CommonChristianity: Ephesians 2:8-9

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Friends: You can’t get to heaven with good deeds, but they sure make the trip more enjoyable. See the column below. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1031

August 18, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Car Keys and Life Keys

By Bob Walters

“I’ve learned that doing good and good deeds are not the key to going to heaven.” – Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the “Bless Your ’Hardt” video podcast last week with wife Amy.

“For by grace you are saved through faith … not by works.” – Ephesians 2:8-9

This column is going to be a bit of a mash-up of thoughts from my earlier life and my current life, but generally this is about “doing good,” why we do good things, and who benefits from the good deeds when a Christian believes in and obeys God.

First … my former life. It’s hard to believe it has been 30-plus years ago, but my working career from 1985 well into 2001 focused almost entirely on auto racing. I worked first as a sportswriter and then in media relations in the top echelons of motorsport: the Indianapolis 500, CART Indy Car, NASCAR, and NHRA Drag Racing.

These were fun jobs at the pinnacle of a highly visible, boutique, and closely knit industry. Let’s spare you the details of my resume, but in the 1980s and 1990s I either knew, worked with, or was loosely acquainted with most of the drivers, sponsors, events, sanctioning bodies, and especially the media involved in elite auto racing.

I don’t follow it much anymore as I got away from it, grew past it, and the players changed and charged into a new generation. I pestered Bernie Ecclestone relentlessly from the late 1990s into the early 2000s to establish a Formula I public relations office in North America and hire me to run it; he did neither. That was my last gasp in the trade.

My racing years were years far from Christ. But I was always taken by the large turnout on NASCAR race mornings for the drivers’ and families’ chapel services in the garage area, which I never attended but were open to anyone with a garage pass.

I still see lots of motorsports content on Facebook, and Dale Jr’s quote about good deeds and heaven (FB Link, 1:01, Dale and Amy – language warning) are, as they say in racing, “spot on.” He was voted NASCAR’s most popular driver 15 times and is worth a reputed $300 million. He’s done well, though his witness would be strengthened without the cuss words. He’s obviously “getting it” that faith in Christ begets the deeds that matter.

And good deeds matter because they improve our lives and the lives of those around us. We don’t do good deeds “to get into heaven;” we do them because living in faith with the Spirit improves the lives we lead now. Our good deeds today reveal the heavenly realms of a life being lived for Christ and with love for others. That’s a reward in this life.

I don’t think I ever met Dale Jr. He was shifting into the top realms of racing as I was heading out to pasture. But I knew his dad, Dale Earnhardt Sr., “The Intimidator,” who was as rough-and-tumble as his moniker suggested. I didn’t know Dale Sr. well, but I knew him well enough to like him and was devastated when he died in a crash at Daytona in 2001.

Now here we are 25 years later. Something else happened in 2001 that changed my life and how I looked at everything in it. Sitting in church that Labor Day weekend 2001 – my first Sunday church visit in 30 years – I teared up and realized this Jesus thing was no joke. The Holy Spirit has had me ever since; I was baptized weeks later on November 18.

Today I’m teaching high school history and civics at Mission Christian Academy in Fishers, Indiana, and married to Pam, who is MCA’s junior-senior English teacher. Together we marvel at God’s gift of putting us in this spot at this advanced time in our lives where we can share both our knowledge and our faith with teenagers thirsty to live by the Spirit in an ever more challenging world. It unlocks God’s love and truth, and gladdens our hearts.

As our MCA school year began last week, it was a joy to return to an environment where faith in Christ and the positive impact it has on our own lives and the lives of those around us – especially teenagers – are celebrated and cherished. More on that next week.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) prays for Dale Jr.’s continued growth in Christ.

623 - 'O' is (not) for 'You OWE Me'

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Spirituality Column #623

October 23, 2018

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

‘O’ is (not) for ‘You OWE Me’

By Bob Walters

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9

I heard a great line on Moody Radio last week that fueled several thoughts.

Moody Church Pastor Emeritus Erwin Lutzer was preaching on Jesus’s familiar Parable of the Prodigal/Lost Son (Luke 15). Of the story’s “older” son – the one who complained that he was more deserving and berated his father’s loving, lavish reception celebrating the return of the wandering, “prodigal” younger son – Lutzer noted: “It is possible to be busy in the Father’s work and still not share the Father’s heart.”

All I could think was, “Bing-O!” The older son was spitefully and self-centeredly insisting that his own non-rebelliousness deserved to be celebrated far more than the return of his sin-laden brother; that his father “owed” him that. But the older brother’s error here – the “O” in Bing-O, if you will, isn’t so much in what the son felt he was owed; it was the unloving nature of his obedience. God is gracious, yet we keep score.

A couple years ago in the casual spirit of post-church, on-the-way-to-Sunday-lunch chatter among Christian friends with my wife Pam and another, younger couple in the car, the other wife floated the following question as an innocuous conversation starter: “When would you say was the last time you were obedient to God?”

I – I … stammered. I couldn’t answer, not really. My wife couldn’t answer, not really. We stammered some more, looked at each other, and never did come up with anything that we thought was a satisfactory example. The question wasn’t meant as a legalistic throw-down, one-upmanship, or to hurt anybody’s feelings, but we had nothing approaching a solid answer.

Later, on our own, my wife and I re-visited the question and came to the eye-opening and faith-affirming realization that we never think about “being obedient” in a way that keeps score, makes a list, or, as in the case of the prodigal son’s older brother, builds an account to recite. We don’t do it with each other, and certainly not with Jesus.

The peril of closely monitored Christian “obedience” is of closely calibrated boasting about it. Paul says clearly in 1 Corinthians 13 that love doesn’t boast, and it clearly ruins the divine “obedience” mojo if obedience is ever a list instead of love.

Chesterton notes that the hardest thing to explain is something that you believe thoroughly, so I can’t explain obedience. Lutzer noted in his sermon that our own merit adds nothing to God’s grace, so merit is meaningless. Paul, in the verse above, covers grace, faith, works, and boasting, so we must never be envious of the Father’s love for our brothers and sisters. God loves us all, deals in grace, and owes no one.

“Prodigal,” interestingly enough, means both “wasteful” and “lavish.” So despite my sins that waste parts of my life, I also know I have a lavish and “prodigal” Father who doesn’t think I owe Him anything; He is simply yearning to share His infinite love. So…

Let’s treasure God’s grace as the unfathomable gift it is, share His loving heart, trust the truth of Jesus, rejoice instead of boast, and let “O” be for “O, how wonderful!”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) offers these audio links to Lutzer’s Moody Radio broadcasts of Oct. 18-19, 2018 - Lutzer Prodigal 1, Lutzer Prodigal 2. Good stuff.

1031 - Car Keys and Life Keys

623 - 'O' is (not) for 'You OWE Me'

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