Please pass the salt

“Please pass the salt.” We’ve all said it countless times and we’ve heard it just as many from others. After years of hearing or saying it, our reaction is fully automatic. But have you ever thought of yourself as “The Salt” that needs to get into people’s lives? The Salt that needs to pass around and bring healing, be the preservative or life-giving sting to others? This Holy Week, it would be well worth reflecting on a phrase that sounds so similar and familiar that Jesus Christ said:

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? (Matthew 5:13)

Imagine eating salt that is not salty, salt that is wet or syrupy, even worse some coarse, grainy particles pretending to be salt? After having my double Angioplasty procedure four years ago, I was placed on a strict low-salt diet. As an alternative, my wife Karen bought a small tub of “substitute salt.” From the very start it did not look like salt. It looked more like broken brown rice and instead of transitioning me into a low salt diet, it quickly turned me into a Monster at the dining table! In a few days, the fraudulent misrepresentation of salt got hurled into the garbage bin.

Salt plays a vital role as a preservative especially for meats and a number of food products. It is a cleansing agent, a disinfectant. For Christians or the “spiritually inclined,” salt are the people or groups that make themselves available and effective in helping people preserve their faith walk or beliefs. The presumption of course is that as a spiritual “salt” you are honest to goodness salt that’s full of spiritual flavor. When you fill up a form and there’s a question “Religion____” Do you fill in what you claim to be or what you actually live by?

“What you actually live” by is a sure sign of what you are and not what you claim to be. Many people claim to be a believer or follower of some religion but when you analyze or break down their conduct, activity or commitment in time and money, majority turn out to be nominal believers or worshippers by convenience. They may have at some point been “on fire” but social resistance, criticism and life and its concerns robbed them of that.

In real life, we get to know people or things by spending time with the person or on the subject. We Google things we don’t know, we read up, we attend seminars, do research. With people, we ask around, do background studies, we conduct “due diligence, spend time and more time, dinner dates, conversations. As Jesus Christ said: “My sheep know me.” Ultimately the truth or the facts bare themselves out as people’s true characters come out in tests, trials and events. In our spiritual walk, we initially read up on the matter, ask people about their experiences and eventually go through the motions, activities, ceremonies, until we get comfortable. Unfortunately that’s where many of us get stuck; in the comfort zone being weekend believers for two hours as minimum compliance.

(A Believer puts his beliefs to the test; before or after the fact. Faith is great but putting them to the test turns faith to fact!)

They say, “proof of the pudding is in the eating,” the same goes for beliefs, promises, prayers and teachings. Jesus Christ was constantly in the habit of asking: “Do you believe?”; “Do you believe I can heal you?” etc., Every time the leper, the blind, the mourning father or burdened centurion said “Yes, Lord” they actually put the Lord and themselves to the test and on the line. There was no turning back.

Aside from “knowing” and “testing” faith, you gotta work it. Life is all about continuing education. Faith is continued learning, constantly putting all that to work. Whatever your specialization, skill set or college degree maybe, we all know that all the knowledge we acquire must be put to good or productive use. Unused knowledge is just information. For Christian believers, both Catholic or “Protestant,” all our prayers and Bible reading amounts to nothing if we do not put all we read and learn to work. If you got “religion” by birth or by choice and have been greatly blessed from it, the very least you can do is share what you know and live by with those who come across your path or may be in the very room you are in.

“What good is it, if someone says he is a believer or religious but has nothing to show for it in terms of work or results? Can being a believer or religious save you from judgment? If your brother or sister or fellow human being is naked or so poor they can’t even eat daily and one of you says to them: “Go away in peace and may your hunger go away” and you did not feed them; what good is that? The same goes for faith alone if it does not result in good deeds; is dead.” James 2: 14-17

I intentionally paraphrased the verse because many people still don’t get the idea that as the salt of the earth we are suppose to cause change in the lives of people. It is not just to be the Clan:

I told you so or to be Team: You’ll be sorry. We are supposed to be encouragers, living proof and reminders of the teachings we believe in, we live by and continually learn and work at. As you take time out this Holy Week may I suggest you set aside even one hour just by yourself to reflect on who and what you are and what you really live by? How much time and how much work have you put in for your “God”? Are you still the salt of the earth?