The exam results days in Scotland and the rest of the UK were nine days apart. Young people learnt how well they had done in their SQCs and GCSEs respectively. Although I’m selfishly in a very comfortable position of not being bothered – neither personally nor as a parent – the subject was unavoidable unless I had gone completely off-grid. Because I didn’t, I was exposed to the relentless coverage of the results in the media. So, I know that there were students whose dreams have come true; there were those whose results fell below their expectations and – last but not least – students who hadn’t expected much and were either positively surprised at getting better results or just accepted the inevitable. All that can be a topical illustration of Jesus’s advice in today’s gospel: “Try your best to enter by the narrow door, because, I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed.” That was His response to the question raised by an acquaintance: “will there be only a few saved?”
In the broadest cultural sense, religion is a more or less structured way of dealing with the unknown. Since time immemorial humankind has faced various challenges, from cosmic – like the solar eclipse – through natural disasters like floods, droughts, earthquakes and so on to personal ones, such as physical or mental illnesses. Without much or any human control over those phenomena, belief in gods was the only available way of understanding the complicated world around them, as well as giving a sense of a certain influence over uncontrollable events by pleading with gods and making sacrificial offerings. No matter how illusory such control was, it was better than nothing; even if it didn’t directly change the course of events, it gave a sense that we had tried to do something. Theoretically, with ever-developing knowledge and scientific understanding of the physical world, the need for such a kind of religion should gradually diminish and eventually vanish. Superficially this is what has happened in this country, where self-declared religious affiliation has dropped to around 45 per cent of the UK population. However, there’s anecdotal evidence that various forms of superstition are common even among those who don’t hold religious beliefs. When you think about it, superstition is a primitive form of religion; it’s a belief that certain actions can influence the outcome of things beyond our control or stop them from happening. Superstitions, astrology and other made-up “spiritualities” are surprisingly rife in a society that claims to be irreligious. Moreover, it’s ineffective and – at best – offers a placebo effect.
On the other hand, monotheistic religions have evolved over time, adopting our ever-expanding knowledge and adapting to the ever-changing cultural landscape. It’s a little-known fact, conveniently overlooked by modern zealous atheists, that many scientific developments and discoveries have been made by religious people. Theologically developed Christian faith doesn’t pretend to explain the intricacies of the universe, readily accepting that this is the subject of scientific research. Such friendly and coexisting separation of science and religious faith was most comprehensively presented as the official teaching of the Church by St John Paul II’s encyclical “Faith and Reason” published on 14th September 1998. Christian faith offers us insight into spiritual matters beyond the physical or material. Scientific knowledge offers us an understanding of “how the world works” but struggles to offer us an understanding of “why things happen the way they do”. Earlier on I listed challenges faced by humankind since time immemorial, but I deliberately omitted one: death. This has been and still remains the main challenge we all face, and this is one of the hardest to make sense of. The question in today’s gospel “will there be only a few saved?” referred to that uneasy unavoidable prospect.
Jesus’ answer dealt with two misconceptions. In no particular order, the first one was and still is quite common: the assumption that salvation will be granted to a limited number of people who belong to a specific group or religion. By definition, everyone else will be condemned. For Jesus’ contemporaries, the People of Israel were those selected few. Sadly, Christians quickly adopted such thinking and when the inevitable divisions had happened, mutual condemnation quickly followed, sometimes accompanied by violence and murder. The second misconception Jesus dealt with in today’s gospel was the excessive interest in the afterlife at the expense of everyday life. It’s very tempting to focus on religious practices as guarantors of eternal life while neglecting those around us: ‘Then you will find yourself saying, “We once ate and drank in your company; you taught in our streets” but he will reply, “I do not know where you come from. Away from me, all you wicked men!” The point of religious practices isn’t having a sense of self-satisfaction and superiority, but rather learning what it means “to enter by the narrow door” and how to practise this in the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay