The Silliest Question Christians Can Ask

My mother once related having breakfast with my grandparents, when my grandfather asked her, once again, to come to church with them. She said that she was busy, to spare his feelings, though really she does not care for their church.
It was before breakfast, and rather late in the morning, so my grandfather was apparently feeling crabby. "What are you going to say to your Maker on Judgment Day?" he asked.
"The bible doesn't say that Christians have to go to church for salvation," she said. She was probably nicer than I would have been, though I love my grandparents as much as I love my animals, and that's saying something.

But then I wondered, what does one say to an omniscient god? Wouldn't literally anything one could say be redundant?
"Well, God, I was a Christian for a long time..." I would begin.
"Yes, I know." 
"And I tried really hard to get close to you and to please you..."
"I know." 
"...but it just seemed like nothing ever worked..."
"I'm aware of that. I was there and I read your mind."
"So I finally started thinking that maybe the reason I couldn't get close to you, wasn't that I couldn't figure out what my sin was, and it wasn't that I wasn't spending enough time in prayer and bible study, and wasn't that my childhood toys were an idol, but was that you weren't there at all."
"But I was there." 
"Then why didn't you say anything?!"

When theists, usually Christians (in my experience), ask what nonbelievers will say on judgement day, they don't really expect an answer. And if God really is all-knowing, any answer I can give would just be repeating something that God already knows I will say.
When theists ask this question, what they are really doing is clearly issuing a threat. What they are really saying is, "God's going to get you!" And they wouldn't be arrogant enough to issue this threat if they actually had any "fear of God," and understood that they didn't have the authority to say or predict who would go to heaven, and who would go to hell. (My standard reply when someone tries to threaten people with hell is, "God? Is that you? No one else has the authority to say that, so maybe you DO exist!" I especially get upvoted when I post it as "Atheist Journeys.")
But if they can be so assured of their own salvation, then I can be assured of mine (if there is anything to actually be saved from, that is). I see many atheists defeat the Pascal's Wager argument with simple logic ("What if another god is real, instead of the Christian god?"), but the main reason I don't go for the Wager is simpler than that: I already have been a sincere, devout Christian.
Most modern evangelical Christians would subscribe to the "once saved, always saved" doctrine, though interestingly enough, it seems to be a relatively recent fad in church history--in the 1678 Christian morality play, Pilgrim's Progress, the protagonist actually loses his salvation (symbolized by a scroll, to be presented at heaven's gates after crossing the River of Death) at one point, and has to retrace part of his faith-journey. There is also plenty of evidence from both the Old and New Testaments of the bible that Christians can lose their salvation, and it is not entirely clear on when names are written in the Book of Life found in Revelation (whether when one "gets saved," or when one dies as a Christian, or before one is born, or some other time). I'm not sure what that means for my own potential salvation, but I also don't believe that there's anything to be saved from.
I believe that most Christians subscribe to the "once saved, always saved" doctrine in order to make themselves feel better, when they hear about atheists being former Christians. They can't lose their faith and therefore their salvation, because they're true Christians, while the atheists never were true Christians, never were sincere.
Except that I know I was sincere. Many of us know that we were sincere.
When I related a short version of my story recently, to someone that I was debating online, he asked me if I was a Catholic. That's Protestant-speak for, "Did you try to earn your way to heaven with works?" (or possibly "Did you commit idolatry by praying to Mary or other saints?"). I answered that no, I had not tried to earn my way to heaven with works. (It amazes me that so many Christians I have encountered seem to think that atheists simply forgot to recite a form of the Sinner's Prayer and mean it.)

I am glad that I did not go with my mom that day, because I probably would have been somewhat crabby before breakfast too. "I'll say, 'Thank you very much,' because He will have said, 'Well done!'" I would have been tempted to say, though that might have been a little arrogant, and unintentionally deceitful, since it makes it sound as if I'm a Christian too.
If I was pressed, though, for a nicer, "real" answer, I would say that at least I know that I sought the truth, whatever it was, and (especially when it came to LGBTQ issues, which is how this silly question often comes up for me), at least I know that I loved, and that I tried to make things better for people in the one life that I knew we did have.
But then, my Maker would have already known that--and would know that now.

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