Mat 7:13,14 After the golden rule, the gospel editors placed Christ's description of the path to life. Christ said, "Enter through the narrow gate. The gate that leads to damnation is wide, the road is clear, and many choose to travel it. But how narrow is the gate that leads to life, how rough the road, and how few there are who find it!" Theoretically, the golden rule would define the narrow gate and path. But no one could apply it so meticulously. Instead, a workable path is that which overcomes sin. After sin is overcome, morality is automatic, and life is the result.

It is very instructive that Martin Luther could not find or follow such a path. After giving up, he traded it for one of Paul's quotes which says people are not saved by works but by faith or grace (Rom 11:6) (Eph 2:8,9). The reason why Martin Luther could not find the path is because he was trained as a Catholic priest at a time when the theocracy hit the peak of its arrogance in assuming the Church held the "keys to heaven," which meant sitting in a confessional. Some of the gods would spend days or weeks purifying themselves in a confessional. It doesn't work, because it is only concerned with personalized morality, while overcoming the forces in subconscious minds which cause sin requires socialized morality.

For this reason, the narrow path is approximately humane poverty. Technically, the word poverty should be replaced with powerlessness. Powerlessness makes socialized sin impossible and creates a need to solve problems. Solving problems is the essence of morality. In other words, a person does not need to study philosophy to determine morality in poverty. With some moral instruction and inclinations, poverty does the rest quite automatically. This might seem like a wide path which is easy to find; but no one finds it, they are only born into it. It is almost impossible for anyone to create their own poverty in a constructive way.

A counter-argument to the path that overcomes sin is that God fixes the person in an instant. The false rationalizers know that a magic wand type of argument won't fly, so they claim instead that there isn't really anything there to fix in the humans; it's either something that changes in God's head, or humans just have a wrong way of thinking that can change just by wanting to think differently.

The reason why the instant fixes don't work—neither a magic wand nor a thought correction—is because behavior creates the problem, and therefore, only behavior can fix the problem. Corrupt behavior repeated over time creates psychological conditioning which functions on a stimulus-response basis. Deconditioning requires correct behavior in a suitable environment.

False Prophets

Mat 7:15-23 The moral instruction in Matthew next moves to the subject of false prophets. In essence, it says you can judge a tree by its fruits. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. What is the fruit of false Christians besides ripping people off and creating problems for everyone. False theologies are based on selfishness. Supposedly God or the Holy Spirit thinks it's virtue, while everyone else pays a price for it, because it's nothing but rotten fruit.

The Foundation

Mat 7:24-27 The sermon on the mount is concluded with Christ saying that his words are the foundation of life. This concept of foundation is extremely telling. One thing it means is that we must build upon it. Christ did not complete the task. How could he? There is no completion to acquiring knowledge and living, contrary to Catholic theology which says the Pope can do it all for everyone else (see Veritatis Splendor).

Another thing to notice is that elements of moral truth can be found everywhere, because the lessons of life teach truth. Hindus often say that all of Christ's morality can be found within Hinduism. But the all important difference is that Christ organized and taught the subject in such a way that it doesn't get buried in oceans of trivia or falsehoods, and only the most important basics are taught. This creates a functional foundation to build upon. Mindless preaching does not develop a subject in such an organized way, where the most basic principles are built upon.

Christ taught and expected others to learn and acquire knowledge, which can be found in the lessons of life. Truth and knowledge are organized from most basic principles, which are most important, to less basic applications. Falsehoods have no organization or relationship to objective reality; so there is no evidence that can be studied. For this reason, we can't look into life or the universe and study the evidence for Paul's theology. It's not there. We have to take Paul's word for it, because it's nothing but a contrivance in conflict with the evidence.

Moses

Mat 8:4 Matthew Chapter 8 starts with Christ healing a leper. And then he said, "...offer the gift Moses prescribed. That should be the proof they need." This quote is sometimes used by literalists to show that Mosaic realities still apply. Then they find absurdities in the literature pertaining to Moses and use it to corrupt the truth which Christ taught.

Here are the plain facts about the Moses literature. 1.) It's literature, not Gospel. It was rehashed many times over a thousand years. 2.) Moses was a corrupt and fallible human, not God. Just because God gave him the Ten Commandments does not mean God perfected everything Moses did or said. God does not perfect anything humans do. In satan's world, supposed perfection would still carry the meaning of the context which satan creates in addition to satan's lies on the subject. (Christ didn't need any perfecting.) 3.) Nothing in the Bible is highly reliable besides Christ words, both because of fallibility of the source and the tendency of Scribes to alter Scriptures. (See Peter)

Even though the Mosaic literature was not a reliable blueprint for life, some traditions could be used for limited purposes, as Christ suggested for the leper who was healed. Using a tradition which went back to Moses does not validate everything in Mosaic literature. Christ demonstrated this elsewhere, when he negated the requirement of stoning an adulteress (John 8:1-11), and when he corrected the use of divorce decrees, which Moses allowed (Mat 19:3-12). Of course the literalists (fundamentalists) do almost nothing which Moses described, and they are usually divorcees. After rationalizing the absurd, they defy the obvious.

Natural Heirs

Mat 8:11,12 The next story is about a centurion whose servant was ill. A centurion was a Roman soldier not a Jew. Christ healed the servant saying, "Many will come from the east and the west and will find a place at the banquet in the kingdom of God with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while the natural heirs of the kingdom will be driven out into the dark."

This lesson is about power mongering and the world which satan owns and controls. Corrupt persons push themselves into positions of power, and nowhere is this easier than religion due to an absence of accountability mechanisms. While people from all walks of life arrive at God's banquet, the religious authorities (natural heirs) do not.

This is a qualified verdict. It doesn't say that all religious authorities are the same, just that so many are corrupt that a generalization can be made. Secondly, it doesn't say that those who are "driven out" end up in the permanent hell. They could be in some temporary place of rejection to be allowed into the saved world at a lower level later. This would be like the purgatory which Catholics describe. Some variation of it could exist, though there are a wide variety of experiences in the spirit world.

A similar example is the rich man who ate in splendor and dressed in purple. He went to a place of pain, while the leper at his gate went to "the bosom of Abraham" (Luke 16:19-31). The place of pain may or may not have been the permanent hell where evil spirits go.

Forgiving

Mat 9:1-8 When a paralytic was brought to Christ on a mat, Christ said, "Have courage son, your sins are forgiven." When the Scribes said only God can forgive sins, Christ said he had authority to forgive sins.

There is an implication in Pauline theology that forgiving is how sin is ended. Forgiving is one small element of a large and complex subject of sin. But Paul's rationalizers want to make it the whole subject, as if forgiving ended the whole problem of sin in some mysterious way. So the concept of forgiving needs to be evaluated.

Forgiving is something that occurs in the mind of the forgiver. The only thing it has to do with the other person is in his expectations for the future. If God is doing the forgiving, then the person can expect to not end up in hell. That should be some encouragement, which is why Christ said, "Have courage..." It doesn't say the person can no longer sin. But Paul's rationalizers claim (to various degrees) that the forgiving ends the sin and they then forever do the infallible work of the Holy Spirit with no other responsibilities for overcoming sin.

The correct perspective is that sin is caused by developed forces and warped realities in the subconscious mind, and correcting that problem is a slow process of following a path that is hard to find and follow (Mat 7:14). The path is humane poverty with moral concerns, where a person learns to solve problems and relate properly to other persons.

The only way forgiving applies to lesser persons than God is that there is not supposed to be any opposite of forgiving with moral persons. The opposite of forgiving is vengeance or debt creation, which are corruptions. So Christ said people are supposed to forgive from their hearts (Mat 18:35). See web page on forgiving.

A related argument is that humans cannot accuse someone of sin while God is so forgiving. Supposedly, humans have no responsibility to humans. Who are they trying to convince, if they have no responsibility to humans? Do they break human laws? Christ said to make friends with this world's use of goods, so that when they fail, you have friends in heaven (Luke 16:9)(Mat 19:21). The only way humans can not have responsibilities to humans is to exist in isolation from them, which never happens.

Sickness

Mat 9:9-13 When Christ was eating at Matthews home, there were tax collectors and "sinners" present. The Pharisees objected. Christ said that sick people need a doctor, and he has "...come to call, not the self-righteous, but sinners." This shows that Christ viewed sin as similar to a disease. This means sin is a developed corruption in the mind, not some abstract way of viewing things which can be pretended away, as some persons claim, particularly Paul's rationalizers.

New Cloth

Mat 9:14-17 When Christ was asked why his disciples were not fasting like John's disciples or the Pharisees, Christ said wedding guests cannot go into mourning while the groom is with them. Then he said new cloth cannot be sewed onto old cloth, it will create a tear.

This is a question of appropriateness and context. Christianity is so different from religions of the past, including Judaism, that it has its own meaning and context. This fact is ignored by an army or rationalizers who try to tear down the meaning of Christ's teaching. They try to equate everything in the Old Testament to Christ's words, as if nothing changed from Old Testament times to New. Everything Changed. God came down and taught the wisdom of the universe. It doesn't fit onto the worn out fabric of any other theology.

Certainly, there was some truth in the past, and it remains the truth. But the arbitraries, ignorance and corruptions of the past cannot be used to degrade the new religion, as rationalizers try to do. Paul tries to draw the religion out of some primordial swamp of absurdities.

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