Finding the Narrow Gate

Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney

I love a challenge.

The way I often look at life is there is an easy way and there is the right way.  I guess that proves that I'm either persistent, obsessive, or just plain foolish.

But just because I find the more difficult path to take, it doesn't mean I make the right choices in doing so.

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it.  For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it. - Matthew 7:13-14

One of the challenges I face when I take the road less traveled, or the path that is unpaved and narrow, is I go a certain distance and then question my decision.

I remember a priest telling me once that he faced many such moments of doubt and even fear while in seminary.   I was surprised.  I grew up with a Hollywood image of religious orders, Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan, Bing Crosby as Father O'Malley, and Ingrid Bergman as Sister Benedict.  These were saintly people with a capital S.

The idea of being respected and admired for being good was an ideal to which I aspired.  But sometimes Hollywood does too good a job at painting portraits of heroes.  How dangerous is it to believe all who wear collars or habits are pure in spirit and heart?

Larger than life characters are great box office attractions, but what kind of imprint do they leave on us as children?  Do we become too trusting of anyone we think is like them?  Should we be more realistic in our portrayals, or do we need to find a way to separate reality from the big screen?

I confess that I like those epic tales of good and evil battling it out, of heroes and villains who are clearly defined and easy to recognize.  I know it isn't the way life is, but when did we start going to the movies to increase our daily dosage of real life?

We have come full circle, I think, in our desire to be entertained. So much of what is available on TV today is extreme over-the-top behavior masquerading as reality.

Naked Castaway

Have you seen Naked Castaway?  A man chooses to be abandoned on an uninhabited island with nothing except a camera.  Nothing.  Not even clothes.  (They drop off fresh batteries every so often so he can document his isolation and starvation.)

The pendulum has swung completely off center.

I, for one, would like to go back to a diet of moral tales and idealized heroes, rather than spending my time bathed in the new false reality.  Sure, it isn't real, but at least I can tell the difference.

I can't imagine what it is like to be a child today, with access to so many untested and unqualified sources of content that may or may not be true.  How does one make it through that jungle?  Who can answer the questions honestly?

I may cringe when I see so much violence in an Iron Man movie, but I know it isn't real.  There isn't a real man suffering with no food or water on an island with no one helping him in the Iron Man movie.

Spencer Tracy may not have been real, but Father Flanagan was.  And maybe the character Spencer portrayed was larger than life, so much so that even Father Flanagan himself would have had a hard time living up to the ideal.  And maybe that is a bad thing, to turn people who do good things into saints.  How many young boys thought they could trust anyone in a collar?

But without ideals, where would we be?

Life is hard and not all people we encounter live their lives with the best interest of others as their priority.  They are the large gate people, and they don't wear signs around their necks so we know to avoid them.  We need to be discerning with out trust.

I pray that I can be a guide for others, for the path of life is littered with false realities, and it is not easy to find the narrow gate.