Salting a Spoiling Culture
Salt. Jesus used it as a metaphor to describe his followers: “You are the salt. . .” (Mt. 5:13). Just as salt preserves meat from spoiling, so the presence of “salty” Christ-followers restrains the corrupting effects of sin in the world.
Here, I’ll focus on how the workplace serves two requirements of salt—the need for it to be scattered around and the need for it to soak in.
Scattering Around.
God often works by dispersing his people. Unless Daniel and his Israelite friends had been dispersed, Nebuchadnezzar would never have praised the true God (Dan. 2, 3). Because Nehemiah had been dispersed, the Jerusalem wall was rebuilt. In one parable, Jesus pictured himself as a farmer who flings seed in all directions. The scattered seeds, he said, are “the people of the kingdom” (Mt. 13:38). In Acts, God used persecution to scatter his salty ones outside their religious comfort zone of Jerusalem (Acts 8:1, 4; 11:19).
Today, the workplace has become one of the most effective ways by which God scatters “the people of the kingdom.” We—like those dispersed Jews—still feel most comfortable inside our safe zones. But as Rebecca Pippert’s book title says it so well, we need to get Out of the Salt Shaker and into the World.
According to U.S. Labor Department figures, the U.S. nonfarm workforce includes more than 150 million people. The global workforce now numbers more than 3.3 billion. Millions upon millions in those workplaces are Christ-followers. Can you think of a more effective way to scatter countless believers among earth’s population than by sending them into jobs ranging from accounting to zoology and from Argentina to Zimbabwe?
Soaking In.
To fulfill its role, salt needs not only to be scattered but also to penetrate. Little preservation will take place if it stays in only a surface relationship with the meat. Here again, the workplace context shines. It lends itself to ongoing relationships that allow the saltiness of believers to soak in over the long haul.
Think of the long-term relationships Erastus must have had as “city treasurer” (NLT) or “director of public works” (NIV) for the city of Corinth (Rom. 16:23). Did he deal with contractors, officials from neighboring cities, bookkeepers, and so on? Or imagine the opportunities Lydia probably had with repeat customers in her first-century fabric store (Acts 16:14). Simon the leather-maker undoubtedly met again and again with those who purchased material for clothing, boots, and belts. The work of these Christians scattered them into places and relationships where their salty influence had the time it needed to saturate.
Today, neighborhoods seem to have become less effective saltshakers than they once were. As one blogger puts it: “Most people go to work in their single person car, leave work in their single person car, park their car in a garage, and shut all the blinds to make it look like nobody is home.” Unless you put in extra effort to stay in touch, how much actual contact do you have with those on your block? Far too many Christians don’t even know their neighbors’ names.
By contrast, workplaces in the U.S., rather than neighborhoods, now serve as the major intersections where believers and unbelievers cross paths and relate face to face over extended periods of time.
What, then—in our church meetings—does this suggest that we focus on? What can we be doing to make certain the salt is actually salty when it scatters on Monday and soaks in? As Jesus warned, savorless salt won’t do.
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