{"id":159,"date":"2013-04-03T05:28:06","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T05:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/?p=159"},"modified":"2013-06-12T05:23:20","modified_gmt":"2013-06-12T05:23:20","slug":"narrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/narrow\/","title":{"rendered":"The Narrow Gate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I dedicate this play about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/pdf\/narrow.pdf\">Narrow Gate<\/a> to a friend of mine who once made the most brilliant reply to a theological question I ever heard.<!--more--> The question was a fairly common one in the conservative Christian circles we belonged to at the time, and had to do with whether a certain requirement was necessary for salvation. I won&#8217;t bore you with the exact details of the question, but my friend&#8217;s answer was, &#8220;Who wants to know?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I could never come close to detailing all the ways in which that question sliced through the issue in useful ways, but here&#8217;s a small sampling:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It raises the counter-question of why the asker is asking the question. Is it so he can feel smug about being among the few who are saved?<\/li>\n<li>It redirects the focus to the asker. (&#8220;You should worry more about whether <em>you&#8217;re<\/em> saved.&#8221;)<\/li>\n<li>It suggests that merely asking the question in earnest fulfills the requirement. (i.e. if you&#8217;re honestly and earnestly\u00a0asking about your own state, you&#8217;re probably fine)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So: Thank you, Tim Lee, for the last line of this play!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I dedicate this play about the Narrow Gate to a friend of mine who once made the most brilliant reply to a theological question I&hellip;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/narrow\/\" title=\"The Narrow Gate\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}