Good people go to heaven, and bad people go to hell. That’s a fundamental teaching of the Bible, one that we can count on, right? But who’s to say who is good and who is evil? We may think we can tell what people are like, but how much can we trust our impressions? We can see the way people act and make judgments about those actions, but it’s what is inside that counts.
God’s definition of a good person and our definition may be two different things. He looks at the whole of a person’s life, the highs and the lows, mistakes made, and genuinely good things done. If there’s any possible way He can lead a person to heaven, He will.
In fact, the decision of whether we end up in heaven or hell is ours. The Lord works to lead us to a good life, but we are free to live as we choose. Sometimes our choices are terrible, but we always have the opportunity to return to Him and allow Him to lead us in wiser directions. So maybe we will end up in heaven with some interesting characters, but we’ll get there only if we try as hard as they do to straighten out our lives and live as the Lord our God has asked.