The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

The Great Choice, and Why It's Not Just About Educating People:  Mt.7:13 – 20

^7:13 Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. ¹⁴ For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. ¹⁵ Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. ¹⁶ You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? ¹⁷ So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. ¹⁸ A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. ¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰ So then, you will know them by their fruits.

          ‘Why isn’t it enough to be a good person?  Why do we need Jesus?’  I hear that question a lot.  Maybe Christianity served a purpose back then because the world was so bad.  But do we need it anymore?  Can we build our own morality without God?

          Good questions.  I appreciate the desire to be a good person.  But I think that my life before Jesus might have looked mildly attractive on the outside, while on the inside, I was self-concerned, self-centered, and self-justifying.  And that is a problem both to God and to us.  Jesus thought that one’s actions were an expression of one’s nature.  This is why he says that good trees bear good fruit, and bad trees bear bad fruit.  One’s actions are the result of one’s nature.  Jesus therefore wants to fundamentally heal and transform human nature. 

Jesus has not been the only one to say this.  Psychologist Carl Jung, in a BBC interview in 1959 said, ‘We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself... We know nothing of man, far too little. His psyche should be studied because we are the origin of all coming evil.’  Human nature has been corrupted by our sin.  We were meant to allow God to be the sap in our being, but we refused.  Love, which was meant to be the fruit of God’s life in us, became corrupted and reduced.  We still produce fruit of a sort, but the fruit is unhealthy.

          Thus, democracy has not been enough to curb human evil.  Hitler was democratically elected.  Hezbollah was democratically elected.  Racial segregation was maintained in the U.S. by democratic means.  Democracy just gave more people the power to do evil.

          Some argue, ‘What about better education?  I get that human beings need to be changed.  But why can’t it just be a change in our education?  Our mindset?  Why do we need Jesus?’  I hear those questions a lot, too.  Working on college campuses in the liberal northeast of the U.S., I have to consider that.  Certainly I’m in favor of good education.  But I still think that we need Jesus to heal and transform us – all of us.

          Take the campus itself.  If the college campus is supposed to be so effective at moral education, then why do 10% to 25% of women in college get raped?  In fact, 90% of the victims know the men who rape them?[1]  Alcohol or drugs are frequently used to intoxicate women, especially in fraternity houses, to make them more susceptible to sexual coercion.  Sadly, up to 40% of rape victims develop sexually transmitted diseases.[2]  Looking beyond the U.S., we find that ‘rape is common worldwide, with relatively similar rates of incidence across countries, with 19%-28% of college women reporting rape or attempted rape in several countries.'[3]  That’s not counting attempted rape, attempted coercion, verbal pestering, being stalked, and unwanted sexual contact more generally.  The fact that Tufts University in 2009 had to make a residential life policy that you couldn’t have sex in your room while your roommate was there, nor could you ‘sexile’ your roommate (exiling him or her so that you could have sex),[4] means that even respect and conflict resolution skills have been deteriorating on campuses.  This is happening at the campus, the very institution that is supposed to be shaping people’s moral lives for the better, the very place that notions of good and evil, right and wrong should be taking root in people’s hearts and minds.

          Furthermore, the campus is effective at producing careerists, but not at producing people who use their professions and lives for higher goals.  For example, despite what pre-law students say about wanting to do pro-bono work or civil rights law, most go into corporate law.  This is strongly suggested by Katchadourian and Boli, Cream of the Crop: The Impact of Elite Education in the Decade After College, in 1994, and by Page Smith, Killing the Spirit: Higher Education in America, 1990.  Since college educations cost so much, and graduate school even more, and since people want to maximize their investment in themselves, the emotions that reign on campus are anxiety, fear, greed, and self-centeredness.  Naturally, most students will work hard and then choose money-making ventures.  Where is the university’s moral case for calling students to live for more than themselves?  How successful has their rhetoric been?  Not very, and increasingly weaker.  In an age of moral relativism, the university puts forward a weak moral case, if any at all.

          Secular American culture has promoted ‘reason’ to shape behavior and curb human evil.  But has it worked?  “As an alternative to tradition, the United States has proposed reason.  Educate citizens and inform them, and they can be counted on to behave sensibly – this is the Jeffersonian-Enlightenment faith on which the United States was founded.  It has not been fulfilled.  Until recently the world’s leader in education, the United States leads likewise in crime, delinquency, and divorce.”[5]

          This gets to the heart of the problem.  Education has, at times, become a handmaiden to evil and injustice.  Because of the Enlightenment, Europeans thought they were smarter than everyone else in the world; that led to European imperialism.  Smart people can help with some things.  But are they ‘the answer’?

Author William Golding offers an insight into human nature true to the Jewish prophets of old:  ‘‘There isn’t anyone to help you.  Only me.  And I’m the Beast…Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!’ said the head.  For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter.  ‘You knew, didn’t you?  I’m part of you?  Close, close, close!  I’m the reason why it’s no go.  Why things are what they are?’’[6]  And former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan delivered a depressing verdict on the economic crisis of 2008 – 09.  ‘It’s human nature, unless somebody can find a way to change human nature, we will have more crises and none of them will look like this because no two crises have anything in common, except human nature.’[7]

          Ultimately, there is only one way to reconcile corrupted human nature with God’s divine nature of holy love.  Jesus is that ‘narrow gate’ because he takes fallen human nature to himself, forces it to align with the love of God, crushes its every resistance, and gives us a new, God-soaked human nature soaked in his resurrection. 

Every other attempt at trying to resolve the human nature problem winds up saying, ‘It’s not that bad after all.  I’ve done a lot of good things.  Why can’t God leave my nature alone?’  That is how the fruit we produce becomes bad – we use merely decent actions to justify ourselves.  We deflect attention away from the root problem of evil:  our corrupted human nature.  And we mislead other people by lying about how severe the problem is.  That’s the wide gate and broad path that many people take. 

Praise God that He has come in the person of Jesus to heal and transform us.  It will be a long journey until the day Jesus returns and completes that work.  But as we walk down his narrow way, Jesus will make us more and more like him.  How comfortable are you with Jesus’ exclusive claims?