The Real Salt Life

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I want to write this not as a person who has learned to live the real salt life well and can attest to living it completely and fully, but as a fellow traveler and disciple who is still learning the lesson.  From before time as we know it began God knew what the human condition would be.  He knew Adam and Eve would fall into sin and he knew that from that moment on every created being would need a savior. If you look around today you see the effect that one sin has on our culture.  In our world ideas are not gained, and any kindergartener with a box of crayons can be considered a great artist.  We are consumed by the television, We do not read and formulate our own ideas, we are told what to believe and beliefs can change depending on who is espousing the idea.

In his book “The Divine Conspiracy” Dallas Willard tells the story of a young woman from the Midwest that goes to Harvard for college. While she is there she becomes part of a study in the behavior and morality of students. Harvard is know as one of the best schools in the country. Its prestige alone gives its graduates a jump on success that 98% of the other schools in the United States can not offer. During the course of this study the girl took a job cleaning the dorm rooms of fellow students. While she was doing this job she was treated horribly by other students. She was called names, lied to, and even propositioned for sex. She ended up leaving school and in her exit interview for the study she recalled being in class with these same people and being taught what was true and what was good and what morality was supposed to be. Her most poignant question was this,

“How do you teach people to be good, what is the need for learning what is good when you don’t try to become a good person?”

That is the world today and in many of their eyes the church at large is no different. They look at people like the Dali Lama and say if he can be a good person without Jesus then why do I need Jesus?  The here and now is what they see because they have no sense of the eternal.

So how are we to respond to a world so ravaged by sin?

In Matthew 5: 13-14 Jesus says this, 13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. 14 “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

The first way we can respond to our world today is to be like salt.

A few years ago I remember just starting to see Stickers on the back of car and truck windows that read, “Salt Life.”  I thought they were for Christians who were committing to live the salt life Christ calls us to, but I was terribly wrong. If you are not familiar with the Salt Life brand it is a clothing line based in Ponte Vedra Florida that make beach and ocean wear. One of their biggest promotional items are those stickers for the windows in cars. I wanted one because I knew what the salt life entailed for a Christian. I knew it symbolized a needed change in our society.

The problem with salt is that it can do any number of things. One of those is kill, to much salt water will shut down your kidneys. Or salty earth will not grow vegetation. Where I grew up in Arkansas we had bare spots in the ground where natural salt deposits occurred.  If you would put a little of the dirt on your tongue you could taste the salt in it. I was told that the Indians that were originally from that area would dry the dirt and salt out in some way to make the salt useful. Imagine that in your life. This was real salt of the Earth. If you are the salt of the earth Jesus has taken you out of the mire and dirt and made you useful again.

Which leads us to my favorite use for salt. I am a huge fan of Bar-B-Que. If you have ever done much barbecuing you know that salt is used for two things, the first is flavor. As with all cooking salt flavors the barbecue. But the more important use is that it penetrates the meat and takes the other flavors with it. If we are the salt of the Earth and Jesus has raised us up and made us useful salt we need to penetrate the world we live in. Don’t put this off because I am using food analogies because that is exactly what he was doing when he said it.

We are called to go out into the world.  As Christians we are supposed to make a difference in people’s lives.  We are supposed to show them the love of Christ and live the Real Salt Life.