You may have thought that I was speaking entirely about Christians. No, I agree that all Christians are saved by the grace of God through the sacrifice of Jesus and the access of the Holy Spirit.

But there are non-Christians as well. And the source of my "blasphemy" about them is St. Paul:

12 For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law; 13 for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified. 14 For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, 15 in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, 16 on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.

If you don't take this bit of scripture seriously, you have to become one of the people who believes that even the people who never in their lives heard of Jesus would be condemned to hell just for not being properly saved.

No, I take it you and I will be sharing heaven with some Sikhs and Jews and Parsis, and if that's blasphemy, wash Paul's mouth out with soap.

Also, though, you mustn't forget the whole "faith without works is dead" conundrum posed by James. There is the worst-case scenario that you could accept Jesus, and then just sit back doing nothing, or even going off on binges of sin, and still expect to attain the same end as the diligent and conscientious Christians.

If you don't believe in a credit system at all, then, what is treasure-like about those treasures in heaven we are supposed to lay up for ourselves? Or to switch parables, why not just bury our coin? What about the most profound (and easily misunderstood) thing Jesus ever said: "to him who has shall be given more in abundance, but from him who has not shall be taken away even the little that he has." If everything can be taken away because you did nothing with your treasure, and yet you're still living on eternal easy street, what have you lost? Isn't the saying utterly pointless then?

I think what I have been saying is not blasphemy at all, it's orthodoxy. It's not orthodoxy in every Christian denomination but there is a very large end of the spectrum that believes that living your life in faithful accomplishment rather than idle or counterproductive futility is a value for the Christian.

The things you attribute to heaven and hell are mostly somewhere in scripture, but they are mostly not attributed to a concept of heaven or hell. And the fiery hell concept is mainly from Revelations, which many theologians are dubious about, and which is not recognized as part of the bible by a large number of eastern churches.

And curiously, if you read Revelations 20, you will find that hell is thrown INTO the Lake of Fire. I've never seen that scene in a painting, but it's in the bible - twice.

Sorry, i have been rushing and i could probably have done a better job sealing up my arguments.