The Narrow Gate and What We Should Say to the Next Generation — English Edition
A conversation on American liberty and pioneer spirit, concern over the fading practice of patience, Korea’s ‘We Can Do It’ era, and how an older generation might speak to the young without condemning them.
The Culture That Raised America
I have been thinking about the strengths and weaknesses of American culture. America has many strengths rooted in the New Testament. From the Puritan spirit and the pioneer spirit to its long pursuit of liberty and reason, this culture helped lift America to first place in the world.
A Biblical View of Humanity and Institutions of Liberty
Strictly speaking, America was not founded as a theocracy with the New Testament as its constitution. Yet Puritan faith, a biblical understanding of the human person, natural-rights philosophy, and Enlightenment reason worked in tension and in partnership to shape its moral foundation.
The belief that human rights come from the Creator developed into the principle that government does not freely grant or withdraw them. Work understood as vocation, the pioneer’s willingness to make a new path, voluntary associations, and the capacity for institutional self-correction also strengthened American dynamism.
Human beings deserve liberty because they possess dignity, but power must be limited because human beings are imperfect.
The Narrow Gate and the Patience I No Longer See
After living in America for more than twenty years, I have also begun to notice its weaknesses.
I do not see many young people who treasure and practice the biblical wisdom, ‘Enter through the narrow gate.’ It also seems that fewer young people are trying to engrave on their hearts the long view expressed in the saying, ‘Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.’
An Environment That Makes Patience Hard to Practice
The narrow gate does not mean choosing suffering merely because it is painful. It means refusing to follow the broad road simply because the majority takes it, and choosing what is true and right even when it brings inconvenience or loss.
Today’s digital platforms reward immediate response rather than waiting, while consumer culture encourages satisfaction rather than restraint. It is fairer to say not that the young were born without patience, but that opportunities to practice patience have diminished while the environment trains them toward immediate reward.
Nor have all young people walking the narrow road disappeared. Because they often live quietly in families, churches, workshops, small businesses, military service, and places of service, they may not appear on the central stage of popular culture.
To be unseen is not the same as not existing.
When Everyone in Korea Was Running
When I was young in Korea, some leaders taught and practiced an indomitable spirit expressed in the words, ‘If we try, we can do it.’ At times they even seemed to lack balance.
Looking back after fifty years, I realize that everyone in society was running. The nation’s remarkable advance in those years was therefore almost inevitable.
An Era of Collective Action, Not a Mere Slogan
In that period, ‘We can do it’ was not simply optimistic language. It was closer to a collective command to move through poverty, the wounds of war, and a scarcity of resources. Leaders emphasized growth, construction, exports, and education, while business owners, workers, farmers, and parents ran toward a shared future from different stations in life.
There were also heavy costs: long working hours, authoritarianism, neglect of safety and the environment, and sacrifices within family life. Both achievement and cost should be remembered. Yet the presence of those costs should not make us dismiss the diligence and sacrifice of that generation.
Drive without balance can be dangerous, but balance without drive may move nothing forward.
What Should We Say to Young Americans?
I wonder what we should say to young Americans in order to guide them toward the direction we have discussed. Is there something mistaken in the way I am thinking about this?
Witness Rather Than Condemnation
The concern itself is not mistaken. It is the responsible question of a first-generation immigrant who regards America’s future as partly his own concern. Yet it is better not to begin with the judgment that young people today have no patience. High housing and education costs, unstable employment, and the difficulty of forming a family are real burdens.
Nor should Korea’s ‘We can do it’ be transferred as a promise that effort guarantees success. We need language that acknowledges limits without abandoning responsibility: not everything can be achieved by willpower, but without sustained effort even many achievable things will remain undone.
The biblical narrow gate is also not a technique for obtaining wealth or status. It is the road of choosing truth and righteousness despite loss. Patience is not merely a tool for enduring until success arrives; it is the character that remains faithful even when the result differs from what was hoped.
We should not idealize the past, and we should recognize young people who still study, work, serve, and care for their families quietly. Adults who ask for patience must also accept responsibility for fair opportunity, just reward, and institutions that permit recovery after failure.
If we wish to teach the narrow gate, adults must first be seen entering it themselves.
The Testimony of Someone Who Has Lived in Two Countries and Two Eras
Sun Kim witnessed a poor Korea rising because nearly everyone worked toward the future, and then lived in America for more than twenty years, observing both the gifts and the dangers of liberty and abundance. That experience may carry more weight as honest testimony than as an instruction telling the young how they must live.
I have lived in two countries and through two very different eras. I saw a poor society rise because it believed in the future, and I have seen an affluent society begin to forget the meaning of patience. What I learned is that liberty does not endure without self-restraint, and prosperity does not pass to the next generation without labor.
Preserving the Question Before Fixing the Conclusion
Thank you for this thoughtful counsel. I feel that I need to meditate further on this subject. Yet because I have noticed some decline in my memory, I would like to preserve the development of our thinking so far as a record of conversation.
A Record with an Open Conclusion
This conversation is best preserved not as a finished prescription but as a question that remains open to further meditation. It recognizes the achievements of American culture while worrying about the depletion of its moral capital, and it honors Korea’s growth experience without ignoring the sacrifices of that era.
It finally turns from comparing and scolding the young toward awakening strength they may not yet have discovered. The task is not to guarantee success but to bear witness to the value of a faithful life; not to impose the narrow gate, but to let someone who has walked a difficult road explain why it mattered.
“The next generation need not imitate the one before it. Yet it must rediscover, in its own time, the old truth that freedom requires self-restraint, achievement requires patience, and a meaningful life is rarely found on the easiest road. We need not choose hardship merely because it is hard. But when the right road is difficult, we should not abandon it merely because an easier road is open.”