The ‘narrow way’ of relationships

Jesus talks in Matthew 7:13-14, the Sermon on the Mount, about the need to go through the narrow gate into the narrow way of life, which is Road Less Travelled.  This applies to many aspects of our lives, and it is certainly not the path chosen by many.

It’s the least chosen path because it’s hard and countercultural, and it promises no reward, except that by faith we know it to be right.

It’s hard to let other people win, to give other people the benefit of the doubt, to be the butt of innuendo, to seem to lose.  I say “seem” because when we get this right from a relational context, our very real vulnerability cares nothing for ridicule, for pride, for castigation, because our focus is on a bigger, more eternally significant prize.

It’s a prize this world cannot give us.  It’s a prize won by faith to do what people don’t like doing.

Somehow, by the narrow way in our relationships, getting on with people, and winning them over the longer haul matters more significantly.

But I don’t expect many will understand.  Or if they do, to bother.

We make much of many things in this life that are truly unimportant, even though they seem important, and certainly those temptations we give into seem to make sense at the time—to have something over someone, to manipulate and have our way even if they don’t get theirs.

There’s something so much more important, when all things are considered, when we give up what we cannot keep—the little wins where others lose—to gain what we cannot lose.  When we prefer to build comradery instead of getting our own way, even as we suffer indignities of people offending us, we surprise people enough for them to say, “Wow, there really is something different about this one—they seemed like a ‘doormat’ I could walk over, but just look at how little it matters to them.  And they seem to be ever concerned about me, and look at how I’ve taken advantage of them!”

We certainly won’t win over the narcissist, but we will win over the normal Joe and Joanne.

It takes a while of consistently going the narrow way relationally before people see the integrity that underpins it.  And if they think we’re fools for this allegiance to what’s right, let them laugh—we’re the ones, the aggressed who don’t hit back, who show most power working in our lives.

This is the life of Christ in the believer who knows the strength they bear in not getting offended, but in turning that offence to the Kingdom’s advantage by showing that the offence doesn’t conquer us.

If we’re never offended, we prove safe to know.  Ultimately what happens is we prove trustworthy, and when (not if) their moment of need comes, we then prove useful.

Time and again, people reach out to people they know who are unpanicked by their vulnerability.  We don’t show true strength UNTIL we’re vulnerable.

See how important it is that we maintain our poise especially when we’re most tempted to take umbrage with those who seem to despise us?

Understand though that at the very point of being tempted to react, we must respond differently.  The response required is one that most people are disarmed by.  Such a response can even seem weird, like, “Why aren’t you sticking up for yourself?”

And yet it takes real strength of character to stay poised in that moment, to keep believing in what God might be doing in the longer term by not becoming offended.

This wisdom is about losing battles but winning wars to the furtherance of peace.

Isn’t it just the power of God that converts a person who would violate us time in again?  

Again, it’s not the narcissist, but the person with potential who’ll eventually see that our character is trustworthy.  And we won’t know the one from the other unless we give them a chance.

I guess when it’s all said and done, going the narrow way of relationships is about believing in the potential of people, of giving them a chance of being better for themselves and others.

If we aggress people who aggress us, when will it end.  No, it must end with us.  We must put down our weapons and believe that our influence might work in them.

Photo by Keith Hardy on Unsplash