“If the road you are on is easy, it’s likely you’re going the wrong way.”
— Terry Goodkind
Let me start with a disclaimer. None of this is easy. There’s no magical, quick way to spiritual growth, better relationships, or a life that means something. It takes time, effort, humility, and a willingness to admit we’re playing a role in our own problems.
I know that one from experience. The root of many of my own problems was one thing: me.
That’s where our song The Wrong Way comes from. The questions in it are aimed at me first.
Video premieres Thursday on YouTube.
The Illusion of Easy
We live in a world that sells us free, now, easy, and guaranteed. We hear it so often that we’re preprogrammed to look for the easy way. But if you’ve been through anything hard, you already know there is no easy. A good education, a marriage, a family, a faith: anything of real value takes sacrifice, discipline, and humility.
Jesus warned us first:
Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matthew 7:13-14 ESV)
That’s the chorus of our song:
If our road is easy
We’ve been led astray
There’s still time to turn around
We’re going the wrong way
You Know What’s Easy? Sin.
Being selfish is one of the easiest things in the world. Criticizing other people is easy too. Blaming someone else for our mistakes is easier than owning them. Looking in the mirror and working on our own flaws is the hard road. Or, as the song puts it:
Pointing fingers
Always comes cheap
When we face the mirror
We’re digging deep
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? … You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:3,5 ESV)
We can still help our brother with his speck. Just be gentle. When you take a speck out of someone’s eye, you don’t use a shovel.
The easy road isn’t always the one that looks dark. Sometimes it’s just the one that’s all about me.
The Other Kind of Easy
There is one kind of easy worth paying attention to: the things that come easily to you but not to others. Those are clues to the gifts God put in you. Using the gift is the easy part. Giving it away in service to others is where it gets hard.
The gift flows. The purpose costs. That’s the narrow road.
Where We Live It
In residency, I assisted a pulmonologist performing a bronchoscopy for a longtime smoker in his fifties. We found a tumor. The pulmonologist looked at me when we saw the mass, and we both knew the patient didn’t have many months left. As we finished, still lightly sedated, he said, “Yup, I made a decision. Doc, I’m giving up smoking.” That stayed with me. Doing something about my purpose isn’t something I can put off until I don’t have much time left.
I see a lot of people, me included, pouring time and energy into things of questionable value. We say we have bigger fish to fry. What I found in my own life was that all those “bigger fish” I was frying were really minnows on matchsticks.
So I’m asking myself first, and maybe you can ask it too: where in my life am I choosing easy because it’s about me? And what comes easily to me that God gave me to give away?
Go deeper · Book 1 of The Authentic Self Series
Brave The Wave
Chapter 5, “The Illusion of Easy,” is where this song started: the narrow gate, the log and the speck, and why the things that come easily to you are a clue to your authentic self.
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