Thanks for sharing your post. I agree with you that the belief that people are saved by their good works is pervasive among unbelievers. And I think this is to be expected. Besides Christianity, other world religions teach that people become saved by doing good works. When we are raised as children, it is communicated to us both directly and indirectly that good things happen to those who do good and bad things happen to those who do bad. In that kind of worldview, if one should go to heaven, it would be because of their having been a good person to deserve or somehow earn the good fortune of going to heaven.
But we couldn’t be more wrong. As we know, the Bible says, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” Jeremiah 17:9 NLT
In another place, it says, “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Genesis 6:5 ESV
Somewhere else, it says, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” Isaiah 64:6 NIV
Looking at the aforementioned scriptures, which are only a small sampling of such words in the Bible, we clearly see that we are not capable of good works that mean much without the help of God which is accorded to us through Christ Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit in us.