“You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless. You are the light of the world-like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.” -Matt 5:13-16
This passage has been on my mind a lot. Jesus describes us as salt and light. I looked up the meaning and function of salt; knowing from my own experience that salt functions as a preservative and as a means of adding flavor, but wanting to see if there was more meaning available. I found that the greek word for salt is halas, which figuritively is another word for prudence. I looked up prudence and saw that it originated in 1340 as a way to describe “wisdom, to see what is virtuous, or what is suitable or profitable.” So now, instead of having only two interpretations of our function, I now found three. The idea of us as salt really fascinates me. First, we are a preservative to stall or stymie the natural (or in context of God’s ideal purpose of His creation, unnatural) process of moral, social, and physical degradation in this world. We are like salt put into meat in order for it to keep longer than its natural shelf life. The same holds true for our world, due to the fallen nature of our existence, our world will rot all the more rapidly with our absence. One only has to consider when Christ will come and rapture His people from the earth before it ends. Once he removes a vast majority of believers it only takes a possible seven years for the world to come to an end.
Second, we are to add flavor to the world. What sort of flavor do we as Christians have to offer? Salt, eaten by itself, is rather unpleasant, but given a context or a medium through which to operate, it becomes more palatable. Of course this analogy is not perfect, but a mere paradigm to perhaps ascertain a certain truth to our purpose here on earth. If we as believers remove ourselves from society and the means by which to influence it, then we are like salt that has lost its flavor. Salt takes meat and vegetables and things like french fries and enhances the flavor. I think we are obligated to enhance the flavor of the things our society consumes, things like art, music, movies, conversation, philosophical thought, science, etc. When we only offer the same thing the world already has, with an application of Christian lacquer, is it any wonder that the world would rather keep its own inventions? Putting a cross or a cliched Christian euphemism on a shirt, cup, bumper sticker, etc. does not make it Christian, just as putting salt on a plate by itself doesn’t make it filet mignon. Can’t we recapture the counter-cultural essence of what makes the Message of God so transformational instead of diluting it into just another sub-cultural mimic of the world in which we live? We have a God-given ability to imagine, and we most bear the image of God when we exercise our inherent creativity. We need to put ourselves back into society and offer a flavor to the society we have effectively removed ourselves from. If we don’t, then we shouldn’t be surprised when our society tosses out all things Christ-like with the junk we have for Jesus.
Finally, we are supposed to be the prudence that salts the wisdom and discretion of our age. Sure, we rally to the causes of preventing gay marriage, keeping the Ten Commandments in government buildings, speaking out against Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Code, but is that the best prudence we have to offer? What do you think better compels people to take as true the claims of Christ: our railings against what we see as enemies to our belief, or the steadfast, consistent application of the prudence, discretion, and wisdom offered by our Lord and Savior? Even if we win out in these things mentioned previously, do we really expect transformation to take place in our neighbors? Is that loving them? I believe that the only way to expect prudence from others is to exercise prudence ourselves. That’s one of the vital ways we keep our flavor as well. As I talk with students at UNC-W, students who will be the leaders to come, one of the consistent arguments I hear against Christianity is the apathy believers have in living out their faith through the keeping of the commands of God. Nothing discredits the claims of Christ faster than the walk-without-talk lifestyle that has become the norm of Christianity. I do not expect this argument to ever cease, as I recognize our inability to ever perfectly demonstrate the law to others (we will always be works in progress), but I think we can do better as the body of Christ.
It amazes me just how deep the analogies of Christ can go. How easy it is to read right over something as simple as the analogy of believers as salt. I simultaneously feel excited about these things mentioned above that I am called to be for the world in which I live and convicted about how often I have lost my flavor. I don’t say these things to berate or denounce my bretheren, but I implore you, as Jeremiah did his brothers and sisters, to repent from casual Christianity that ultimately makes us casualties, and to embrace the preserving, flavorful, prudent saltiness of our belief.
To sum it up: “Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness?” -The Message
Filed under: Reflections
