WHY IS WALKING THE "NARROW PATH" THAT JESUS TAUGHT EVEN NECESSARY? WHY DON'T WE JUST HAVE THE ABUNDANT LIFE RIGHT NOW?

Jesus said that he came so that we might have life more abundantly and to have it, he said: “… to you I give the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven. But if God is perfect and we are “children of God, made in the image and likeness of God, why don’t we just have abundant life? Why do we have to ‘ask, and seek and knock’? Why do we have to change and “become as little children’? Why is it necessary to put Jesus’ commandments into practice as he frequently admonished us to do?

Jesus also spoke about the ‘narrow path that few find’, implying there is a distance from where we are to where we need to be. Jesus also made it very clear where the narrow path leads when he said:

“That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. John 17: 21-23

Jesus made it very clear that the path he taught is the path that leads to oneness with Jesus and with the Father.

How did we fall out of oneness in the first place?

If we carefully consider and examine the probable events and decisions that caused us to become separate from the Creator, it will be much easier to find and implement the steps necessary to return to oneness with our Creator. Jesus’ teachings will make more sense as we will be pondering the meaning of Jesus’ teachings  aligned with the purpose for which the teachings were given.

Surely the Creator did not create his children whom he loves with infinite love and desires to see grow in Spirit to be in a state of consciousness where they see themselves as separate from God and separate from their neighbor. Yet it is self-evident that the vast majority of the eight billion inhabitants of this planet are in a state of consciousness where they see themselves as separate beings – separate from the Creator and separate from their neighbors. Many of them completely believing that it is possible to harm other without harming themselves.

Somehow, we humans have lost our sense of oneness with the Creator and with creation. But how? The story of the Fall of Man in Genesis provides the answers.  

First, Genesis states that God created man in his own image. What does that mean? The self-evident characteristics of the Creator are 1) The Creator is self-aware. It knows what it is and it’s capabilities. 2) The Creator has imagination. It can create images in its mind that don’t currently exist. And 3) The Creator has a will to create and in creating becoming more than it is (Self-transcendence) – it is never satisfied with status quo and is always seeking to express more of all that it is. Therefore, it follows that we the children of God, made in the image and likeness of the Creator, must also embody these three basic traits.

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