Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine,
lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you to pieces.
We should not give that which is most precious to those unwilling or unable to appreciate it. Neither we nor they will benefit from such a transaction. These moments will be clear to us because our audience, while hungry, will not be specifically interested in the holiness or value of what we want to offer. In order for us to even communicate our message in these cases will feel like a disservice to the truth of the Gospel. It is not just that our audience won't receive it a spirit of genuine openness and interest. Our presentation of it will reveal how we ourselves relate to it. If we are willing to throw it forth into a context where it is more likely to be misunderstood, criticized, and devoured, than appreciated it will imply that even we don't really care about it that much. We wouldn't treat something we found to be truly holy or beautiful in that way. Yet we know that those who at one moment come across as dogs or swine may in the future be able to receive like children from the family table. Obviously, perfection is never required. But it is the very desire for spiritual pearl of the Gospel itself that transforms us and gradually makes us capable of receiving it. And so, perhaps, we shouldn't be too quick to write people off as dogs or swine. Without throwing our pearls in their path recklessly we can still let them see the way they catch the light of the sun and see how they respond. Are they humanized by what they see and hear? Do they seem capable of a genuine response? In this case we should not hold back or hesitate to share our treasure.
Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.
This is the Law and the Prophets.
We want others to want the pearl of great price. But we don't want to put them in a situation where they further alienate themselves from its promise. And so we share what we have, not as a weapon with which to bludgeon them, but as a genuine treasure, insofar as they can receive it. If we were without the pearl ourselves we would want others to help us understand and appreciate its beauty so that we could receive it properly. Thus this is what we are called to do for others.
for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction,
and those who enter through it are many.
How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life.
And those who find it are few.
There are almost infinite numbers of wrong answers to the question of how we ought to live. And although there are many ways of expressing it, there is ultimately only one right answer. Jesus himself is the only way to salvation. And so to find the narrow road we must respond to his invitation to follow him to the degree that we become aware of it. He himself is the way, the gate, the only name given under heaven by which we may be saved. It is by availing ourselves of the grace of his gift of the Holy Spirit we become the right shape to pass along the road and through the gate to life. The gate is Jesus-sized and the Spirit make us so much like him that we too can pass through it. We cannot follow the masses, for they may well be heading in the wrong directions. This story is not a Choose You Own Adventure. But the conclusion of such stories usually fails to satisfy. We are merely secondary coauthors of a story that God is writing. And his stories are always more beautiful than anything we could come up with ourselves.
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