It’s never been easier to pick a side—and never harder to talk across one.
The world is loud. Politicians shout. Commenters pile on. Churches split. Everyone’s angling for a win, for control, for the last word. In the middle of all of it, the idea of actual peace—real, honest, lasting peace—feels almost laughable. We either disengage completely or scream louder than the other guy.
But neither of those options look anything like Jesus.
That’s exactly what pastor and author Rich Villodas is trying to get at in his new book, The Narrow Path. Villodas, who leads New Life Fellowship in Queens, has spent more than two decades sitting with the words of the Sermon on the Mount—not as poetry or metaphor, but as a set of instructions for how to live like Jesus in a world that makes it almost impossible.
“The Sermon on the Mount is the most important teaching in the Bible about what it means to be faithful to Jesus,” he said. “But for a long time, we’ve been told it’s more of a metaphor. That it’s too extreme to actually live.”
He’s not speaking as a detached theologian. When Villodas became a Christian at 19, along with 15 members of his family, he immediately turned to his grandfather—terminally ill, but spiritually grounded—for answers. For eight months, they met almost every day. His grandfather gave him two assignments: memorize as many psalms as possible, and live inside the Sermon on the Mount.
Those two instructions shaped the rest of his life.
The narrow path, Villodas says, isn’t just about personal morality or private spiritual disciplines. It’s about embodying a kind of love that is deeply inconvenient. A love that disrupts. That risks conflict. That chooses truth over comfort. Especially when it comes to injustice.
That’s where Villodas draws a hard line between peacemaking and peacekeeping. One preserves appearances. The other costs you something.
“A peacekeeper is someone who wants to maintain the illusion of peace,” he said. “But a peacemaker is someone who’s willing to speak the truth—even when it’s uncomfortable—and still stay emotionally close.”
You don’t have to look far to see how often the church has chosen the former. Silence on racism. Avoidance on abuse. Shrinking back from hard conversations under the guise of unity. Villodas believes that real peace isn’t possible without truth—and that naming what’s broken is a deeply spiritual act.
The challenge, of course, is that most of us have been trained to do the opposite. Especially Christians. Especially those raised to believe that niceness is next to godliness.
Villodas gets it. He’s a self-proclaimed recovering people pleaser.
“I used to lie a lot—not in malicious ways, but in avoidant ones,” he said. “I wouldn’t say what I really thought. I wouldn’t name my preferences. I’d just keep things smooth.”
It took years of self-reflection, therapy and spiritual practice to start telling the truth. But it’s not about being loud or confrontational for the sake of it.
“Peacemaking isn’t about picking fights,” he said. “It’s about refusing to pretend everything’s fine when it’s not.”
So what does that look like in practice?
According to Villodas, the first step is asking yourself why conflict feels so threatening. What’s the story you’ve internalized? What are you afraid will happen if you’re honest? Second, it takes community—people who can support you, challenge you and remind you you’re not crazy for wanting to have a hard conversation. And third, it takes spiritual grounding. Not just a quiet time app, but a real connection to God that gives you the courage to act even when it’s scary.
The same pattern shows up in how we deal with anger. For some Christians, anger feels off-limits. For others, it’s the whole brand. Neither is healthy.
“Christians don’t think we’re allowed to be angry,” Villodas said. “So we lie. We push it down. We smile through it.”
But culture teaches the opposite—that anger is a right, a power source, a platform. Entire media empires are built on it.
Jesus, unsurprisingly, offers a third way. Villodas points to Paul’s command in Ephesians: “Be angry, but do not sin.”
“Feel it. Name it. But don’t let it define you,” he said. “There’s a difference between anger as a moment and anger as an identity.”
In The Narrow Path, this tension—between feeling and acting, confronting and connecting, grace and truth—runs throughout. Villodas isn’t interested in spiritual platitudes. He’s interested in what happens when Christians stop trying to win culture wars and start living like the kingdom matters more than the algorithm.
So what would happen if more people actually chose the narrow path?
“The Church would be more humble,” he said. “More confessional. More self-aware. We’d love better—not in a sentimental way, but in a way that leads to justice, forgiveness, reconciliation.”
And to be clear, he’s not claiming to have mastered it.
“I fail at it all the time,” he said. “But the teachings of Jesus are my North Star. They keep me trying again.”
The narrow path doesn’t promise safety. It doesn’t guarantee outcomes. It’s costly, disruptive and often lonely. But, Villodas says, it’s the only way that leads to life, and it’s wide enough to carry the truth with you.
