saved?

i'm still trying this whole church-thing out.
it's been a few years since the
bad things happened,
and it's been restorative in some ways
to try and go back.

in light of everything, i find myself to be
a bit more critical, perhaps, of
the information being fed to me,
and am feeling a certain freedom to
challenge the words that are 
fleeting from behind the pulpit.
this week, a speaker challenged everyone
in the room to specifically ask someone-
a peer, a coworker, a friend, a family member-
if they had a personal relationship with
jesus christ- and to use that question as a
springboard into further discussion.

he went on to use an analogy that
ultimately depicted a man
trying to save a neighbor from a burning building,
which, i assume, would allude to christians
attempting to save non-christians
from hellfire and the like.

i've heard it tossed out so casually
and frequently over the years:
are you saved?
and it seems to be the grand ethos
of the christian faith:
to get everyone saved.

my question is:
what exactly are we trying to save everyone from?
hell/ damnation/ satan/ etc?

is that really what this life is all about?-
to serve as a primer for the next?
am i living every day to simply prep
for the rest of eternity?
sounds mundane- and like a waste of a life.

am i really attempting to live, the best possible
version of this life i can, to assure that the life i live
in the next will be the optimum choice?
kind of sounds like a watered down version
of reincarnation, doesn't it?

and once you're "saved", are you saved forever?
can it really boil down to you being
either "in" or "out"?
i refuse to think of myself as being saved.
rather, i hope that today, and everyday,
that my salvation will be a work in progress,
as, lord knows, i certainly need it.
may he always in the practice of saving me.

the way i see it is, that we only need to be "saved" from
two things:
ourselves, and
from living a lifeless life.