CarlZunker.com

I have been thinking lately about how I view faith for myself and for other people. I think of it almost like walking through a field of wheat, breaking stalks to create a path as I go, and I imagine others doing the same to my left and right. I can’t clearly see their entire paths, but I can see they are in the same wheat field, trying their best. It’s as if everyone is simply walking on their own spiritual path, and that path is somehow correct simply because it belongs to them. To leave people on their path, uninterrupted and uncorrected, feels kind, accepting, and even patient.

And in one sense, it is.

We all start somewhere. We begin on roads shaped by our history, our parents, our upbringing, our damage, our failed relationships, our habits, and our assumptions. All of that, and so much more, quietly shapes the lens through which we view our lives, and the lens through which we first learn to see God. No one begins with perfectly shaped lenses.

But when I slow down and read the words of Jesus carefully, I realize that this picture we may have formed, this modern way of describing faith, is not the one He gives us. It is not the path He calls us to walk, and it is not the way He teaches us to understand what following Him actually means.

Jesus does not describe a wide field of equally valid spiritual journeys that slowly bend toward the same destination. He speaks about a gate, and He speaks about a road. He says the gate is narrow, and He says the way is narrow. He does not say that it is crowded with believers on their own journey. He says that few find it.

For a long time, I think I pictured that gate as something God quietly places in front of each person at the end of their own road, as if every life eventually receives its own private entrance into God’s way.

But a gate does not belong to the road that leads up to it. It belongs to the road that begins after it.

People come to that gate from very different directions. Some come through grief. Some through failure. Some through success. Some through anger. Some through exhaustion. Some through curiosity. Some through a simple moment that exposes how thin and fragile their faith has become. The roads that bring us there rarely look alike.

The gate is not described as being personalized, so I have to believe that the gate is the same for us all. And the road on the other side is not tailored in its requirements. The journey is different for each of us, but the path, the expectations, are the same for us all.

There is not a narrow version of my way and a narrow version of your way. There is only God’s way.

That understanding matters, because it helps clarify what we mean when we talk about accountability and discernment inside the church.

We are not called to supervise the wide world. Scripture never asks believers to manage the moral direction of people who are not following Christ. But something real does change when someone steps through that gate and confesses Jesus as Lord.

At that point, the question is no longer what feels authentic to me, what fits my story best, or what seems most reasonable to me in this moment. The question becomes what faithfulness looks like now to Jesus.

Jesus says that the road that leads to life is hard, but that does not mean Christian life is meant to be harder than secular life. Secular life is just as heavy. Loss, illness, conflict, disappointment, loneliness, fear, and grief are not introduced by discipleship. They are part and parcel of living in a broken world.

What makes the narrow road difficult is not that it adds suffering. It is that it removes the ability to create our own narrative in making sense out of that difficulty. If I am the author, I can blame someone else for the consequences of my bad decisions. I can dodge any accountability if I don’t feel like accepting it. It doesn’t resolve the difficulties, but it lets us ignore them by putting them on someone else.

Following the narrow path removes our ability to define truth for ourselves. The pressure does not come from added pain. It comes from surrendered authority. I find myself returning to this simple sentence more and more often: God does not offer an easier life. He offers a better one.

Not better because life becomes immediately less complicated, less painful, or generally “less” in any meaningful way, but better because it affords purpose. That is a much lighter yoke to bear, even if it does not seem like it when viewing from places off the path. Philippians 4:7 (NIV): And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

I keep picturing something like a large room filled with noise and movement. Screens and lights flashing and warnings and arguments and urgency layered on top of urgency. Voices competing for attention, loyalty, outrage, fear, and shame. So much fear and shame. And somewhere in the middle of that noise, Jesus stands in one quiet place, pointing to a small entrance, a gate.

Nothing about that entrance looks impressive. It does not look expansive, or powerful, or efficient. Not something a ‘modern’ person could practically use. From the outside, it often looks like loss. If I am honest, it frequently looks like limitation.

But what I cannot see until I walk through that entrance is what disappears on the other side.

The noise fades. The constant pressure to perform an identity fades. The need to justify myself fades. The background anxiety about whether my life is measuring up begins to loosen its grip. We die to ourselves in a way that gives relief we could never imagine.

Not because life becomes simple, but because it becomes directed. Not easier but more clearly focused on Jesus and the narrative He has for us.

This is why the conversation Jesus has with the Samaritan woman at the well has stayed with me. John 4:13–14 (NIV): Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

He tells her that if she knew who He was, she would ask Him for living water. Whoever drinks the water He gives “will never thirst” does not simply mean physical thirst. Jesus Himself becomes physically thirsty later. He is speaking to something deeper.

The woman had spent years drawing from wells that could never satisfy the deeper ache beneath her choices. Relationships, security, approval, belonging. Jesus is not promising a life without need. He is promising a life without desperation.

You can still thirst, but you will not be thirsty.

You can still feel loss, longing, disappointment, and the weight of unfinished things. But you are no longer trying to make those things answer the question of who you are or why you exist. Cannot make loss somehow add to your own narrative.

Those questions have already been resolved when you build on the rock instead of the sand, even if you cannot see that resolution, you trust in a power greater than your own understanding. That is what the narrow road gives that the wide field never can. Meaning instead of earthly logic.

And that is why following Jesus is not about inviting Him to walk with me where I was already going, although he did that for far too long. He leaves the 99 sheep for the one that is lost. After opening the gate and walking on His path, life becomes a long obedience of trusting Him enough to leave my road behind. Trusting His plan is better, so I do not get lost following my own heart. Why wouldn’t I want to follow my own heart? Jermiah 17:9 (NIV): The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

That doesn’t mean we are or become perfect in this world, but it means we can recognize His grace and feel the ground change underfoot if we step off His path. I know that if someone claims to be a follower of Christ, I cannot judge their journey. But I also owe it to every believer to let them know, in gentleness and relying on relationship, if I see them going the wrong way. We all need to recognize that the people who have the courage to help correct us are just trying to help us get closer to home.