“ ‘Salvation’ is not just a matter of avoiding hell and somehow getting into heaven. It is, as its etymology indicates, the wholeness of good health. Present-day Italian still says la salute, with the two meanings of health and salvation. No-one is healthy who has any sort of infirmity. Every fault, even the smallest and least noticeable, means the contamination of a little health, a little ‘salvation’.”
—Irenee Hausherr, SJ, Penthos: The Doctrine of Compunction in the Christian East, p. 23
As long as heaven and hell are seen only as ‘afterlife’ choices, we will be inclined to a view of morality that is a kind of jumping through hoops or scorekeeping. Atheists who reject this view have reason to do so, I think. However, it is not at all representative of the great tradition of Christian moral reflection, which sees ‘salvation’ in the terms that Hausherr presents it in the quote: health, fullness of life, joy, contentment. All our choices lead either toward such flourishing or away from it.
Over the course of our lives, we will have tended either toward ‘salvation’ or away from it. And the realities of heaven and hell correspond to these patterns of choices.