Jesus called and still calls his followers "the salt of the earth." Salt adds flavor. That which was bland becomes bodacious when salt is added. Christ-followers are to season society. So many people live a bland existence--tasteless and boring. Sometimes the mundane routine wears thin. Life is so daily. Christ launches his followers into daily life to add zest and flavor. At least, that apparently was his intention.
Some Christ followers and much of established fundamentalism and evangelicalism seems to have mistaken him to have said, "You are the lemons of the land" not the salt of the earth. So much of the religious establishment and so many pious rule-keepers seem so intent on souring, rather than flavoring, other people's lives. They seem intent on ruining a good time; after all, the reasoning goes, if it's fun it must be sinful. So much of established religion assigns ourselves as the moral police and we go around looking for something wrong we can condemn. We scope the horizon ready to pounce on the next hell-bound hedonist. The lemons of the land sour people's lives, assuming the slacker they've shamed will now repent. Repentance isn't normally what has been my response if I've been on the receiving end. I and many others respond to these lemons with an involuntary gag reflex: pucker and puke.
Wouldn't it be a beautiful thing if we were to take Jesus seriously and determine to serve as salt in society? This video portrays a group serving as salt. What flavor they added that day! Notice the wonder-full excitement and joy in the smiles of the unsuspecting shoppers. You can bet that at the end of the day if a family member asked, "How was your day/" The response wasn't the usual perfunctory, "fine." The shopper would be telling their loved one all about the melodious joyful interruption to a harried day. Their day, their routine was interrupted--not by someone in their face, but beautiful music resounding in their ears and settling in their heart.
God, give us who claim to be Christ- followers the grace to creatively enhance others' lives with random acts of flavor.
2 comments:
Much of what you said is how I feel about the evangelical and fundamentalist crowd in the US today. They are the people who thrive on shows depicting people getting what they got coming to them, the Nancy Grace crowd. These are the people that really think sick people do not need Doctors but instead they need to remove some sin from their life and then God will take their Cancer away from them. I ran into a person once in an online debate that said Christ would not support any form of healthcare for our nation if it included pre-existing conditions, this puzzled me,wasn't the whole point of needing Christ to Die for our sins " Because of Our Pre-Existing Condition"? To your point, we have enough judges in the Exangelical and Fundamentalist movement, we need more healers.
Dave, thanks for your feedback. I'm encouraged in that there is a current generation who have much more sodium chloride coursing through their veins than a previous one.
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