JULY 19 2015
THE NARROW DOOR
For the last number of years, while visiting St Paul where our youngest daughter lives, I have bought a Journal in the bookstore of the Luther Seminary close to where they live. This past year it was a simpler book with 365 pages, blank except for one Bible text. Based on that text I write my daily meditation. I have done this for more than 25 years.
Last week the line came from Luke 13, and the designated section was Jesus saying “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door because many will try to enter and will not be able to.”
It puzzled me and made me think of illustration that hung in my parental home, depicting John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. The illustration showed a long winding road where the Pilgrim encountered all sorts of obstacles starting from the City of Destruction – Earth apparently – on the way to the ‘Celestial City’ or Heaven. Christian – the Pilgrim- finds himself weighed down by a great burden which he gets from reading the Bible. The Evangelist appears several times during the story, pointing him in the right direction. In the book the first person he meets is called Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who says he can be saved by looking at the law, and that Mr. Legality can help him. Evangelist stops him from going that way.
Later he goes to the Shadow of Death. He is not afraid because his friend Faithful reminds him of the words of Psalm 23: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Just outside the Valley of the Shadow of Death he meets Faithful, who also used to live in the City of Destruction. They go together to Vanity Fair, where they are both arrested because they do not like the kind of business which is being done at the fair, all based on greed. Faithful is put on trial, and executed. Hopeful, who lives in Vanity, takes Faithful’s place as Christian’s companion for the rest of the way.
Christian and Hopeful eventually reach the Celestial City. End of story.
Help from others
I was also reminded of the Narrow Door when my younger brother, Drewes, living in The Hague, sent me some comments on Pope Francis’ encyclical. I have other people who feed me with comments, such as Fred in BC. Without these people my self-imposed task to write a weekly blog would be much more difficult. Here’s what Drewes sent me: “A senior figure in the Church of England has described the recent papal encyclical as unlikely to produce the desired reduction in global poverty. In a commentary on Pope Francis’s recent encyclical on the environment, Peter Forster, the Bishop of Chester, and the Labour peer Bernard Donoughue, say while they share the Pope’s deep desire to reduce poverty, they are concerned the very policies advocated by the papal encyclical are more likely to hinder than advance this great cause. The authors argue that “the encyclical is coloured too much by a hankering for a past world, prior to the Industrial Revolution, which is assumed to have been generally simpler, cleaner and happier. There is little historical evidence for such a vision, and for most people then life was brief, painful, poor, and even brutal.”
Bishop Peter Forster said: “Pope Francis should certainly be commended for his desire to deal with poverty in the developing world, but it is hard to see how he hopes to do so without economic growth and fossil fuels, both of which he thinks are unnecessary evils.”
The authors are also critical of the failure of Pope Francis to address some of the most pressing moral dilemmas in the environment debate.
Lord Donoughue said: “Wood and dung fires may be renewable energy sources but their disastrous impact on human health is undeniable. We would have liked to have seen the encyclical address moral dilemmas like this head on. We would also have liked to have known Pope Francis’s view on the bans on development aid for fossil fuel plants that so many western governments have put in place.”
Is there a connection to the Narrow Door?
How can I connect all this to Luke 13, to the Narrow Door?
I see Pope Francis as a Reforming Catholic. In the original sense of the word “Catholic” pertains to the entire body of believers, regardless of denomination. The Apostle’s Creed points to this when it refers to the church as the One Holy Catholic Church. Even though the Pope in his encyclical refers to Mary, there is in Revelation 12 a direct referral to the church as “The Woman who gave birth to the Child”, and how this woman, actually the church, was persecuted by the Dragon, who stood before the woman, trying to devour her. That’s what’s going on nowadays: Satan – always busy – is trying to destroy the church.
We usually see heaven as the most tranquil of places, but in that same chapter, Revelation 12, it unambiguously says that: “There was war in heaven.” Satan had a big fight with Michael, a prince among the angels, and mighty Michael prevailed and sorry Satan was kicked out of heaven. You know where he went? Here, on planet earth, there’s where he made his temporary habitat. Not really a welcome guest in my book. But he’s here, and wherever he is, there is trouble. In Brussels they placed Greece in a Satanic bind, because of money. Believe me, money is a very hard taskmaster, and by and large Satan personifies money. When in Genesis 2 the Lord Creator made trees, the Bible says “Trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.” The aesthetic comes first: pleasing to the eye; the economic comes last: good for food. In the next chapter, Genesis 3: 6, when Satan points out the tree to Eve, the order is reversed. There the Satan refers to the tree as “Good for food and pleasing to the eye.” With Satan Economics, the pursuit of money, the lust for that filthy lucre, always has priority, even when it kills people, even when it kills creation, even when now most of the fish are gone, and most of the large animals are extinct. Money overrides it all.
With that in mind I come back to Pope Francis, return to the objections raised by an Anglican Bishop and that Labour leader.
Pope Francis knows darn well that nothing what he says can change people. Actually his warning has come too late. What is going on today with poverty and Climate Change had its start in Paradise, in the Garden of Eden with that tree. That same John who penned the book of Revelation while exiled to a lonely island, also wrote a few letters. In 1 John 5: 19 John clearly says that, ”We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the Evil One”. Jesus admits to the same when he is tempted by the Evil One and Satan (Matthew 4: 9) offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world. Of course Jesus refuses, knowing that he will be the ultimate winner here, but he does not deny that today and yesterday and tomorrow until Jesus returns Satan rules this world.
The Pope does not say that in so many words, but the Anglican bishop and that Labour leader are siding with Satan by pursuing economic growth at all costs, even creation. The Pope is right when he points out that the pre-industrial time was more God-pleasing, as it was easy on creation, God’s work of art. Pope Francis is right, even when many of his own church, especially politicians, disagree with him. Pope Francis is right for the simple reason that he is being persecuted by others. The church today, unless it is persecuted for its stance, is on the wrong track. Pope Francis is doing the right thing.
That Narrow Door again
To pursue the ‘narrow door’ matter: Jesus points out that it is not easy to aspire to enter through the narrow door. Talk is easy, but it does not earn us bonus points with Jesus. Talk – sermons – is the church’s usual stock in trade.
C. S. Lewis, a well-known Christian and world renowned author, who wrote an excellent book Mere Christianity said somewhere that ‘the way to hell is smooth, slightly sloping, no sudden turns, no real obstacles.”
That’s the way of the Evil one. He was thrown out of heaven and landed feet first on the earth, where he now rules the world, and where he each day dreams up new ways to entice people to fall in line with his thinking.
It seems to me that the “narrow door” section in the Bible – Jesus’ very words- calls for a radical Christianity. There’s nothing easy about radical Christianity. Jesus explicitly says: “Many will try and few will be successful”. I recall that Jesus also said: “Many are called, and few are chosen.” He also wondered whether he would find faith (in him) when he returns.
So this Anglican bishop is the pragmatic kind. Listen, he suggests, growth is imperative for the church because without it we face economic stagnation and the few who still come to church will be reduced even further when jobs disappear and money becomes scarce.
Pope Francis personifies Radical Christianity here, a movement that engenders persecution. He knows that economic growth is the perfect Devil tool to subvert what little wholesome is still around in this world. The trouble is that he can say only so much or he will be accused of being a heretic as Martin Luther was, the whistle blower who almost 500 years ago in 1517 turned the table on the church. Pope Francis already has to cope with a lot of members of his own church, including cardinals, who disagree with him. You see he is aiming for the narrow door and that is an unpopular stance.
Even though Jesus said that ‘my yoke is easy and my burden is light’ that is only true because when we aim for the narrow door, he is with us.
So what is that narrow door business all about?
Psalm 119: 105 says that “Your word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path.” The church has, by and large distorted that by concentrating on the lamp, God’s written word, his secondary, indirect word. By doing so it has stared into that light so much that it has become blinded, unable to navigate the earth, stumbling around, splitting up in all sorts of different paths – or denominations – and forgetting that the earth is God’s primary word, where we securely can make our way when we are guided by God’s written word. Why do we need the Bible? It tells us that God is the Creator; it relates how we fell into sin and ceded the earth God had given us to the Evil one. Its crowning truth is that Jesus has bought creation back at the cost of his life. That same creation, once restored, will be the new Kingdom. The door to that kingdom is narrow, because the earth can support only a limited number of people in perpetuity without damaging it again.
That’s what the Written Word tells us, unpopular perhaps. We now must use the Scriptures to guide us in making our way in creation, in the direction of the Narrow Door. For that we have to take the road less traveled. We have to make our way, in this Satanic world unfortunately on a road that is full of obstacles, full of temptations, full of Satanic pleasures, full of evil matters, exactly the opposite of what C. S, Lewis describes as the road to hell.
How your travel to the “Narrow Door” must proceed is not something I can tell you. There is not a single way. Your way is different than mine. I do think, however, that there is a definite and necessary link to creation. For the rest it is something between you and Jesus. Once you have him on your side, the going is easy. Alone it cannot be done.
Next week my crockpot, and how it relates to Greece and Europe.