When you think of the word "works" in a Christian context...

...what are you thinking about? ?

"Works" is the watershed, between two facets of our relationship with God ...

Call it them the "responsive" and "receptive" components of relationship. Human relationships have these two facets, too. We "love" our children when we put food on their table, provide their clothes, tend their wounds, nurture their spirits. But our love is complete when we also receive their gifts, hear their encouragement, and enjoy their compassion.

Or, call them the "internal" and "external" components of relationship: accepting, hearing and enjoying are entirely subjective actions that only the actor experiences. They are pleasant experiences, even transcendent. But they are only half of a relationship that becomes complete when the actor responds. Giving, speaking and caring are objective actions; fulfilling the actor's basic need to communicate, to reach out and affect the Other to whom he relates.

God's Chosen People are given a list of active behaviours -- the Torah. By fulfilling all the requirements of the Law, one reaches out to God in communication, in an effort to please and affect God. But that is not sufficient (and I am not bashing Judaism here, either; spiritual Jews will say something similar). The relationship with God becomes complete when one also receives, accepts, hears, and enjoys God subjectively.

Those who are born again in Christ have experienced internally God's love and gift of salvation, and hear his voice speaking in their hearts. But that is not sufficient, either. Until we respond by reaching out to God objectively, as God's hands and feet in the world and in the service of our fellow men, our relationship with God is only half-consummated.

Confession and head-covering seem like pretty wimpy responses to Transcendent Love. But, if it is a response that flows from the heart, it's valid. Starting a prison ministry is good, but if it doesn't spring from (or result in) subjective experience of God, it is hollow.

Salvation is salvation. Works have nothing to do with salvation, for truly "We are not saved by works but by faith." But whatever happens to us after death, salvation in this life is lived the context of a relationship with God. A relationship requires action. "Faith without works is dead".