What keeps meat from rotting? One way to do that is to salt it, this method was widely used in Bible times. In Matthew 5:13 Jesus says to a bunch of his followers "you are the salt of the earth." In other words, the world is the meat and you are the salt, you help to keep the meat from getting rotten. Here is where I think that we have missed out on something. We (the church) keep removing ourselves from the world more and more, we look down on all the horrible things that are going on in the world and shake our head and say "tsk, tsk." There are horrible things going on in our world (sexual promiscuity, hatred, racism, oppression, drugs, alcoholism, etc.) so we withdraw ourselves from it in order to protect ourselves from these horrors. We create our "Christian bubble" and pray that no one will burst it. We make sure our kids hang out with the right crowd so that they will not be corrupted, we don't hang out in certain places so that we won't be corrupted.
I think it was Brett Ullman who was saying that right now the church (the salt) is looking at the rotten meat on the counter, holding our nose to it and saying, "why are you going so bad?" What do we expect? If we are to be the salt, how can the meat be blamed for going bad? Is our faith so weak that it won't last if we are exposed to bad things? Is our faith so weak that we can not risk contacting those who do not believe the same as us, for fear that they might rub off on us (getting rubbed by rotten meat does not seem attractive). What about us? Should salt not be mixed in, seasoning the meat?
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