ecause, after all, they are not the Good Shepherd. Nor will they ever be. Even the bravest may one day decide that the danger is too much for their heart. Or that their heart has run out of caring. Or that their life is not worth laying down for yours. Or that the opportunity cost is not worth the paycheck.

No one can ever match up to the Good Shepherd himself—that is the point. If you expect any hired hand to be equal with the Good Shepherd, it is not their sub-par performance that is the issue, but your own misplaced expectations.

When you think of Christianity, do you think of it more in terms of fences or gates?

A fence exists for two reasons: To keep something in and/or to keep something else out. It is protective. We have small dog that we don’t want to escape, so we build a fence with small enough spaces between the pickets so that it cannot slip through. Or we have a garden full of plants enticing to deer, so we build a fence higher than they can jump.

Fences are good when they serve good purposes. They probably even have a place as a metaphor within Christianity.

But fences can also be bad when they serve bad purposes. Especially when they begin to be overly restrictive of those on the inside, which can happen quite easily in any religion.

You can bank on Jesus repeating himself. He is easily misunderstood—a fact which he seems to accept, often with greater patience than you or I might.

“I’m not going to repeat myself!” is a common refrain from exasperated parents. But not from Jesus.

A lot of attention gets paid to Jesus’ antagonism towards the Pharisees. He often seems quite easily perturbed by them, in all their arrogant religiosity. But if you read carefully, there are also times when Jesus seems to slow down, take a breath, and then give them another chance to catch on.

Are everywhere. They exist between you and the movies you watch (or don’t), the music you listen to (or don’t), the foods you eat (or don’t), the books you read (or don’t), the friends you keep (or don’t), the prayers you pray (or don’t).

I say this without judgment. Gatekeepers are simply a part of human culture. They are unavoidable, and possibly in many cases essential. Mediation is necessary because none of us can relate to everyone or everything on our own. We cannot produce or create everything on our own. We cannot connect to or consume everything on our own. Gatekeepers are the bridges that keep us connected.

Sometimes it’s helpful to acknowledge the gatekeepers.

It will come at you from every which way. It wants to get into your head, into your soul, through any means possible. It will attempt to seduce your eyes, bombard your ears, dominate your thoughts, manipulate your heart. And it’s opportunistic, creeping in at any time of its choosing, day or night, during work or rest, alone or with others.

When the world ignores your boundaries, it never comes to give (although that is often the promise), but rather to take. Thieves and robbers.

Are you having trouble seeing? Does life seem blurry to you at best? Are you tired of straining your eyes out into the fog? Do you feel like you’re stumbling around in the dark, bumping your knees on every coffee table, stubbing your toe on every corner? Jesus came to change that.

Do you see everything clearly? Do you catch on to what others seem to miss? Do you feel like you’ve got most (if not all) of it figured out? Can you have a firm grasp on what is true or untrue? Can you quickly determine the right path to take when a decision needs to be made? Jesus came to change that.

Seeing is believing. So do whatever you can to open your eyes. Beware of stubbornly keeping them shut, or even squinted, out of preconceived notions or hand-me-down realities. We all have a weakness for confirmation bias. But there’s nothing quite as thrilling as seeing something that you’ve never seen before, and perhaps never even dreamt was possible.

Hearing is also believing. So do whatever you can to keep your ears wide open. Beware of keeping your world so full and noisy that you can’t hear the quietly important things. Our world is noisy enough on its own. It can be a little unnerving at first, but it’s amazing what can be heard in the silence.

Is a dangerous one. Yet it’s one of the most enticing for religious folk. It’s dangerous because our criteria for who is in and who is out can be easily based more on our own values than on God’s values. Whether it’s out of superiority or fear or anxiety or whatever, we can quickly push out those who have every right to be in as we do.

Those who are thrown out, Jesus seeks and finds.

Those who are rejected, Jesus welcomes and accepts.

Those who are denigrated, Jesus honors.

It’s easy to ignore both logic and signs.

The Pharisees were given a sign that Jesus was sent from God: He miraculously healed a man blind from birth. But they persisted in refusing to believe that he was the same man. They refused to believe the townsfolk, They refused to believe the formerly blind man. They refused to believe his parents.

The Pharisees were also given sound logic that Jesus was sent from God: God only listens to holy people. Such a dramatic healing is unprecedented. Ergo, Jesus must be from God. But they refused this simple logic on the grounds that the blind man himself was “steeped in sin at birth.” Kicking him out for lecturing them.

Saying “yes” to one thing requires saying “no” to something else. We are finite creatures. The answer cannot always be “yes” to everything or everyone. Trying to say yes is gluttony and will ultimately lead to some debilitating manifestation of unhealthiness.

This is foundational to Christian discipleship to Jesus: In order to say “yes” to following Jesus, I must say “no” to following anyone else. Every day. Multiple times a day. Carefully taking note of all the subtle, unconscious ways we take our cues from a myriad of other sources rather than him.