It's Not What We Get; It's Who We Become.

In the debate about the place of (verbally expressed) faith vs. works, I prefer to try to simplify.

There are two options:

1) What I do is important and has an impact on my life and my future, and I have some degree of choice in deciding what I do.

2) What I do really isn't important and has no impact on my life and my future, since I really don't have much choice in deciding what I do.

I accept the first option, and I really don't care all that much about exactly how different people make sense out of it - how they choose to explain it in a way that makes sense to them. I try not to get caught in semantic arguments about the "best" or "correct" way to frame the discussion.  Instead I try to stay focused on what I perceive to be the central issue. 

As an extension of that conclusion, there are two options:

If what I do is important, I can focus my "doing" on:

1) "becoming" or

2) "getting" ("earning")

The Mormon approach is to focus on "becoming". I like that MUCH more than focusing on "getting". Sure, it can be a fine line, since receiving eternal life can be worded as a "reward" we "get" - but if eternal life is defined as a "condition" (a state of being we reach), then it really isn't something we "get" or "earn". Instead, it really is something we "become".

That is perhaps the central theme of the entire Bible, but it gets lost in the endless debate over confessing or working. I see that whole debate as a bit of a smokescreen - obscuring the "true" objective laid out in the Bible itself.