[Griff]

You are going to get a lot of variation across Christian sects so any one answer won't hold. Lots of Christians believe I'm going to hell because I'm a Catholic. The Catholic Church has always tap danced around the issue of "righteous heathens" being saved. Room was made for it in Catholic teaching because nobody wanted Aristotle to fry.

To the question of conversions: You have to remember that you come from an exclusive tradition, while a major part of Christian teaching is that God's love isn't exclusive. So while you view Christianity as a black hole sucking everything in they see it as a supernova freeing the "truth" from being the exclusive property of a chosen people.There is a very good chapter on prosteletyzing in The Gods Drink Whiskeycalled My God can Beat Up Your God. The philosophy prof that wrote the thing does a good job of explaining why folks who think they're saved and that salvation is exclusive really do think they're in the right when they treat other religious traditions with such contempt. He actually makes their view understandable even though he (and I) hold it in contempt. It is like anything else that people come to believe in democracy, communism, fascism, socialism, libertarianism, they really think they have all the answers even though you can drive a bus undetected through their blind spot.


edit: I also forgot to mention that there is variation on the amount of weight given to the Old Testament. Catholics hold that the new covenant supercedes much of the earlier stuff but wisdom can be found found there. Some other sects read the bible literally and get themselves in deep do do. YMMV especially in religion.