doing it anyway is wrong. Asking for forgiveness with your whole heart and being granted forgiveness is what God is all about. Don;t be sad or angry with that be glad that God loves us so much that he doesn't limit the number of second chances we get!

Answer 2

Heaven is a religious construct. The idea reinforces what early religious leaders consider to be moral behavior.

Have you ever heard of the "carrot and stick" method of controlling behavior? The idea is that to motivate a donkey/horse/mule or other beast of burden, you either hit it with a stick or else you coax it with a carrot dangled in front. You control the behavior either through brute force/punishment or you allow the person/thing to do the work for you by presenting a reward for behaving in the "proper" way.

Well, persecution/prosecution/excommunication is the way people are controlled while still on earth. Heaven is the "carrot" used to motivate people to follow the religious code of behavior.

Follow the Golden Rule and treat everybody as you would wish to be treated. If you fail to do so then your conscience should kick in. The shame and guilt you feel for mistreating someone else should serve to teach you to modify how you act in the future. An apology is always nice too.

Answer 3

Do whatever feels right to you instead of basing it on other people's beliefs. There is no heaven. There is no hell. There is no karma. There is only your own personal well being. If you are not a strong enough person to be yourself then go to a church and find out how to be what someone else wants you to be.

Answer 4

Heaven is a plane of existence (sometimes held to exist in our own universe) in religions and spiritual philosophies, typically described as the holiest possible place, accessible by people according to various standards of divinity (goodness, piety, etc.) Christians generally hold that it is the afterlife destination of those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their saviour. In unusual instances, humans have claimed, according to many testimonies and traditions, personal knowledge of Heaven. They then presume this is for the purpose of teaching the rest of humanity about life, deities and notions of the afterlife.

Answer 5

No. A 'right' heart would not allow one to do as they wish, but (wo)man's heart is deceitful above all things.
The only way to get to heaven is through the Lord, Yashua, Christ Jesus. We don't earn it by having a 'right' heart. we can't earn it by doing good things (works). We don't even deserve it. But we can still go.
How? By faith alone, in Jesus alone

Answer 6

If a person's heart is right with God he would not do anything bad to another person. He will be loving others as God has loved him.

Answer 7

Only if one is saved do they go to heaven. Doing good will not get you there. Once saved does not mean we can do bad. We must always repent and stay in fellowship with God.

Answer 8

We go to heaven only by the mercy and grace of God if we accept Him as our Lord and Savior. : )

Good deeds are required, but we do not get saved by them. With our works we show that we serve God. :)

Answer 9

It's all about intentions. So yeah, if you inadvertently (thru say stupidity) messed up, then a good person will feel GUILT. My ex-sister-in-law committed adultery, and yet she thinks she is a good person worthy of heaven. She pays no attention to the rules of her new Christian religion (if it has rules, I'm not sure) or else doesn't think they apply to her. She has never apologized to my brother, which is what she has to do if she has treated someone badly.
You can be stupid, but it only gets you so far. As soon as you discover your stupidity, you have to apologize and make amends, if possible. People can most certainly NOT do whatever they want if their "heart is right". The only excuse for bad behavior is ignorance, and once you find out the correct thing, there goes your excuse for future bad behavior. Plus, you have to atone for your previous bad behavior.

God isn't giving anyone a free pass based on their "heart" when it comes to their behavior. If they know God, then they know His rules, and so there really aren't many truly ignorant people around.

By the way, the reason you have to live a good life, no matter what the fools around you are doing, is so that you can hang out with God after your death. God doesn't want the querulous types around him. Remember, we were made in God's likeness? That probably extends to our behavior. The people we like to be around are probably the same ones God will want to be around after they die. You know, the ones who live by the Golden Rule, etc. So if stinkers are telling you they "mean well" and yet go ahead and misbehave, they are only fooling themselves. The rules are laid down, anyone dumb enough to misbehave is going to be sorry later.

So don't worry about the mis-speak of people, they have been fooled (by the devil, no doubt) and think they are going to be just fine, when a closer examinatioin of the Bible and their own behavior would have opened their eyes to the danger they are in. But self-delusion is one of the ways to march straight into Hell. I have never read Dante's Inferno, but since this interests you, you might want to read it. I think in his book there are 'circles of Hell' or something, behaviors that merit Hell, with the worst being in the inner circle, something like that. I'm sure self-delusion ranks right in there somewhere.

Remember the old adage, "Hell is paved with good intentions." You meant to do good, you intended to do good, you had a "good heart", but oops, you slipped. (we all do.) But did you repent and try to fix your mistake? If not, you certainly won't march into heaven with that record, you might squeak into purgatory, or not, depending on how dreadful the "oopsies" are. We don't know God and we don't know what he allows. Another thing I think is that we all at the time of our death have had exactly the same opportunities--if you were born beautiful, then you have junk that occurs to you later to humble you, if you were born ugly, your life will go well in other ways. So while different, it all evens out in the end, everyone has miseries and happiness, and makes their choices of how they will act. Otherwise, if the beauty queens also got all this natural patience and kindness, they wouldn't have to struggle like the rest of us and it wouldn't be fair. And God is pure fairness. I think we all get sorrows, just different kinds, and how we act by embracing our "crosses" tells God volumes about whether we are worthy of being with hiim when we die. It does seem to be hard to get to heaven. Read what Jesus had to say about it.

If you want to get into Heaven (I know I am jumping around and being long-winded, it's the way I think, so sorry), copy Jesus' behavior. That is, I think, quite likely the only reason he was born and came to Earth. I don't really grasp the "dying for our sins" theory, but I do think God looked at the people on Earth, got disgusted that they kept forgetting what he told them, and Jesus volunteered to go to Earth and model what God wants in terms of the type of human behavior that will merit you heaven. And since for some reason God wants us all to have our own types of crosses (different from Jesus, but just as painful in their own ways) perhaps to find out who merits Heaven and who doesn't, that meant that Jesus had to have a cross and even die because we all will have crosses and die too. Jesus died with dignity and belief in God and obedience to God, and so that is how we are expected to live and die in order to get into Heaven.

Yeah, there are the jeerers and disbelievers. Think what you want, dudes, but just remember smart Woody Allen and his line about if God exists and then if He doesn't exist, and our different kinds of behavior. You have to be truly stupid to not recognize that there is a sublime and mysterious Creator--our bodies should give us the clue here, folks: their design is too sophisticated to be random--duh!!! And as for Jesus, why wouldn't the Creator look down and see a need for a model, since the 10 Commandments were made of rock and not sufficiently compelling for enough people, apparently.

Now since I know and have figured out all this, if I could just behave better myself!