Only One Way

There is only one way to enter heaven

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me..."  John 14:6

To live in Christ is to obey His commands.  And Christ commands that we give up all worldly pursuits and seek the kingdom of God and the glory of God.  This is not easy to do.  We can see that by looking around, almost everyone is wrapped up in some worldly pursuit or another.  For some people its as simple as money and all the shiny things that come with it.  For others its relationships - family and friends.  And some people are trying to impress, to be recognized as talented or great or smart or maybe even humble.  Some people are trying to climb the corporate ladder.  Some people are trying to find the perfect spouse.  A person could write a book or two just on the ins and outs of worldly pursuits.  But that's not what I'm trying to do here; just trying to establish a basic idea of what worldly pursuits are.  Here we will address those psychological attractions and deterrents to seeking the kingdom of heaven.

If you ask someone plainly whether they want to go to heaven or not, you will almost always get an absolute and obvious "Yes!"  Putting the question so simply makes answering it very easy.  But is it that simple?  Can the desire displayed in that "Yes!" really take a person the whole way there?  Firstly we must tackle the hard realities of Christ's words.  Jesus did not make it so simple for His disciples.  Jesus said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."  And we know from the verse atop, following Christ is the only way to enter heaven.  So that puts us in a different position.  Now the question is, "Are you willing to deny yourself and take up your cross daily so that you can enter heaven?"  Denying yourself means crucifying every desire to serve yourself, to honor yourself or to please yourself.  We know this is hard to do, but why is it hard to do?

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.  -Jesus in Matthew 7:13-14

The desire for worldly things is strong because we are constantly reminded of them.  Every time we see, touch, taste, feel or feel an emotion, we are reminded of these things.  It takes zero faith and understanding to believe in sex, or steak, or the praise of men, or a corvette, or a masters degree, or a six-figure income, or a desirable spouse.  We are reminded of these things many times a day; they bombard our mind through our senses.  And yet these are the things that must be denied in the denying of oneself.  That creates a colossal battle in the mind.  It is so much easier to just ignore eternity and focus on all the immediate things, the things that take no faith and provide instant reward.  And we can't have both.  Christ made sure we knew that.  He made sure that we knew that there is a reason why the road is narrow that leads to life, and that we do not ignore that reason.  So what would drive a person to choose God and choose to deny himself?  What is it about these "few" that makes them different from the "many"?

I believe God designed the human psyche in a peculiar way.  He knows what He made, both tangible and intangible.  Even the knowledge gained through the eating of a fruit was made by Him; so there is nothing, not even a man-made thing, that is not or was not known by God.  Every thing made by God is simply what it is, but how we judge that thing, whether we consider it good or bad, is more a matter of our own psyche as it is of the thing itself.  We might find roadkill repulsive, but buzzards beg to differ.  So we might look at our own psyche for once, rather than looking at the world around us, and wonder why some things are considered good and others bad.

We know that human instinct sees worldly things as desirable.  Otherwise we wouldn't be talking about them.  And we know that this is the reason it is difficult to follow Christ's commands and deny ourselves, and the reason for the narrow path.  But I believe there is a greater design at work, one that goes overlooked.  If all there were is our instinctual and worldly desires, then no one would be a Christian.  The path would not be narrow, the path would be nonexistent.  There has to be a deeper desire that exclusively exists in the human soul; a desire for meaning, I believe.  Its not an immediate desire - something you feel right away - and its not something you feel through your senses.  Its a desire that may develop over time.  And its something that our circumstances either contribute to or not.  Every experience adds or subtracts to or from our deepest values and heartfelt desires.  A Christian does not always crucify those worldly desires; sometimes they are unwittingly killed for him.  Now let us consider a situation in which that might happen, and see if that too might be a design of God.

I have a hunch that every worldly pursuit is riddled with pitfalls, and that because God designed it so.  There may be a guy that considers himself to be very honest and good.  But if his goal in life is to climb the corporate ladder, he will be faced with the reality that he must lie and cheat and step on other people to do so.  Suddenly this guy is not so honest and good.  Worldly pursuits lead to an inevitable compromise of morals.  Sometimes they lead to ultimate disaster, like what we see with the prodigal son.  On top of that, if there were any worldly pursuit (for example, having the perfect family) that didn't result in compromising morals or ending up as the prodigal son, it would still leave the pursuer empty.  A good relationship might satisfy for a little while, but there is only so much meaning that can be found in family, friends or a spouse.  This too is designed to fail.  Every worldly pursuit, whether its ignoble like sex and drugs, or noble like having a perfect family, is designed to fail in fulfilling an individual.  So what happens?

There are two things that can happen to a person, I take it, that will lead him to Christ.  The first thing is basically what happened to the prodigal son.  A person pursues his worldly desires and that worldly pursuit ends with disaster.  At that point he comes to his senses, has nothing to lose, and chooses to follow Christ.  This is what I mean when I say that not every Christian crucifies their worldly desires, but has them unwittingly killed.  And this is why I say that disaster can be the best thing to happen to a person; it can be the thing that turns his life to Christ and sets him on the path to eternal life.  The other thing that can happen is when a person realizes that there is nothing on earth that can satisfy his own soul.  This is the guy that has what he needs to survive, and maybe even thrive, physically, but knows that there is something missing in his soul.  He goes searching for meaning, and after some while, he finds meaning in Christ Jesus.  At that point he is faced with the fact that he must give up all his worldly pursuits and seek the kingdom of God.  You can't serve both God and money, as Jesus has said.

This is food for thought.  When you look around at the world, don't just think simply of what is there, think also of what God created and why He created it that way.  Things are designed, even our own way of thinking, in a particular way and for a reason.  Its amazing to me to consider all the things God has designed, from history, to His word (the Bible), to nature, to knowledge, to the unborn baby, to the dynamics of human life.  Everything is designed, and its all designed for a purpose.  The purpose of all those failures and pitfalls in life is to show us that worldly pursuits are the wrong path.  There is only one way, and the way is narrow, and the way requires a particular life, and the way is Christ.