Bland Busters
Maybe you’ve seen the beer commercials with “the most interesting man
in the world.” The most interesting man in the world is now a wizened veteran of
all the adventures the world has to offer. He is nattily dressed, sports a well
trimmed beard, and speaks with somewhat of a Spanish accent, suggesting his
international savoir faire. We see a few flash backs to his adventures as a
younger man to prove he’s no flash in the pan buccaneer. He’s been at this being
interesting for a long time.
Cut back to the present. He is seated with two gorgeous, adoring women
hanging on his every word, one on the right and one on the left. The implication
is if you pay attention and do as he says guys, you too could be like him, adored
my multiple members of the opposite sex. He looks knowingly into our eyes and
says, “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis. Stay thirsty my
friend.” Wow! How interesting! I want to be just like him. “Hey honey, would
you bring me a Bud Light?”
What little information we have about the Apostle Paul suggests that
physically he wasn’t very attractive. There was nothing about his appearance that
said, “Now here comes a real swash buckler. He looks interesting.” He probably
looked like what we would call a nerd or a geek. But we also know he was highly
intelligent. He was educated by the top rabbis. He had a blue blood pedigree. He
was a Jew’s Jew. He wrote 2/3rds of our New Testament. He established
congregations from scratch all over Asia Minor. He debated local as well as
national religious leaders and stood before governors and representatives of the
worldly powers and argued the case for Christ. Sometimes he was received and
was convincing, many times he was rejected, even persecuted, beaten,
imprisoned, and threatened with death. Once he was beaten so badly he was left
lying in the dirt when his tormentors assumed he was dead.
Maybe one of the most disheartening reactions Paul experienced was
interest. After speaking passionately and skillfully to the crowd of sophisticates in
Athens, they said, “Gee Paul, that’s very interesting. Let’s do this again
tomorrow.” It was a cheap shot way to marginalize Paul and dismiss his message.
“We’ll put your ideas on the buffet line with all of our equally interesting theories.
How does that sound to you? See how tolerant we are. See how open minded
and inquisitive those of superior intellect can be.”
I think Paul learned a valuable lesson in Athens about Greek culture, so
when he moved on to Corinth, another sophisticated cultural center, he decided
to go a different evangelical route. He said it outright in a letter he wrote back to
the Corinthian church which he established while there: “When I first came to
you, I decided to know nothing among you except Christ and him crucified.” He
could have used lofty words and wisdom, but knowing the Greek penchant for
discussing things as interesting, he didn’t. The Gospel is not primarily interesting,
designed to titillate our intellects. It is intended to be transforming, bringing new
life to people who have become dull and dead in their sins.
I had a friend from my college days with whom I have since lost touch.
After I came to Christ, we were in contact for a number of years. Occasionally, we
would talk about issues of faith and unbelief. I never had much success helping
him understand my faith convictions because his outlook on the world was to see
everything as interesting. Interesting things rarely become transforming things
where the human heart is concerned.
So Paul learned that if a person doesn’t come to terms with “Christ and him
crucified” that one would not have the tools of wisdom needed to understand
what is involved in living the Christian life. In his commentary on I Corinthians,
Simon Kistemaker says this: “The spiritual things relate to sin, guilt, forgiveness,
redemption, salvation, righteousness, and eternal life. To the unspiritual person,
these things are meaningless, irrelevant, and even foolish. They have no place in
a life that is limited to the present world. And they are unable to understand
them because they are spiritually discerned.”
Paul goes on to say that among the mature he does impart wisdom and he
draws a clear contrast between worldly wisdom and spiritual wisdom, and
between those able to understand the things of the Spirit and those who are not.
It all begins in the grace that brings us to see Jesus of Nazareth as God’s anointed
one, to see that he is The Christ, the one authorized to bring salvation and give it
as a gift. And that insight is coupled with the Cross, which shows us the cost of
salvation that God was willing to pay, the length to which God is willing to go, to
reclaim us for God. Everything else flows from that fountain of God’s grace.
Perhaps the most clear and concise way to understand what happens next
is to look at Jesus’ own words to us when he said, “You are the salt of the earth.”
I typed into my computer the question, “How does salt savor?” and did a random
search on the internet. Most of the sites wanted to sell me different kinds of salt
or salt shakers in the shape of roosters or rabbits or kittens. But peppered among
them you might say, there were some Christian articles taking up Jesus’ saying
and musing over its implications.
One man was a chemist and asked how salt could lose its saltiness? He said
that when sodium and chloride get together, they don’t let go of one another.
They like sharing their electrons very much and are loathe to be parted. All you
can do with them is dilute them in water so they don’t dominate the whole show,
or electrocute them and then they might relent. Then he did a little moral lesson
that exhorted Christians not to let our faith be diluted by influences from the
culture of the world.
Then there was one by a chef who spoke of using salt to cook. Salt when
used properly is intended to bring out the natural flavors of the food being salted.
Seasoning takes place at several points along the way in the cooking process to
develop depth of flavor that otherwise might remain locked inside the food.
That’s why low quality food without much flavor is heavily salted and ends up
tasting, well, salty. I like to cook. I know about this practice of salting several
times along the way, and I also like the obvious spiritual applications that this
elicits.
Going back to Jesus’ statement, I found Dale Bruner’s insights into the uses
of salt helpful. Salt does at least four things: it preserves, it purifies, it flavors, and
it kills. Salt does not exist for itself. It is only useful as it comes into contact with
other things. Isn’t this true of Christians as well? After we come into contact with
Christ, our life becomes keenly other-directed.
A person who lives on the grid of worldly wisdom most often thinks like
this: you exist for me, to make me happy, satisfied, fulfilled, or complete. If you
fail, I no longer have use for you. Our relationship is expendable because you
have not adequately served me. Or this: why should you be the favorite? Why
should you get the raise, the promotion, or the reward and not me? It’s not fair.
The one who comes to Christ enters the process of mind renewal. The Holy
Spirit takes up residence in our hearts and begins to change the way we think and
how we live. We grow in our questions like, “Whom can I serve? Whom can I
bless? Whom can I honor, respect, and from whom can I help bring out the best?
In other words, “Jesus said that I am salt. So how can I act like it?” Bruner says
helpfully: “Jesus says ‘You are salt’; he tells them what they are before he tells
them what to do.
But who we are as salt carries with it the built in mandate as to what we do
as salt. As the salt of the earth we become agents of preservation who care for
the world and those in the world who are placed in our path. Someone may be
on the skids. Someone may be on a downward slide. Your hand may be the God
ordained hand to reach out and hold them up from falling.
Salt purifies. Sometimes, someone needs to speak the truth, albeit, in love.
Sometimes an injustice needs to be called out. Sometimes a slanderous lie needs
to be exposed. Sometimes a wound needs to be disinfected. Many things wound
people, most often lies that have been seared into one soul by the words or
actions of another. Sometimes the salt of the Holy Spirit needs to sprinkle the
wounded with the powerful grace of God. Jesus said, “You will know the truth
and the truth will set you free.” Salt people are often freedom fighters.
Salt flavors. Salt people help other people become more fully human,
simply by love and respect, compassion, and caring. Maybe you’ve come across a
salt person in life who brought the best out of you, who helped you do things you
never thought possible, or set you free from the withering assessments of hypercritical people in your life. Many people lie buried under the negativity of
someone who should have built them up but tore them down instead.
Salt kills. It kills germs and things that infect the human soul. Salt people
can kill that which is beneath the glory God intended for human beings simply by
living as an example of the alternative. The Spirit filled life sometimes sticks out
like a sore thumb in a numb world.
But we must be careful at this very juncture. I just read a posthumously
published novel by Brennan Manning titled, The Prodigal. The protagonist is the
highly successful mega-church pastor, Jack Chisholm. At the core of his church
building prowess is the exhortation, “We’ve got to do better.” People respond to
his insipient works righteousness and double down on religious activity. The
results are impressive. But the house of cards that is build upon human strength
and motivation comes crashing down when Jack falls into moral failure and he
loses everything, his ministry, his wife and daughter, everything except the love of
his father who comes to his rescue, even though they’ve been estranged for ten
years since his mother’s funeral.
The source of that estrangement was Jack’s message which lacked all
comfort for his family. The conclusion of his funeral sermon once again made all
feel like failures. The well worn mantra of his ministry, “We’ve got to do better,”
lacked the grace to bring comfort to his own family. In the novel, this prodigal
son finds his way into God’s grace for the first time, after his life totally fell apart.
We don’t become salt by trying real hard. We are not salt because we
should be, or because we ought to be, or even because we must be. We are salt
because of our contact with Jesus. We are salt because he says we are.
If we were making a Jesus commercial, we might picture Jesus surrounded
by broken, hurting people, the wayward and the lost. There would be people
who are stunted in discovering their own worth and value as a precious human
being who matters, whose life is a treasure and a gift. There is a crowd who
needs to come in contact with spiritual salt. And after some shots of the history
of his ministry, he might look into the camera and say, “Stay salty my friend. As I
was sent to save the world, so send I you to savor it that the glory of my Father
may be seen through your good works done in my name.”