Every Road Forks-Which Choice Will You Make?

20 March 2026  Wisdom 2:1, 12-22

Friday of the Fourth Week in Lent

“To us He is the censure of our thoughts; merely to see Him is a hardship for us, because His life is not like that of others, and different are His ways.” (Wisdom 2:14-15) 

One of the things that people despise, have always despised, about Jesus is how He calls out our lunacy, and names the crazy irrationality and sinfulness of the things we take for granted.

People who know better say that men can become women, and should be allowed to play in women’s sports. People who know better order soldiers to open fire on unarmed protesters in Tehran, and kill 32,000. Bill Maher, who knows better, finally owned the charge that abortion is murder: “It kind of is,” he said. “I’m just OK with that. I am. There’s eight billion people in the world. I’m sorry, we won’t miss you” (12 April 2024). 

People wind up in hell only because they choose to be there, because Jesus has been the censure of their thoughts, and they cannot bear the hardship of even seeing Him, much less begging for His mercy, and then receiving His life in our hands: “This is my body.”

We didn’t get to places like this in just one step. We got there a little bit at a time – a few little justifications here, a few little obfuscations there, a little turning of the head so we can’t really see, some clever moral sleight of hand thrown in for good measure, and the moral sense we all have is numbed. Bill Maher says, “I’m OK with that,” and we sigh, muttering, “Well, OK.”

But Jesus is the censure of such thoughts. “Merely to see Him is a hardship for us, because His life is not like that of others, and different are His ways” (Wisdom 2:15). He makes us feel the sting and stain of our hypocrisy, and we hate Him for that. The sting and stain of sin are supposed to be inducements to repentance. We have turned them into symptoms of wrong thinking that we can correct simply by redefining some terms like right and wrong: “That may be wrong for you, but its not for me.” “You have to understand that things are different now, and we have to change with the times.”

The way to mercy, which is to say the way to heaven, goes through the sting and stain. We have to feel them and know their inner agony. The way around them goes to hell. C.S. Lewis was right – “We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle, and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the center.” We are rather living in a world where every road forks into two, and each fork diverges again, and so we must make a choice (The Great Divorce, p. viii). People wind up in hell only because they choose to be there, because Jesus has been the censure of their thoughts, and they cannot bear the hardship of even seeing Him, much less begging for His mercy, and then receiving His life in our hands: “This is my body.”

We are in a thicket of paths, and only one leads to heaven. There is no “right for you, but not for me.” That path leads, little bit by little bit, to the diabolical confusion that is the aroma of our days. “He calls blest the destiny of the just, and boasts that God is His Father. Let us see whether His words be true” (Wisdom 2:16-17). Let us see, indeed. Quite literally everything depends on making the right choice.