Salt Continued

The second part of Jesus' statement - You are the salt of the earth - is equally cryptic, as I pointed out yesterday. But if salt loses it saltiness, how does it ever get it back. How does salt get salty in the first place? What make salt? (Bear with me.)

There is a really long chemistry-based answer available to us, which includes many words and phrases I have not heard in more than a decade, since the time I sat in advanced Chemistry in high school. Yeah. Like I remember any of that. The basic idea is that salt is sodium chloride, so it takes both sodium and chloride to form. They bond in the perfect way to season your french fries, and salt is born.

The mining, or harvesting, of salt is one of the oldest mineral-man processes we know. For thousands of years, man has been obtaining salt from its natural sources in a couple of ways. First, through the salt mines. This is where salt exists in other deposits and is extracted from the minerals around it. It's a tedious process, which is how we got the phrase "working in the salt mines." And the process often involves water, to help draw out and isolate the salt. The water is then desalinated, to end up with both salt and water. 

The primary way man has obtained his salt, though, cuts out the work of the mines and simply strips the precious seasoning from the sea waters of the world. Desalination at its best. You take the water, remove the salt, and you're left with both water and salt, each in a more usable form.

The problem I have with this concept, as it relates to God's process of salting creation, is that it requires the removal of water. It always requires the sodium chloride to be removed from the dihydrogen monoxide. As far as I know, there is not one reference in God's word of Him taking His people out of the water; He's always pouring living water into us. So I cannot fathom an instance in which God harvests us, to use us, as the salt of the earth in the chemical sense because it would require an action contradictory to His word. 

Of course, He could be saying that we are the salt of the earth precisely because we are wrapped in His living water, but let's not mess up my train of thought, ok?

So back to this: how does a man be salt anyway? I think the answer is rather simple, and this one takes us back to Genesis and the story, yes, of Lot's wife.

Lot's wife - the example of holy disobedience. God is ready to rain down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. And by divine grace, He is going to rescue Lot and his family first. The messengers of the Lord come to Lot and order them to run, to run into the hills, into the nearest town, and escape the coming destruction. The only caveat? Do not look back. Lot's wife, of course, looks back and is instantly turned into a pillar of salt.

The answer to the question, then, of how does a man become salt, is that he looks at what God is doing.

Sure, in the case of Lot's wife, this was disobedience. It didn't work out. It wasn't the way God intended it. But the truth of the story is that she looked back to see what was happening, and when she saw what God was doing, she turned to salt. 

Yesterday, I looked at the first part of Jesus' statement and presented a few reasons we may be salt. It may be the we are the flavor of the world. It may more likely be that we are the preservative of God's creation. It's fun to think that it might be up to us to ruin this place for anything but God. Regardless of what you believe, it still comes down to this: how are we to be salt in the world?

And I think the answer is plain as day: we have to look at what God is doing. It's that simple. When we keep our eyes on God at work among us, we can do any of the above...and infinitely more. 

Salt

You are the salt of the earth. Jesus said it. And for two thousand years, men and women have read those words and wondered....what does that even mean?

There are theories, for sure. Salt is a flavor additive. Perhaps Jesus was saying that we are the flavor of the earth. We make this place less bland. Or if you dare go so far, we spice this world up. That could be, I guess, but I don't think it really fits with the other messages God gives. A man in relationship with his God (as Christians are meant to be) was the design; it's not the added flavor. We are not apart from this world. We are a part of it, so I just don't see God using salt in this context.

As with pretty much everything, I could be wrong. I am not now, nor have I ever been, God.

Another theory leans toward salt as a preservative. This is possible. For those of you who have always grown up with things like refrigerators and freezers, this goes back a few generations. But salt was used to preserve foods for later use before we had all this high-tech stuff. You can still see remnants of this old fashioned idea today - which is why we have canned goods with or without salt...and "without" is the one that's specially labeled! So perhaps God was saying that we, His people, are the preservers of the world. Maybe He was saying that we hold on to the way this world was meant to be, and it is because of our presence and our faithfulness that this world stays palatable. I kind of like this idea, of being a preserver. It ties right in to what I believe I do in ministry as a chaplain, among many other things. It certainly feels holy.

Again, I could be wrong. I am not now, nor have I ever been, God.

And let's be honest - Jesus doesn't help us out a lot. He says this cryptic thing - You are the salt of the earth - and the only other clue we get is even more cryptic: But if salt loses its saltiness, then it is no longer salt and how does it get its saltiness back. Uhm...what?

Since it's hard to even know, and since we have some theories, and even though I kind of like some of those theories and they do make logical sense, I want to throw one out there that I haven't heard touted before. Just for the sake of conversation. And this idea comes from the book of Judges.

God has enabled His people to defeat their enemies, and the Israelites have ransacked the cities. As they claim men and women, slaves and free, animals and crops for the Lord, God tells them to "salt the land, so that nothing will ever grow there again." Salt can be used to ruin things! 

On the surface, it doesn't look like this would be at all what Jesus meant when He said You are the salt of the earth. But what if it is? What if God is saying, I sent you to ruin this world for everything else. I sent you so that no other idea, no other love, no other god would ever grow here? 

I kind of like that idea.

You are the salt of the earth. You are the reminder of who God is. You are the example of what it means to have a relationship with Him. You are the living representation of love. When this world sets its eyes on you, even though they might never admit it, they are ruined for anything else. Everyone will always be looking for that one good thing, that good thing that makes you so...different. That one thing that sets you apart. Once they see that, nothing else will ever take root in their hearts. Nothing else will grow here.

So I'll say it again. You are the salt of the earth. What if you lived in such a way that you ruined this world for everything but God? 

On Lent

I wasn't going to do this - Christian blogger writes about Lent on day 1....*yawn* - but well, here I am. It kind of ties in to some of the things I've been saying for the past couple of days, and I think there's something important about today, about this season, that we, as Christ's people, need to understand.

And I'll be the first to admit that there's a lot that I need to get. Lent is another one of those things that we don't really "do" in my faith tradition. There will be no one at my building today spreading ashes. There will be no Lent devotionals or even conversations, really, except what we may post on Facebook or Twitter or other social media. And that's kind of the problem. 

I first learned about Lent from my friends, and quite prominently, from social media. I had heard the word, even as a heathen, but had never understood what this celebration means to a person who engages in it. As the social interweb started to explode, I came to understand a few things about the Lenten season:

First, Lent is a time when people give up things that are very important to them - like meat, Coke, and chocolate. Second, the aim is to use this time to make you a better person. Or to show your strength of will. Or just to see if you "can."

Now, that's the social perception of this season. In fact, if you watch closely, you will see persons with no professed faith at all embracing the time of Lent because they see it as simply that - a socially approved opportunity to try something new, give up something old, and become a better person. For any number of reasons. While I'm not saying it's necessarily bad to make positive changes, it's not Lent.

Lent is a time of preparation, as Jesus' forty days in the wilderness prepared Him for public ministry. It is a time we use to reflect on what's coming for us - Holy Week, and the time when Jesus sacrificed Himself for our benefit. It is a time to prepare ourselves to enter the ministry of Jesus, to accept His anointing, His blessing, and His gift and set out to do His work. We celebrate through penitence, yes, but not some cheap contriteness about how many calories we've consumed.

It's all symbolic. I get that. You can give up whatever you want for Lent; that's not my complaint. My problem is that we seem to have made Lent entirely about the symbol. We give things up, but we have forgotten why it is that we give them up - to draw us closer to God. People give up soft drinks for Lent, and then spend forty days talking about how much they want a Coke when what they should really be thinking during this time is how powerfully they are thirsting for God. People give up chocolate and lament every time they pass the candy aisle, but they are very few any more who long for the sweetness of God. The whole point of Lent is to increase your appetite for the holy, to create a vacant space in your life for God to come in.

It's not about making you a better person; it's about making God a closer God.

Jesus said if you want to follow Him, you must lay down your life and take up His Cross. That, to me, is what the Lenten season is about. As I look around, I think we have gotten all-too-comfortable with the former to the neglect of the latter. It's not so hard to lay down our lives, at least not for forty days (as agonizing as some people would have you believe it is), but it's incredibly difficult to pick up His Cross. So we've cut that out altogether, but let me be honest: we do not live empty. 

We can't. So when we lay down our lives this Lenten season, when we give up the things we enjoy and take pleasure in, we create an empty space that will not stay empty. We will fill it with something. Either we pick up the Cross or something else will pick up our empty spaces. Something else like...complaining. Like...counting the days. Like...temptation. Like...a new vice. I'm not willing to trade a good thing for just another thing. I want something better.

Celebrate Lent. By all means, create an empty space in your life this year. Prepare yourself for the coming Cross. But as you do, search for the God of the empty spaces and invite Him to fill more of you. That's what this is really about. That's Lent.

Well Endowed

I kind of touched on this point yesterday in talking about two kinds of strength - the kind that limits and the kind that enlarges - but I want to expand out on that thought a little bit today. Because I think this is something that many Christians, particularly in the time of the prosperity gospel, misunderstand, and I think this is something that an unbelieving world pushes back against. 

Being God's - choosing Him, loving Him, even serving Him - does not entitle you to anything.

That's the misconception. We believe that a relationship with God entitles us to immunity. It doesn't mean that things don't go wrong. It doesn't mean that we never fail. It doesn't mean that we never fall. It doesn't mean that life isn't hard, that times aren't tough, that things don't occasionally suck. I think this is the single most frustrating encounter I ever have with someone who misunderstands the faith - because for a seeking Christian who has suddenly encountered trouble, this is the deal-breaker. Life is not perfect with God. And for the cynic on the outside looking in, this is ammunition. God provides no practical benefit.

I cringe because that's never what God promised. His Word repeatedly reminds us of what God means when things happen, not how He steps in to stop them. Build your house on the rock, He tells us, and when the winds blow, you will not be moved. He does not say, Build your house on the rock and the winds will never blow. For crying out loud, the winds blew walls of water against the disciples while Jesus was in the boat with them. God never promised immunity. He promised to be there.

God talks about the way that His people treat their enemies. Even how His people are to treat His enemies. Pray for those who curse you. Turn the other cheek. Go the extra mile. He never said, Now that you are mine, you will have no enemies. For I shall smite them and smite them good. Even His Son had to deal with His enemies. God never promised social security. He promised there was another way.

Even with God, some of the things we do will be fruitless. It wasn't that long ago, I told the story of Moses and how God sent him to Pharaoh, in the same breath telling the prophet it wouldn't do any good. I think about the story of the disciples in the Gospels. They've been out to sea all day and haven't caught a thing. Then God shows up and tells them to cast their net one more time, and suddenly, they haul their biggest catch. It makes you think that when God shows up, things go well, but these were not men without God; they'd been traveling with Him for three years. And still their fishing was fruitless for awhile. God never promised success. He promised provision.

Yet there are still those among us who believe God has entitled them to immunity, to security, to success. To many more things, as each man's heart desires. They live like nothing can touch them because they have God on their side, and inevitably, something breaks through and shatters faith.

Our God is simply not a God of entitlement. He is, however, the God of endowment.

I don't know a lot about the financial aid process. I probably should, since I'm about to be a student again, but I've just never much cared for the world's standard of money. But from what I understand, an endowment is self-sustaining for the most part. I've heard stories of new endowments beginning, and the way it works is that the money is set aside into a high-yield fund where as it is used, it replenishes itself so that a little bit of money goes a long way. A widow's gift today may mean scholarships unto her great-great-great-great-grandchild's generation and beyond. And that is what God has done for us. He has endowed us with certain treasures that enable us to live another way, even when life is hard, times are tough, and things occasionally suck.

He's endowed us with strength. To withstand the storms. And that strength builds on itself. When you find yourself timidly believing in the Lord one day, it's not too far down the road that you don't think twice about trusting in His promises.

He's endowed us with peace. To handle our enemies. And that peace builds on itself. When you choose not to enter into a battle of wills or a petty argument or even all-out war, it's harder to find something worth sacrificing the peace of the Lord for. So you hold onto that peace in the midst of a full assault.

He's endowed us with eternity. I don't know why I was thinking about this one this morning, but I was, from the very moment I started to write this post. God has given us eternity; we no longer have to worry about what we do with our time. We don't have to stress about it. When you have forever, now doesn't seem like so much pressure. (And you can read that the wrong way, as an advocation for procrastination. Please don't.)

I just think about all the things that God has endowed me with, all of the stuff He has invested in me, in each one of us. I think about the way it all builds on itself until even in the face of life, you look up and realize that faith is all you have. And you have all you need. God has invested in you so that you continue to grow and make an investment in Him. In His message. In His mission. In Love. 

So to quote a group of men who realized this much before my time, the old statement is true: Man has been endowed by His Creator. 

Not entitled.... Endowed. 

Well-endowed.

Two Strong

As I reflect on life a little bit and on the way God steps in and changes things, I am becoming aware that there are two kinds of strength. One is deceptive in that it limits you; there is a strength that makes you weaker. The other is encouraging, quite literally; it makes you courageous and enlarges you.

On the surface, it's kind of hard to tell the difference because any strength could go either way. It depends on how you respond to it in your heart.

Deceptive strength tells you that you're better than this. It makes you feel like you can do anything, which makes you increasingly resistant to doing many things. It plays off one of the traits that I think is very troubling, particularly in younger generations: entitlement. Because I am strong enough to do this bigger thing, you might say to yourself, then I should not be relegated to doing a lesser thing. For instance, I know people who would never consider certain lines of work because they are "too good" for it. They know they are capable of better, so they'd never settle for something less.

The problem is that when you think you're too strong to do a weak thing, you end up doing something much more degrading: no thing. You live your life in idleness, telling yourself that you're strong, but wasting away and wasting time doing nothing at all, waiting on the chance to do something more.

None of us are immune to this. Even the most noble man in his weakest moments understands this temptation. If you're looking for evidence of this in your own life, think about your profession. Everyone who has ever had a job had at least one responsibility at work that they liked...less than they liked everything else. Everyone's had that task that's made them wonder why they are the one who has to do that thing. It's just preference, really, but at its core, it is a recognition of where our strengths lie. For instance, I once had a creative job where I got to do something I loved to do every day - design collateral for a non-profit organization. Unfortunately, coming up on the annual fundraising campaign, part of my job also included cold-calling businesses to solicit donations. Not my strength. I was young at the time, and I remember thinking, "I am not a glorified telemarketer." I hated every minute of it. Something inside of me pushed back against it, telling myself I was made for bigger things than this. Despising to do it. I had to remind myself that I am a servant first and foremost, that I do the things that need to be done because I am put in a place for a reason. And I constantly had to remind myself that no. I was not "better" than this. (I will not be a telemarketer, or even a sales rep, any time soon. Definitely not one of my gifts.)

The second kind of strength is more counterintuitive. It's paradoxical. It's a strength that says, "Because I am strong, I have no aversion to being weak." It is a confidence in who you are, in where you come from, in what you're doing, and most importantly, in Who is calling the shots in your life. It's a bit harder to explain this one, perhaps because I constantly find myself in awe of this entire principle. I sit around in quiet moments and think about how incredibly blessed I am, how strong I feel, and then I realize all of these things I do in any given week that it would be so easy, in a different heart, to think I must be somehow better than. I think about the people who quietly go to work, do what they're supposed to do every day, and don't complain about it. I think about the men and women who have jobs many of us wouldn't touch, and yet, I watch the integrity with which they work. 

I think about the small things each of us do that don't seem like anything, yet make such a big difference. And I wonder what difference we could make if we had the strength to believe in the small things.

It takes courage, but thankfully, this kind of strength is encouraging. It's a strength based on faith, and the knowledge of God beside you is enough to spur you on. I think God understood this better than I maybe ever will.

In His Word, God tells His people to "Be strong." But He doesn't stop there. There's always an "and," and what follows is usually "courageous." Be strong and courageous. The two are inseparable. Because a simple strength fools you into thinking you can do it all yourself, that by the power vested in you, you are able. But a courageous strength leans on its source to take a risk, to do something daring. It's hard to be courageous in yourself because you know your weaknesses. But when strength lies outside of you, it's easier to take a chance. All of a sudden, it feels like the strength is pouring into you, and it's suddenly okay to pour it out.

I'm thinking about all of this because I'm still thinking about calling. I'm thinking about this season of my life and where God is, and where God is taking me. As God speaks courage into my heart, I'm feeling the pull between these two kinds of strength. I'm feeling the pull between knowing what God has called me to do, and understanding there are things I would rather not do, that don't seem to be at my pay grade, if you will. And yet, I find that when I center myself on that very same strength, I can't help but not do what seem to be the weaker, lower things because God has drawn me into doing them without thinking a second thought about it. (Until of course, later, when I realize what I've done and realize that with conscious thought, and without love, I wouldn't even have considered it.) I guess it all just comes out of love. When you're strong and secure and know where your strength comes from, you're just not afraid to love.

Even when it gets a little messy.

That's what I'm thinking about this morning. So let me ask you: what makes you strong? If your strength limits you, then you're leaning on yourself; it is not a godly strength. But if your strength lowers you, humbles you in the sight of your God and yourself, and enlarges you to do the little things, then that is a holy strength. Let it pour right through you. And love the world.