Jesus on The Road Less Traveled

Recently I happened to read the famous book by Scott Peck, ‘The Road Less Traveled’. Many people have talked of it. I just wanted to read it myself. Today let me reflect on Jesus as the person who has traveled on the road less traveled. He never chose to take the trodden path. 

The first attitude of a person who travels on a road less traveled is ‘delaying the gratification’. To delay the gratification means to postpone the pleasure of life for something more valuable. To delay the gratification means to give priority to ‘what the heart sees’. What we see with the eyes, for example, money, job, education, car, jewels, property, etc., give us a gratification. A gratification that we feel we are greater than the other. But ‘what the heart sees’ is equal to all of humanity – birth, love, life, death, poverty, compassion, hunger, justice, cruelty. Jesus always saw with his heart. He understood, ‘there is more to seeing than what meets the eye’. When the people saw a widow in the temple, Jesus saw in her an attitude of generosity. When the people saw the twelve men as fishermen, tax collectors, good-for-nothing fellows, he saw them as men who are dynamic and will change the world with their courageous faith. When the people saw sickness, death, impurity as curses from God, Jesus saw them as the grounds for working wonders. He never gratified himself with immediate glory. When Satan offered on the mountain an easy of becoming a Messiah he delayed the gratification and embraced the cross. When the satisfied people wanted to make him a king he delayed the gratification until he accepted the thief at the side of the cross acknowledged, ‘when you come in glory remember me’. The heart of Jesus saw everything differently. It always delayed the gratification. The first lesson that the heart of Jesus teaches us is ‘to delay the gratification’.

The second attitude is to ‘be responsible’. The first sin of humanity was ‘to disown responsibility’. Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent. The serpent blamed God. Nobody took responsibility in the beginning. Cain took no responsibility for his brother Abel. Joseph’s 11 brothers took no responsibility when they sold him in the hands of Ishmaelites traveling down to Egypt. The only sin of the Israel that the prophets condemned was that the people never were responsible. To be responsible means ‘to own one’s decisions, one’s words, one’s actions in relation to the other’. Jesus always felt himself responsible for the other. Theologically speaking his very incarnation-crucifixion-resurrection is that he felt responsible for the sins of the humanity. Each moment of his life we can see this virtue in Jesus. When the wine ran short in the wedding at Cana he felt responsible. When the people were hungry in the desert he felt responsible. When the widow’s only son was carried dead in the streets of Nain he felt responsible. To be responsible is to do the necessary and required action. Many relationships fail. Many commitments break. Many withdraw. Because they have no courage to say ‘I did it’. This attitude makes us ‘respond’. We are called today to be responsible.

Thirdly, the commitment to truth. It is this commitment that boosts our responsibility. At all costs remain committed to the truth. In the movie Passion of the Christ, Pilate asks his wife Claudia, ‘what is truth? Do you see it? Can you make me see it?’ Claudia responds, ‘if you do not see by yourself nobody could show it to you’. Truth is what we are. That is why the Indian philosophical systems rightly correlate Sat-Cit-Ananda. Our being, our consciousness, our bliss all are united in truth. Jesus’ being, consciousness, bliss was always on truth. ‘I came to testify to the truth’, he firmly told it before Pilate who asked the million-dollar question, ‘Quid est veritas?’ ‘What is truth?’. ‘Be true to your own self. That must follow as the night follows the day. You will not be false to anyone’, says Shakespeare. 

The fourth quality of a person who walks in the road less traveled is ‘being balanced’. ‘Virtue stands in the middle,’ says Aristotle. The greatest fault of our generation is ‘we are never balanced’. Anything we do, we do extremely. When we love we love so much that we end hurting each other. When we talk, we talk so much that it loses all meaning. When we drink, we drink too much. When we eat, we eat too much till we get sick. We make one suffer at the cost of the other. The balanced people never sacrifice one at the cost of the other. Jesus was balanced. He knew the joy of a relationship of . He knew the pain of loneliness of a desert. He could strike the balance at all moments of his life. 

Jesus is the embodiment ‘traveling on the road less traveled’: ‘delaying the gratification, taking responsibility, being committed to truth and being balanced’. We, who are close to his heart, shall give it a try. The road which everybody travels is easy but does not make us unique. Let us remember, ‘the winner stands alone’.

Two roads diverged in a wood,

And I, I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

(Robert Frost)