Proper Motivation - Luke 13:22-35

Many of the Jews in Jerusalem were very angry with Jesus for claiming to be the Son of God and tried to stone him to death, but Jesus is not harmed by them and eventually leaves the city. While traveling elsewhere, Jesus is asked, “Lord, are there few that be saved?” I’m not sure if this person is referring to a specific number of people who would be saved like a, “we will only allow 225,000 people into heaven,” like some religions believe, or if it was a more generic question like, “will a lot of people accept the gospel?” or maybe even a “will you only accept the absolute best people into heaven?” Interestingly, this verse is cross-referenced with D&C 121:34 which says, “Behold, there are many called but few are chosen. And why are they not chosen?” Jesus is going to give us the answer right here in verse 35, “Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world, and aspire to the honors of men.”

Over the next several verses Jesus says things like “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.” Then he tells a parable about a master of the house who has people that he has “eaten and drunk in thy presence” and these people ask him to allow them to come into his house and he tells them “I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.” This kind of language gives the impression that people will be wanting to come into heaven ad God will say “no, not good enough.” This isn’t the way that I see heaven at all, heaven will be filled with all those who want to be there and who are working to improve and become more Christ-like. The only ones who will not be in heaven will be those who explicitly choose to go elsewhere. It feels like a massive disconnect between how I view heaven and how Jesus is portraying it here, though I know that I’m not wrong, because the Spirit taught me this. God won’t choose us for heaven, we will choose Him.

I have to be honest, this last part of Luke chapter 13 is a lot of the reason why people feel so distanced from God and such a lack of motivation to keep his commandments. It would be interesting to know if the way that these teachings are written are verbatim what came out of Jesus’ mouth and if so, then was that the speaking style at the time and it had a different connotation then we have now. I wonder if these verses or this way of speaking was changed at all to make it more, I don’t know, maybe aggressive. I can’t seem to find a JST for this part so I have to think that maybe this is what Jesus actually said, and how he actually meant his words to sound and come across to his audience, including us. So that begs the question, why does Jesus adopt this rather depressing mantra of “weeping and gnashing of teeth?”

I’ve been thinking about this concept for the last couple of days and I think that I want to find out more about the psychology behind motivation. I thought a lot about the perspective of someone who was not super interested in repenting or changing my ways and wanted to continue doing what I was doing without consequence. I remember a teacher telling about a statistic once that said something like, by far people are more motivated by fear than they are reward. Thinking about it, it makes sense. When people change their lifestyle to be healthier, what are their reasons? “I don’t want to get sick,” “I don’t want to die,” or “I don’t want to have a heart attack.” Those are all fear based responses. Sometimes people will say something like “I want to feel good,” “I want to have energy” or “I want to wear cute clothes,” but this reasoning is usually secondary to one of the other fear based responses, and rarely do these reasons alone give the sufficient motivation to make grand changes.

Let’s look at this same idea from the angle of the gospel. The vast majority of people look at Mormonism and think, “wow, that is really strict, you have to give up so much.” This is the fear motivation, people are afraid to give up their lifestyle because they don’t see the benefits of changing. I will admit, to see the gospel and the commandments as liberating is a more advanced perspective. It takes a while to get there, and, like I’ve said before, it seems like there are a couple of different playing fields here. There is a level where you see following the commandments as a sacrifice, and then there is a level where you see following the commandments as a blessing. It’s not always one or the other, and there are definitely degrees in between, but there is a primary perspective as mostly one or the other.

Looking at these last verses in Luke chapter 13, we can see Jesus not necessarily saying, “join me or die” but he’s letting people know that there is a time limit, giving them a sense of urgency, and really it makes sense. The longer it takes someone to repent, the more that they are going to have to repent for, and the more pain they will be caused, and because Jesus wants to spare us any unnecessary suffering, he wants us to start repenting and changing our lives as soon as possible. Interestingly, Jesus wants to spare us any pain that we can avoid, but he didn’t do that for Himself. He didn’t only agree to atone for the sins that would be repented of right away, he didn’t agree to only atone for the sins that would be repented of ever. He didn’t say “only sins, no suffering,” and He didn’t put any limitations on just how much he would bear. Jesus atoned for every single one of us, he took on our whole entire existence, he took extra pain just in the off chance that he could spare us any, and that’s really something to consider.