Matthew 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.”
C.S. Lewis writes, “The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose.”
Jesus describes these little Christs as the “salt of the earth.” But what does that look like?
Salt is a preserver. No one in the first century had freezers. So if you wanted to keep meat from rotting, you had to cure it with salt. Salt also symbolized preserving a promise. If two parties entered into an agreement, they would eat salt together in the presence of witnesses. That act would bind their contract. From preserving agreements to preserving the culture, the call Jesus gives to be the salt of the earth remains as relevant today as in the past.
The Church has always had a preserving influence in American culture. Christianity recognized man’s fallen nature and influenced the idea of checks and balances in the Constitution. Christianity helped civilize an early frontier fraught with lawlessness.
It was the Quakers who started the first abolition of slavery movement in the United States. And why wouldn’t it be Christians who addressed the issue of slavery? Christianity is the most anti-racist religion on the planet. We know how God feels about racial, ethnic divisions. When Peter displayed his feelings of Jewish superiority over the Gentiles, Paul called him out on it because it was inconsistent with Christianity (Galatians 2:11-14). He wasn’t about to watch Peter lose his saltiness and subsequently risk his own salty call.
Nothing will cause us little Christs to lose our saltiness more than failing to stand up for truth. Author John Stonestreet says the reason Christians must engage in our culture-wide conversations about issues like gender identity is that it’s based on a lie about the human person. If believers remain silent on basic issues, people won’t trust us to tell the truth about God.
So don’t let your salt lose its taste. Be that little Christ the world needs to see.
.