If you have ever been a student, you are probably familiar with "Student Housing". And if you are familiar with "Student Housing", you are probably familiar with one of life's slimier problems: the slug. And if you are familiar with the slug problem, you are probably also familiar with the slug solution: Salt. And lots of it.
I recently saw a picture of a complex salt maze someone had made from their back door, which any brave slug would have to overcome in order to 'enter' the house. The maze had many tight corners and dead ends - virtually impossible to master if you are a slug ... I wish I had thought of that as a student.
And it's not just slugs who can't stand too much salt. When I was little I thought salt and pepper were opposites. I once had an unfortunate accident with a loose-lidded salt shaker and covered what would have been a lovely plate of chips in white stuff. Thinking the pepper would cancel out the salt, I applied that liberally to the plate too. You can imagine the result.
The point is that too much salt is unpleasant, sometimes harmful and potentially lethal, if you are a slug. We all know the dangers of a diet high in salt and the potential problems this can lead to. So whilst yesterday I said we need to be salt in the world and let people 'taste' our saltiness, to pique their interest in God, we also need to make sure we don't overdo the salt.
Sometimes I think as Christians we can become so focused on being 'salty' that we forget that salt isn't ever meant to be eaten by itself. It is meant to be added to food to enhance it and draw out the different flavours that are already there. Similarly, we are meant to be salt in the world, salt mingling and mixing with the other flavours of the world, not overpowering them and overwhelming them. We are meant to meet people where they are and engage with them and draw them to God, not offer up an unappetising plate of salt.
Which leads us to ask: what does it look like to be salt? Salt with my friends, salt with my family, salt with my neighbours, salt with my colleagues, salt at work, salt at the pub, salt at the party? Do people taste a difference?
Salt isn't a meal in itself.
"You must have the qualities of salt among yourselves and live in peace with each other."
[Mark 9:50, NLT. Emphasis added]
If you need help with a salt maze for your own slug, try this: http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2012/06/13/1226393/924840-snail-maze.jpg
I have a clear glass jar filled with white granules on the bench in my kitchen, next to my oils and pestle and mortar. Several people have helped themselves to its contents whilst making themselves a cup of tea or coffee. They sprinkle it liberally into their drink and stir it vigorously thinking it is sugar.
It is not sugar.
But they don't know it's not sugar until they take that first mouthful and the saltiness stings their mouth and catches in their throats and makes their eyes water.
Sugar and salt.
They look the same. So much so that they are easily mistaken for each other. But they are not the same. And it's only when you taste them that you can tell the difference. And by then it's too late.
Jesus didn't call us to be sugar. He didn't call us to a sweet and easy life, with a pallatable message to share. His Gospel isn't the 'icing [sugar] on the cake' - an easy and tasty addition to our lives. He called us to be salt. To stand out, to share a message that is hard to swallow, because it calls for the complete transformation of our lives. It calls for us to stop living for ourselves and to start living for Him. And sometimes that sticks in the throat.
But it is the only way to live. It is what we were made for - to find freedom when we hand our lives over to God and stop trying to be our own saviours. And we are called to share this messgae of freedom with others.
You can only tell if it's salt or sugar when you taste it.
What use is salt if it stays in the jar? Some of us spend so long becoming the saltiest salt we can: going to church and reading our Bible and reading "Christian books", that we forget that there is a purpose to our saltiness. Jesus didn't call us to be salt as an end in itself, to enhance the 'flavours' of the church. He called us to be salt in the world, to stand out, to 'taste' different, to do life differently. He called us to pique people's interest and to draw them close to Him. Like the cleverly placed, overly-salted nuts you find at a bar, Jesus calls us to be salt to create a thirst in people. A thirst for Him.
"Let me tell you why you are here. You're here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavours of this earth."
[And if you make a drink at my flat and you're looking for the sugar, it's the top cupboard, left of the oven.]
