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It's extremely interesting to me how difficult I find it to nail down the disagreement.

If you attend church services and pay a tithe because you feel you will be blessed - you’re buying your way into heaven.

How about when I do the good deeds because I think the deeds, the ability to do them, the understanding to discern that they are good, and the desire to do good are themselves blessings? And I believe further that they will lead to further blessings. I do not barter this step that I may take the next step, do I? Is my lifting today a barter for more strength tomorrow?

Catherine of Siena, arguably the greatest lay Dominican, said something close to:
All the way to heaven is heaven, for Jesus said, I am the way.

That may help present the difficulty I have with the barter idea of virtues and good deeds. For one thing, they are not mine to begin with.

When, forty years ago, I hung with those tending in a "neo-Orthodox" and strict sola gratia view of things, the general opinion was that good works were blessings given rather than tokens of exchange. That way of thinking about it survived my becoming a Catholic.

And I think that approaches an answer to your question. It is hard for someone who's been a convinced Xtian monotheist for a long time to entertain the notion of good works without a good God. The question strikes me ALMOST as if you were asking, "Would you do good works if there were no goodness?" But I'd answer that if justice were the only good I saw or could think of, I would try to do justice.

(In this connection, it's probably good to point out that the Scholastic 'tag' for justice is "to render what is due to him to whom it is due." Therefore worship and those acts connected with it are just, because God is due praise at least as much as the sunset which seems to require of us that we invite others to come outdoors and say, with us, "Isn't it WONDERFUL?" Beauty, Justice, Goodness, when apparent, exact an eagerly paid tribute of praise.)

In any case, to say that

Christianity is a culture based on a single belief that doing good will be rewarded. This is what Jesus taught.

MAY be true of a CULTURE influenced by Xtianity. But to attempt to make that, as expressed, a pillar of Xtiaity is like making the observation, "The sky is blue on fine days," a pillar of meteorology. It's not that it's false; but it seems superficial and it seems to have the whole question upside down and backwards.

To go further into the whole issue of bartering good works for a place at the celestial feast:

There are two aspects that get my attention:(1) the goodness of the works themselves; (2) The place of good works in the "spiritual life."

The first is interesting because different approaches are related to different conceptions of reason. Monotheists who think that reason is essential to the nature of man and that it deal with truths and realities tend to think that God is Goodness itself, and what he commands is good. For support some might point to the existence of "God-fearing" gentiles and converts to Judaism in New Testament times. It is unlikely that they were drawn to Judaism by clothing, dietary laws, and rites of purification so much as by the chastity, justice, and integrity they saw in the Jews.

As for the "spiritual life," Aristotle says that virtue is a "habit." And just as the person who walks every day is healthier than the couch potato, so the person who is merciful, temperate, prudent, and brave every day will be happier and more "whole" than he who doesn't.

Many of us, though, who make even a half-hearted attempt at righteousness are amazed to find out how lousy we are at it! This realization prepares the ground, so to speak, for receiving the concept that good deeds are not things of our own that we can barter for heaven but are rather gifts and foretastes of heaven.

And this is why the notion expressed by Paul:
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
(Eph 2:10)

The deeds of justice are prepared for us, and we enjoy them by doing them. And these "walkings," this 'way' (Hebrew: "halakha") are, so to speak, morsels of the heaven toward which they lead.