finding honesty.

It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.

Confucius (Circa 551 BC – 479 BC)

This reminds me of a popular quote from Jesus around 400 years later.

“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.

So often I’ve heard this used to infer that a small group of people who think or act a certain way are the justified ‘in’ group who have found the ‘narrow way’ and that everyone who disagrees with them are on this ‘broad path to destruction’. I’ve encountered this quote being used to SUPPORT narrow minded thinking and shut down any challenged to it. And on the surface you can see why. It seems to say it clearly “Narrow = good, broad = bad”.

But interestingly in Matthew 7 where Jesus says this, he says something very related to what Confucius brought up a few centuries before. Right before mentioning the narrow and broad way, the hard and easy way, Jesus reminds us of the ‘golden rule’.

“Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.

THIS is what causes there to be a broad and a narrow way.

It’s HARD to be selfless and loving. Yet this is what everything else God has been telling civilizations through the ‘laws and prophets’ was all about. This is the core message that we still miss today.

It was not about supporting narrow-minded thinking, or proving that because you are a small group believing x or y that you are ‘in’ and the masses are ‘out’. It’s not even about God playing favorites, or being really hard to please, like a cross tough bouncer who’s letting only the pretty ‘cool’ people who never smoked into the nightclub of a heavenly afterlife.

It’s about following a way that leads to life. Starting with now.

It’s a challenge to the heart of the individual.
A reminder of a hard but fundamental truth.

It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love.

Will we choose the broad way of selfishness or the narrow way of love?

Hate brings death - love brings us to life.

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