mark 9:50 :: causing to stumble

“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”

usually this verse is pulled out on its own, away from the context. and it’s easy to see why, the verse on its own is a great maxim and has lots of meaning. it speaks to the need in our life for consistency and the value of our life on the world around us. it makes us think of all the applications for salt in teh real world, and how that transfers over through metaphor into our spitirual life: the use of salt as a preservative, its use as a flavor enhancer for food, things like that…

but we always pull this verse away from its context. Scripture can stand alone, but it also important to make sure that we remember what is being said around key verses so that we don’t lose its original meaning.

Jesus was talking about the need to guard our life against sin and inconsistancy in our witness, to the point of leading others astray. our saltiness comes as the effect of Christ’s work in our life. it is exuded from us as we work for Him, it is the natural by-product.

when i finished high school, i weighed a good 230-240 pounds. i’m 6’2″ so i carried it okay, but i was still heavier than was healthy. the summer before i went to college, i went to work for Sam’s Club in J-town pushing carts in the parking lot (where Ashley Furniture is now.) so each day, all summer, we pushed carts uphill on blacktop in the heat and humidity of June and July in Kentucky. sometimes we would have contests that OSHA would not approve of, and see how many carts we could push at once. I think my best was somewhere in the 70-80 range, and you couldn’t do much more than that because you had to have 2 other people steer while you pushed. after days like that, when i would take off my red sams’ club vest, i would have several rings of salt that had come out through my sweat and resolidified in/on the vest all down my back. that’s gross…

but that’s kind of how i picture this verse. that saltiness we have as Christians comes out as a natural result of our working out our faith. as we live each day for Jesus, serving those around us, and taking the time to spread His Message, it will become apparent to those around us that we have been doing just that.

but it’s not gross, in this way it is a beautiful thing. this life in Christ also produces peace. that is why Jesus lists them together here. peace also comes as a natural product of living this salty life. so as we spread our salt, we also spread peace. and this is an incredibly appealing thing to a world without its own real flavor and wrecked by violence. no wonder our presence and consistency is so imporant.

better to enter the next life maimed than to have willingly removed the flavor and peace from the lives of others, leading them away from God in the process.