What is the Narrow Gate?

 

When I began writing in this spot on September 23, 2008, the verse Matthew 7:13-14, which I chose as the founding guide for what would appear here, held a meaning different than what it does today.

Initially, in my very young and as-yet unexplored and inexperienced thought-world of God, the verse stood out in its focus on separation-from so as to deprive as much fallenness from life as possible. 

Charles Spurgeon aptly describes the manner in which I applied the verse:

“When you only stand at the door of virtue, for nothing but to keep sin out.”

That is something I rather needed back then, with sobriety from chronic binge and dependent drinking having recently taken root. At that time, I required a wall of protection from anything associated with my past drinking: its establishment, prolonging, encouragement and romanticization. That included the music that had embellished, the family of origin that had curated, the towns that had normalized and the thinking that had justified.

All of it had to go in the sense that I could not relate to or include those elements in my life in the same way as before, or, sometimes, at all. 

The narrow path, then, was my line of demarcation upon which I stayed the course—like the bar that steadies our taking of a pano photograph on an i-Phone. The minute I wavered off that line, a black edge appeared and threatened to swallow the entire picture if I did not quickly correct and re-align.

Over time, to my dismayed hindsight—the verse about the narrow path became more about judgement of those not on it. 

In that negatively other-focused way, I sourced a warped sense of spiritual pride and personal superiority: a getting back at all those people and places I was convinced had been the reasons for my drinking and its subsequent sabotaging of the maturity, integrity and accomplishment I could otherwise have attained. This disdain extended to what the corporate church perceived and led one to believe was “wrong with the world” and those causing it.

But, as God would have it—in a turn I can hardly explain or put my finger on in the details, and only came to grasp in His progressive revelation of reality—He reigned-in the long leash he had loosely gripped which had allowed me to indulge—for a time—“the ways the world has been, and is, against me,” and then began convincing me that victimhood or martyrdom isn’t exactly the point of the Matthew verse, or of faith in general. 

God said, (and of course I am merely giving voice to His meditative feedback here. For the record, God has never literally spoken words to me):

“Look: you’ve lived the militant, keep-your-Christian-nose-clean interpretation of this verse. And you sustained victory over drinking. 

But then, as you progressed to a more confident mindset, and began to live in your new-normal of relationship with Christ, you “got-it” that those not on the path are missing out, but you got it with un-helpful animosity and an un-called for and disturbingly high regard for yourself.”

When I saw and faced into this, I absolutely agreed with God and was readily willing to not stay in that phase. 

So God said: 

“Let’s take a closer look at Matthew 17:13-14, and as we do, see if we can fathom what the verse actually conveys and ultimately hopes to instill.”

So that’s what God and I did. 

It took several years. 

It took exiting any and all corporate church and “para-church” organizations. 

It meant jettisoning labels of all religious movements and established practices. 

It meant jettisoning labels of all secular movements and established practices.

It meant, not monkhood—which I was cerebrally tempted by—but just living as the person I had become thus far with God, but now in a practical, objective and logical manner, and starting there. 

It was a bit like beginning all over again, only this time maintaining the foundation of love, compassion and impartiality for all of the Triune God—the very underpinnings of the Gospel which I had lost site of, and perhaps never internalized. 

And now adding the mind.

What the Matthew verse began to reveal about itself during these years of clarified contemplation of God, with God, is the prediction that, what very few will find is purity of God, Jesus, the Spirit and their word. Not just their word written in the Bible, but written upon each individual heart. 

Alternatively, a broad road also exists, one the verse points out as being quite readily tread, so therefore, must be easy. 

This opposing option of travel I envision as spacious lanes paralleling a boulevard adorned, not with life-enhancing landscaping, but constructed of resentment, animosity, jealousy, pride, religious high-regard, malcontentedness, self-absorption, selfish ambition—all of which stem from a lack of God-imbued inner conviction matched with inner reflection—and all of which breed ill will and hatred. 

And a majority, even of the religious, will experience some aspect of this wide road’s destructive impact as they self-justifyingly and willingly—albeit perhaps ignorantly—traverse upon it.

The degree to which we desire and grant to navigate with those dark and defeating motivations and attitudes, we exist outside the small gate that unlatches to the heart of God, and thus, to His heart within each one of us. 

This is the heart God is concerned with and in fact, I believe based on Scripture, the only thing, in the reality of life and faith, God appraises. 

The narrow gate, then, the constricted path—purity of God—is difficult only in its being finally arrived at.

It is shattering in its destructive simpleness. 

Which is why, perhaps, so few find it, and for those who do, can take a very long time.

Copyright Barb Harwood