Let’s read Matthew 7:13-14 – “Enter through the narrow gate. 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 that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
In these verses Jesus continued his teaching of principles for everyday living as a Christian, and this time he directly linked your attitude towards daily life now with your eventual fate in eternity.
He presents your life as if it ultimately boils down to a binary choice. Will you take the easier, more popular route through life and end up taking the destruction gate? Or will you take the harder, less popular route and end up taking the life gate?
If you’re a Christian then presumably your answer is “I want to take the narrow gate”. But how do we do that? And how do you identify towards which gate you’re heading?
Sleepwalking is bad
One thing I can state with confidence: you will never go through that narrow life gate unless you make a continual conscious effort to do so.
The reason why the vast majority of people end up going through the destruction gate is not because they consciously choose to. It’s because they live life on autopilot, following whatever the surrounding culture says and does, taking what seems like the default option that will make life easier.
Most people who take the destruction gate won’t be moral monsters like Hitler or Stalin; they’ll just be ordinary people who never tried or even wanted to be anything more than a part of the society they grew up in. People who never saw a reason to do anything other than that, who never believed there was a life beyond this one – or if they did, weren’t prepared to shift their priorities from this life to that one.
That probably describes the vast majority of people you meet on a daily basis. As much as we might wish otherwise, there’s nothing we can do to change what Jesus predicted: the vast majority of people either won’t want to know or won’t be willing to commit to changing their lives.
That’s not to stay we should give up on preaching the gospel or assume that it would be a waste of time to share it with certain people. Quite the opposite. We have no way of knowing who will or won’t be receptive to God’s message, and there have been times in history when large numbers of people did want to listen. We can always hope for it and try to do our part to make it happen, but we should never expect it.
Factory default
In the UK it’s no coincidence that when Christianity ceased to be the ‘default’ socio-religious position for people to hold, the number of people identifying as Christians declined rapidly.
This wasn’t because large numbers of people suddenly stopped believing in God – it was because they simply switched their allegiance to the new default position of secular humanism. Their faith had only ever been a nominal one, a label they attached to themselves because everybody else was doing the same thing. They’d never made any real commitment to God or given their lives to Jesus.
If you’re living in this post-Christian, post-modern age and still identifying yourself with Jesus, that’s a good sign your faith is more than just a nominal one. Still, it doesn’t mean you can just relax and assume you’re going to stay safely on the right path no matter what.
It’s not enough just to be a nominal Christian who attends church occasionally, or even regularly, but only goes through the motions of worship and service to God.
I’m sure you are perfectly aware of that, but that’s what all of us will slip into if we simply go on autopilot and let the surrounding culture be our guide.
So what does it mean to make an effort to take the path towards the narrow gate? What do you need to do? And how do you know if you’re doing it right?
Wisdom in odd places
Let me take some words of wisdom from what may seem a very unusual source! In the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Albus Dumbledore warns his students that they are going to have to choose “between what is right and what is easy“.
I don’t know if JK Rowling is a Christian (or if she even came up with that line – I’m not sure if it appears in the original book!) but it’s a really interesting way of considering the choices we as Christians need to make in the real world.
We might intuitively think that the choice is between what is good and what is evil. However there are so many situations in life when the choices in front of us can’t be so easily divided into those two categories.
There are many things you can choose to do which, while not evil in their own right, are still a step down the path towards the destruction gate.
For example, going to a football match on Sunday might not be evil in itself, but if it caused you to miss church, it’d probably be a step in the wrong direction.
Likewise spending £250 on a meal in a restaurant wouldn’t be evil in itself, but if that money could instead have been given to a homeless charity or to a friend who is struggling financially, it’d again be probably a step in the wrong direction.
Or if you were sitting in the cafeteria at work and the subject of God were to come up, would you tell people about your faith? Or would you keep your mouth shut because you didn’t want to be laughed at or challenged with difficult questions? Keeping your mouth shut in that scenario wouldn’t necessarily be evil, but it’d certainly be a missed opportunity to teach people about God.
With examples like these in mind, when you’re considering your choices at any given time, perhaps it’d be more helpful not to ask “Would this be evil?” but rather “Would this be easier?” or “Would this make me more popular?” or “Would this be a missed opportunity to serve God?”
As always, avoid the extremes
That’s not to say you should always do whatever is hardest or whatever will cause people to hate you the most. Some Christians unfortunately seem to take the latter approach, behaving in a way that seems intentionally designed to make their professions of faith offend other people as much as possible, or to develop a siege mentality in which everyone outside of their church is an implacable enemy to be opposed, not a potential Christian to be welcomed.
As always, of course, we don’t want to go to the other extreme – that of choosing whatever will make us most popular or will make life easiest to navigate in a secular society.
It’s human nature to choose what’s easy and comfortable, and many Christians do it. Some churches even adopt secular values over Biblical ones in an effort to appear more welcoming or relevant. This too is to be avoided.
As a Christian you cannot have a foot in both camps – one in the church and one in the secular world – just as you cannot walk through both the life gate and the destruction gate.
Notice I am not saying that you may not, as in “you’re not allowed to”. I am saying you can not, as in “it’s not possible to do both”. You must choose one or the other.
How does God look through the medium of you?
It’s essential for us as Christians to demonstrate all sides of God’s character both in our preaching and in the way we live before others.
Christians who tend towards the “siege mentality” view of humanity tend to over-emphasise the wrath and judgement of God, and sometimes even seem to relish the thought of those being unleashed on the world around them.
On the other hand, Christians who tend towards embracing secular values tend to over-emphasise the mercy and inclusiveness of God, neglecting to teach people about the problem of sin and the need for repentance in order to be truly be part of God’s family.
Choices, choices
So when you’re faced with choices in a given situation, ask yourself what each choice might make other people think about the God you serve.
Would it make them think God is unimportant, because you’re choosing to do things for yourself instead of serving him?
Might they think God is an angry and spiteful tyrant, because your choices fail to show the merciful side of his character?
Or might they think God doesn’t care about how you live your life as long as you’re vaguely nice to other people, because your choices fail to show the stricter paternal side of his character?
These are choices you need to think carefully about and will sometimes require much meditation and prayer.
You must never allow yourself to simply coast through life, letting yourself be guided by whatever’s popular in this moment or making choices without considering their impact on your discipleship and your effectiveness as an ambassador for God. That’s the way to the destruction gate.
That’s exactly what will happen to you unless you make a conscious effort to apply Jesus’ example and principles to every situation you encounter, and instead head for the life gate.
Nihilist to Christian 