'Being saved' and 'doing good works' sounds like a low-grade version of the classic Reformation stand-off between Luther and the other reformers on the one hand and the Roman Catholicism of the late mediaeval period on the other -- and, of course, Luther and his followers saw this stand-off as the re-run of the battles Paul had with his opponents, particularly the so-called 'Judaizers' in Galatians

This important set of arguments has become fairly thoroughly confused in the last hundred or two hundred years because it's got muddled up with various others, including (a) the Romantic notion that genuine religion is all about inwardness rather than externals ('How I feel deep down' vs 'What I do outwardly') and (b) the existentialist notion that 'authenticity' consists in being true to what one finds within oneself rather than conforming to outward regulations etc. Unfortunately, these four things (Paul's battles, Luther's battles, Romanticism and existentialism) are simply not the same as one another, though it would take a long article, perhaps a book, to spell all this out (I have tried elsewhere: see e.g. my commentary on Romans in the New Interpreters Bible (Abingdon Press) vol. 10).

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The answer is that it gets murkier and murkier by the day.

Only the diehard commentators are still maintaining that it was absolutely the right thing for us to go in when we did. (Remember the war has now been going on longer than the First World War did.)

I opposed it from the start, to the fury of my right-wing friends, and now I find a lot of them saying 'You told us so'. But granted we have made a huge mess, a quite new argument can be made for saying that we have to stay and see it through.

At this point it becomes a nice political judgment as to whether the region is likely to return to stability with us or without us. On that, granted the continuing horrible chaos, opinions will differ, but it is vital that our leaders get as broad and impartial wisdom as possible in assessing the possibilities.

There are still, alas, those on the one hand who insist that because we westerners know what's what we must of course stay and impose our way of life (dream on!). And there are still, alas, those on the other hand who insist that it's the Iraqis' mess and we have no business there -- though the present mess is at least as much of our making.

For the Christian the main obligation must be to pray; and then, to try to help at whatever point in the forming of that wise public opinion which will inform the decision-makers. And to help that same public opinion to learn from its mistakes.

(a) Heaven is important but it's not the end of the world: in the mainstream Christian tradition until the Platonists corrupted it, the ultimate destination is THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH, which will involve an ultimate resurrection (bodily, of course) for God's people (in some versions, for all people).

The way the phrase 'heaven and hell' are used today implies you go straight to one or the other, ignoring the solid biblical testimony to an ultimate new creation in which heaven and earth are brought together in a great act of renewal (for those who want it, check out Ephesians 1.10, Revelation 21 and 22, Romans 8.18-27 and 1 Corinthians 15.20-28 -- though once you see this theme it's there everywhere). When Paul says 'my desire is to depart and be with Christ which is far better', and when Jesus says 'today you will be with me in Paradise', the wider context of both indicates that this will be a TEMPORARY state prior to the eventual resurrection into the new creation. This means (by the way) that the 'second coming' is NOT Jesus 'coming back to take us home', but Jesus coming -- or 'reappearing', as 1 John 3 and Colossians 3 put it -- to heal, judge and rescue this present creation and us with it.

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