Wide Roads and Narrow Roads
Wide Roads and Narrow Roads
Thursday of the Second Week of Lent
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches his followers using this analogy:
“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” (Matt. 7:13-14, NIV).
You may want to shift your thinking a bit today. Traditionally, this passage has been used as a description of a person’s relationship to sin. The wide road is the road of a sin-filled life, I’ve heard often.
But today, consider instead that Jesus is talking about our inner landscape. The wide road is not the life of wanton sin, but a life that basically flows along with the way things are, influenced by cultural mores, social patterns, and values that are generally accepted by a community or nation. The wide-road person is not reflective, that is, he or she does not question the validity of those values, nor do they hold them up to the light of the Gospel. They simply adopt the patterns as truth . . . while maybe throwing a Bible verse toward them now and again to justify the patterns as normal.
Traveling this wide road takes no real effort. You just go along with everyone else. You fit in. To walk this road takes relatively little interior work.
On the other hand, the person who embarks on a narrow road engages the long, slow, and messy work of spiritual formation, honestly holding their life up to the light of the Gospel, hearing the words of Jesus more deeply than a mere surface reading. Though it sometimes hurts – this is a narrow road, after all, so it can pinch us a bit – this person is willing to see and acknowledge his/her own blind spots, to notice their own shadow, to open up the closet where they have stuffed so many things about themselves over the years . . . and begin to see their own life in the light of Christ.
Traveling this narrow road takes intention and effort. Something within us resists seeing the truth about who we are and who God created us to be, yet the narrow-road person goes there, trusting in the mercy and unfailing love of God even as the way is difficult or painful.
Not many choose this second way – which makes it a narrow way – but Jesus says that the narrow road is the way to life.
Elizabeth O’Connor has some thoughts about the wide road and the narrow road in her book, Journey Inward, Journey Outward. Today and tomorrow I’ll share some of her insights about these two ways.
To have life as vocation is to be aware that there are two ways to go – the wide road and the narrow road. The wide road might be called the way of unconsciousness and the narrow road the way of consciousness. The wide road is the road of the crowd. Jesus describes the people on it as not seeing and not hearing. They have an invitation to a banquet, but are too busy to attend. They always have something very important that needs to be done, and their reasons are always logical and convincing. They can explain well to others because they have explained well to themselves, silencing any murmurs of dissent that come from within. They have lost awareness that there are two ways. They respond to externals only, since their attention is outward. They have many answers. When they do ask questions they ask them of others but never themselves. There is a sameness about those in the crowd. By contrast with “round characters” that develop and change, they are what in fiction writing is known as “flat characters,” which means that they do not change. They are the same at the end of the story as at the beginning. They do not receive anything into themselves; things happen to them, but never in them. Their lives are rich in outer events, and poor in inner ones. They are the impoverished who are not included in any poverty program. They are the dead who do not know they sleep.
There is something comforting about descriptions of the crowd, for it is easy to think that we do not belong to it. Who is there that cannot summon up a few encouraging examples by which to place himself outside its boundaries? I can remember questions that I put to myself one day. I can remember an event that changed my thinking. I can remember a time of decision when I was aware of two roads and chose the narrower. But these are isolated experiences that return as a reminder of a Way that exists. They are not the ways of many hours or many days. In reflection, I grow aware that most of the time I walk with the crowd on that wide and populated highway. I am lost to myself.
[Elizabeth O’Connor, Journey Inward, Journey Outward. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968.]
For Reflection:
o I sit quietly for a moment with what I have read, considering wide roads and narrow roads. How do I feel about this? What is my point of meeting with today’s reading?
o What is at risk for me if I don’t walk along with the crowd? Can I identify that risk honestly?
o I am invited to offer those feelings to God.
Thursday of the Second Week of Lent
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches his followers using this analogy:
“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” (Matt. 7:13-14, NIV).
You may want to shift your thinking a bit today. Traditionally, this passage has been used as a description of a person’s relationship to sin. The wide road is the road of a sin-filled life, I’ve heard often.
But today, consider instead that Jesus is talking about our inner landscape. The wide road is not the life of wanton sin, but a life that basically flows along with the way things are, influenced by cultural mores, social patterns, and values that are generally accepted by a community or nation. The wide-road person is not reflective, that is, he or she does not question the validity of those values, nor do they hold them up to the light of the Gospel. They simply adopt the patterns as truth . . . while maybe throwing a Bible verse toward them now and again to justify the patterns as normal.
Traveling this wide road takes no real effort. You just go along with everyone else. You fit in. To walk this road takes relatively little interior work.
On the other hand, the person who embarks on a narrow road engages the long, slow, and messy work of spiritual formation, honestly holding their life up to the light of the Gospel, hearing the words of Jesus more deeply than a mere surface reading. Though it sometimes hurts – this is a narrow road, after all, so it can pinch us a bit – this person is willing to see and acknowledge his/her own blind spots, to notice their own shadow, to open up the closet where they have stuffed so many things about themselves over the years . . . and begin to see their own life in the light of Christ.
Traveling this narrow road takes intention and effort. Something within us resists seeing the truth about who we are and who God created us to be, yet the narrow-road person goes there, trusting in the mercy and unfailing love of God even as the way is difficult or painful.
Not many choose this second way – which makes it a narrow way – but Jesus says that the narrow road is the way to life.
Elizabeth O’Connor has some thoughts about the wide road and the narrow road in her book, Journey Inward, Journey Outward. Today and tomorrow I’ll share some of her insights about these two ways.
To have life as vocation is to be aware that there are two ways to go – the wide road and the narrow road. The wide road might be called the way of unconsciousness and the narrow road the way of consciousness. The wide road is the road of the crowd. Jesus describes the people on it as not seeing and not hearing. They have an invitation to a banquet, but are too busy to attend. They always have something very important that needs to be done, and their reasons are always logical and convincing. They can explain well to others because they have explained well to themselves, silencing any murmurs of dissent that come from within. They have lost awareness that there are two ways. They respond to externals only, since their attention is outward. They have many answers. When they do ask questions they ask them of others but never themselves. There is a sameness about those in the crowd. By contrast with “round characters” that develop and change, they are what in fiction writing is known as “flat characters,” which means that they do not change. They are the same at the end of the story as at the beginning. They do not receive anything into themselves; things happen to them, but never in them. Their lives are rich in outer events, and poor in inner ones. They are the impoverished who are not included in any poverty program. They are the dead who do not know they sleep.
There is something comforting about descriptions of the crowd, for it is easy to think that we do not belong to it. Who is there that cannot summon up a few encouraging examples by which to place himself outside its boundaries? I can remember questions that I put to myself one day. I can remember an event that changed my thinking. I can remember a time of decision when I was aware of two roads and chose the narrower. But these are isolated experiences that return as a reminder of a Way that exists. They are not the ways of many hours or many days. In reflection, I grow aware that most of the time I walk with the crowd on that wide and populated highway. I am lost to myself.
[Elizabeth O’Connor, Journey Inward, Journey Outward. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968.]
For Reflection:
o I sit quietly for a moment with what I have read, considering wide roads and narrow roads. How do I feel about this? What is my point of meeting with today’s reading?
o What is at risk for me if I don’t walk along with the crowd? Can I identify that risk honestly?
o I am invited to offer those feelings to God.
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