The Narrow Road

I believe it was April 1968 when I gave a sermon to a bunch of my fellow Cub Scouts. We were all at a Camporee in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. We spent a weekend trying out our various Scout skills, such as tying knots and sending messages by Morse code. (As the brainy kid, my job was to memorize the Code.) Our troop leader was a Presbyterian minister (the departed but not forgotten Alfonso Luke Fritz), so it was his troop that ended up with the responsibility of leading the Camporee church service. And Mr. Fritz knew that I was eager to give the sermon. The leaves were fresh and green, and the wildflowers bursting. So I, future botanist, based my sermon upon the natural world around us.

I chose a passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Matthew’s version. (I read the Bible slowly and savored it, so I hadn’t yet gotten to Mark’s and Luke’s versions.) Matthew 7: 13-14 says, in one modern translation, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

And that, I said, is what we cub scouts were doing when we went hiking around on mountain trails looking at birds and wildflowers. We had left behind the smooth highways and went on the steep trails. Our reward was to see beautiful things that you cannot see from a car or a highway. But it was no good for us to just walk along and glance around us. We had to closely observe the things around us, to notice how many different kinds of trees and wildflowers there were. One of the wonders of Scout lore was that we learned you can eat the stems of a species of spring wildflower called miner’s lettuce, which I now know as Claytonia perfoliata. A steep and narrow path is no better than a broad and smooth one if all we do is walk on it. By just walking, you would never see the plant at all.

I cannot remember much else that I said in that sermon, which was not very long. But I now reflect on what I did not say. I did not say anything about where the path was leading. I was not thinking about the direction of the path, toward Heaven or Hell, but rather the attitude of the person upon the path, the attitude of a person who would choose a steep and narrow path rather than taking the easy way out. I just assumed that the narrow path led heavenward and a smooth path led the other way. I also did not say anything about doctrinal beliefs. The path to salvation was not narrow and steep in terms of requiring knowledgeable assent to complex and confusing doctrines. God did not, I believed, hide truth amidst complexity, so that a sincere seeker could easily stumble into Hell. God did not make the path steep and challenging for its own sake. The path was a challenge which the hiker takes upon himself or herself.

Soon thereafter I became a fundamentalist. But after many years I have returned to a simple faith, which many consider agnostic, since I do not have any defined doctrinal beliefs. But that simple faith is to take the path less traveled and to closely observe the wonders of nature revealed by it. The path to salvation, whatever that is, is not a maze of doctrines but an attitude of expectancy. Whenever my wife and I take a walk out in the natural world (or whatever version of it one can find in suburban Tulsa), we expect to see something beautiful and interesting among the trees, birds, and flowers.