Jesus said that “few” find it. Most people never discover or enjoy what God has made abundantly available for them, which is tragic. Many Christians have found the path to salvation, but they have not found the gate to joy, or fruitfulness in ministry, or victory over certain sins. We should not assume we can merely follow the crowds and still enter the narrow gate. The right path for us will probably not be the one that appears most attractive. It may seem difficult and uninviting. People may even criticize us for following it. In those moments, we’ll have to decide just how much we want what’s behind that door.

One of America’s favorite game shows for many years was The Price is Right. A favorite feature was when contestants chose between what was behind doors number one, two, or three. Behind one of those doors was a fabulous prize. Behind the other two were items of much less value. It was always a tense moment as people made their choice.
When they picked the right door, the place went wild and the lucky winner celebrated enthusiastically. When contestants chose incorrectly, the host tried to console them by assuring them that what they had just won was better than a kick in the head. Viewers who watched the events on television often wondered which door they would choose if they were ever fortunate enough to get on that show.
Jesus claimed that every person must make a more important choice with a far more fabulous prize at stake. Jesus declared, “Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it” (Matt. 7:13-14). This passage has rightly been understood as addressing salvation. Even though everyone desires to obtain eternal life, only a minority of people actually secure it.
But this passage can be applied to other areas of life as well. These verses address the ways of God. How God handles something as important as our eternal salvation provides a compelling clue as to how he will deal with less critical matters. People want many things from God: a better job, a more fruitful ministry, robust health, a vibrant marriage and family. I contend that to obtain those things, we must undergo a similar process to obtaining salvation.
There are several practical takeaways from this passage:
First, God has amazing blessings for people if they are willing to seek them. God could have simply handed each person salvation without any effort on the part of the recipient. But these verses indicate that we must follow a path and enter a gate to receive what God has for us. I believe this sequence is true of any endeavor God places before us. Why do some people experience amazing spiritual victories while others do not? Why do some people regularly experience answered prayer and others don’t? Why do some people traverse the deep places of God and others linger near the surface? A journey is typically required to claim God’s promises. Some people are simply unwilling to invest the necessary effort to receive the prize.
Second, broad and easy is the way that leads to destruction. The reason so many people choose this path is because it requires the least effort or investment. Marketers know that people are eager to find the easiest road possible to their desired destination. When it comes to the things of God, following the crowd will often lead you off track. Jesus warned that few people take the path that leads to life. It’s not out of reach, but it is not a popular path.
Third, Jesus said the road that leads to life is difficult. Wouldn’t a loving God make the road to life broad and gentle, with tall fruit trees lining the way to provide shade and sustenance to its travelers? Perhaps. But Scripture cautions us that God’s ways are not our ways (Is. 55:8-9). God is not motivated by numbers. He wants people to exhibit proper attitudes. He understands that great rewards are best achieved with great effort.
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God gives grace to the humble but opposes the proud. If we want to see real change in our world, it starts right here, with our own sin. Go down, this day, to your own house justified, first. This will renew our motivations together in what we are trying to accomplish when we feel the pain caused through the sins of others.

A perception is often created in our social media discourse that Christians who speak out against the newest injustices of the day are fulfilling some kind of duty for God. Our social media world has produced thousands of little independent journalists and “experts” in sociology who sit all day in front of their computers anxiously waiting for the new story and opportunity to decry injustice.
We’re addicted to controversy. Whatever new headline, scandal, hypocrisy, or sorrow, there are a million tweeters with ready fingers to expose the hypocrisies of their neighbor. Forget that the Proverbs often commend silence as an answer to a sorrow to avoid speaking foolishly. “Calling out” is now is championed as a virtue, a civic good for an ideal utopian humanity where hypocrisy will no longer exist and people will truly love.
The problem is that hypocrisies only seem to be growing worse, and who really knows what the newest champion of exposure is really doing themselves behind closed doors? Is our champion of whatever cause we pursue, exempt of the same hypocrisy? There must be a black and white Twilight Zone episode somewhere of a society where everyone became independent journalists, angrily waiting to uncover their neighbor’s worst hypocrisies until there is nothing left to uncover. And then the last righteous man emerges, the hero who called out everyone else, who pompously struts back to his wife and family…after a brief visit to his mistress on the way home.
There is no end to the hypocrisy of the human race. I, too, am weary of the scandals, the hurt, the sorrow, the immorality, and the injustices but the question is how we get to a proper solution, because what we are doing right now is crushing one another. What does our outrage and call-out/cancel culture really say about us?
Distinctions are important in this regard. There is general hypocrisy in which we all share and then gross hypocrisy and public scandal. The gross, public hypocrisies of an abusive leader does incalculable damage. When this happens, public exposure is often necessary to counter the lie and help people in their hurt. We should never support or cover for people in their unrepentant sin. Yes, there are wolves and wolves deserve exposure and prompt removal. This is why God ordained church courts for proper discipline.
But many of the current efforts toward social justice fail to make any distinction here. Anyone who disagrees with the prevailing narrative of the culture is deemed a wolf. And failing to make a distinction between wolves and saints who are sinners results in making condemnation the goal across the board for, well, everybody. This is particularly true right now with the Christian ministry. There is a vicious attempt at present in the exposure of actual wolves to assault the entire Christian ministry as untrustworthy. Anyone involved in the institutional church is under suspicion.
Something really bad has happened to Christianity’s mission right now. Surely there are high standards for both ministry and Christian life in general. But what we have forgotten is something absolutely fundamental to the Christian faith, namely that “all alike have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” What we have lost is a shared humility in our common guilt.
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The LGBTQ agenda has become the new orthodoxy of woke culture. Anyone who even questions it is declared a heretic and cast from society for blasphemy. In this cultural setting we can expect resistance to and eventually persecution of those who hold to biblical orthodoxy. This agenda is new in recent Western history, so it is important for us to take a look at ancient history. History is crucial for understanding the theological and spiritual implications of homosexuality for the thinking of today’s church and culture. 

The cultural conflict is no longer simply political. The economic value of socialism or capitalism is no longer the debate separating citizens. It is, rather, what our children are learning, whether in non-Christian state schools or even in some Christian schools, about their sexuality, their family life and the theological issues that determine ultimate meaning.
The Sixties was a key moment for Western culture. It might be hard to imagine, but when I was growing up as a lad in working-class Liverpool, England, and even when I became a young man in the Fifties, I had never even heard the word “homosexual.” If, by some chance, that word came up at one time, I would not have known what it meant. Then came the Sixties, when deviant sexuality exploded into the public square and now “alternate” sex is seen as normative.
Normalizing the LGBTQ Agenda
The present administration boasts that its cabinet has more female, gay, black and trans members than ever before. It went further in the normalization of sexual extremism by appointing Sam Brinton to the Department of Energy, where he is responsible for nuclear waste. It seems he took “nuclear” to heart, appearing at the White House in high-heeled shoes, bright lipstick, a striking moustache—and sporting a fetching dress he had stolen at an airport luggage collection point! When his theft was uncovered, the administration reluctantly let him go. The Biden Administration also elevated Rachel (née Richard) Levine, a trans lad/lass with flowing golden tresses. Levine is a four-star admiral who holds the post of Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. In public, he proudly presents in formal naval attire, thus reinforcing the administration’s position on transgenderism. This is the new political norm,[1] which the President made official. At the end of the “Proclamation on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Pride Month, 2023” the president declared (joining God and queer issues) that the month of June was to be a time for all Americans to “recognize the achievements of the LGBTQI+ community, to celebrate the great diversity of the American people, and to wave their flags of pride high.” The final line states: “In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-seventh.”
It’s little wonder that “nearly every major U.S. brand promulgates the LGBT agenda,”[2] and many people are proud of their support of LGBTQ issues. This is especially true of sports personalities. Georgia Marie Stanway, captain of the British ladies’ soccer team, exults: “We’re never shy in saying what we stand for. We’re a squad that promotes inclusivity, equality, we obviously have a number of people that feel very strongly about it.”[3] The California Senate engaged in a ceremony honoring “The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.[4] The “Sisters” are gay men dressed as nuns, who make fun of the traditional nuns’ view of sex. They are drag queens in nun outfits, calling themselves by obscene names, peddling hatred and reveling in blasphemy. Americans are a tolerant people. But we should realize that sexual deviance has by now become an issue to divide the nation into the morally and socially cool, versus the luddites.
They Are Coming for Our Children in Their Schools
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, friend of Jeffrey Epstein and visitor to his island, has invested tens of millions of dollars in a radical nongovernmental organization called the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), which is endorsed by the World Health Organization. The IPPF is pushing for young children to be considered “sexual beings.” “Sexual activity may be part of different types of relationships, including dating, marriage, or commercial sex work, among others,” IPPF said, about what children under 10 should be taught. The toolkit said that children under 10 should also be told: “As you grow up, you might start to be interested in people with diverse gender identities.”[5]This view is taught in numerous schools.
Such explicit instruction is clearly emphasized in the drag queen shows put on in public libraries for children all over the country, developing in them an interest for “diverse gender identities,” that is, interest in non-binary sexual androgyny in which sexual identities are joined in a hopeless mish-mash. This androgynous sex is expressed in: homosexuality, in which both males become females in their love-making; bi-sexuality, in which a person enjoys both male and female sex; transgenderism, in which a male or female person pretends to be the opposite sex; and in drag queen practice. Interestingly, Texas Christian University now offers a course teaching that the male/female gender binary is an expression of white supremacy![6] It also discusses how to create a drag persona. As the culmination of this “academic work,” students participate in a performance in the university’s annual drag show.
They Are Coming for Our Children in Our Churches
On Monday, June 5, 2023, the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine hosted a “Faith Perspectives Panel” examining the intersection of religion and the LGBTQ+ movement as part of the Cathedral’s iconic Pride celebration. The panel discussion centered around deconstructing the “binary view” of the church, namely the doctrine of God the Creator.[7]
In June, 2023, another Lutheran female “minister” recited a heretical “Sparkle Creed” as part of a recent church service, (about which I have already commented).[8] The Edina Community Lutheran Church (ECLC) “minister,” Anna Helgen, led the congregation in the “creed”:
I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads and saw everyone as a sibling-child of God.I believe in the rainbow spirit who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity….
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