The Narrow Road

“Enter through the narrow gate”, Jesus said, “for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road the leads to life, and only a few find it.”

In my Evangelical days, this verse had one meaning and one meaning only:

Only a handful of people are going to believe the right things about Jesus, swallow his hard message of rejecting the world, and make it to heaven; the majority of the world is headed to hell.

I guess that’s one way to look at it, but given the context of Jesus’ life and the things he did, the things he taught, the ways in which he lived his day to day life … I think that’s a pretty bad application of those words.

Right?

Because, really, Jesus didn’t talk all that much about “heaven” and “hell” and who goes where when they die. Yeah, he talked about fires and destruction and things like that … but the Greek words we’ve translated into “hell” don’t really mean eternal torture like in Dante’s Inferno, but carry connotations of fires that will purify and clean and make whole, almost like the fires that are used to remove impurities from precious metals.

And so if there is a hell, then for Jesus and the early church it wasn’t so much about eternal punishment or torture, but about purification and preparedness for eternity in God’s Kingdom.

In other words, Jesus didn’t talk (at all) about eternal separation from God. Simply put, he didn’t talk about a wide road of destruction that would pave the way to hell for people who believed the wrong things about him.

In fact, he didn’t talk very much about beliefs at all … but talked much more about the way in which we live our everyday lives.

Love.

Grace.

Mercy.

Forgiveness.

Peace.

… These were the principles upon which Jesus built his life, these are the principles upon which he calls his followers to live their lives … and so perhaps these are the stones which pave the narrow road to life.

Maybe the WIDE road is paved with the stones of HATE, BITTERNESS, UNFORGIVENESS, and WAR, and maybe the NARROW road is paved with the stones of LOVE, GRACE, MERCY, FORGIVENESS, and PEACE.

And maybe a lot of people are on on the WIDE road destroying the world in which we live because it’s much easier to hate than it is to forgive and it’s much easier to hold a grudge than it is to pray for your enemy.

And maybe not so many people are on the NARROW road that is creating a life-giving world because it’s a whole lot harder to say “I forgive you” than it is to cut someone out of your life and it’s a whole lot more difficult to create peace with your enemy than it is to drop a bomb on them and declare war.

Yeah.

Maybe the narrow road is narrow not because only a few people are going to believe the right things and get to heaven when they die, but because only a few people are going to be willing to put into practice the life-giving ways of Christ that can and will change the world and transform it into a place that more clearly reflects the Kingdom of God.

What you believe isn’t nearly as important as how you live; and how you live and how you treat people is a very clear indication of what you believe.

Something to chew on.

Much love,