Salt and Light

Hello Friend, today I am going to spend some time on Matthew 5:13-16 and the idea of being salt and light to the world. To begin, I want to share some of the fun history of salt. A mineral once valued enough to be used as a currency. In today’s world, it is such a common item in our lives that we take for granted how prized and precious this mineral was in the ancient world. Entire economies were built around the supply of salt. Historically salt was primarily used as a preservative; to keep foods from spoiling and allowed for food to be stored for extended periods as refrigeration wasn’t an option. In today’s world, I think we often forget or even fail to imagine a world where there is no Walmart and no ready supply of food around every corner. It’s genuinely a hard thing for us to imagine not having a surplus supply of any food we want at any given time. This is especially true here in America, where very few of us have ever had to experience hunger and poverty as is in other parts of the world, and was the case in much of the ancient world. Now I want to add a line of thinking beyond salt and then bring these two ideas together.

  Have you ever considered why food spoils? Why does food not just stay good? What force of nature causes food to spoil and rot? As a Christian, I believe God made everything perfect. So why would He have created a world where food spoiled? Where everything spoils and decays with time. Would a perfect God not have made the design of the world perfect and in a way that nothing spoiled or ever went to waste? Now before I continue this line of thinking, I want to be clear, I don’t know the answer; obviously, maybe everything was always meant to be this way, and food was intended to spoil and rot with time, or perhaps it wasn’t I want to consider this line of thinking.

 So as I studied this idea, I discovered the Laws of thermodynamics, and one of those laws is the Law of Entropy. Now before you’re eyes glaze over, I’ll say just hang in there and hear this little bit of science. Also, before some smart science person comes along, I want to be clear I am no scientist, and the information I will present is based on my understanding of these ideas. Also, I’ll add a few google search results and allow that to speak for these ideas, and you can tell me if I’m entirely off base here. 

The entropy of an object is a measure of the amount of energy which is unavailable to do work. Entropy is also a measure of the number of possible arrangements the atoms in a system can have. In this sense, entropy is a measure of uncertainty or randomness.

Entropy is defined as the measurement of degree of randomness or in other words, it is the increase in the disorganization within a system.

So best as I understand it, entropy simply is the idea that all things in the world, given enough time, are affected by entropy and slowly become disordered; they get further and further from the perfect design given enough time. All things fade and lose their original “perfected design” over time as time naturally expends that energy. The idea is that our current natural world does not order itself but rather disorders it. All things over time fall apart, from a pocket watch that was carefully designed to human beings who are creatures of complex design, but given enough time, our bodies fade and fail our skin sags and loses its luster. To go back to the food idea, this is why food decays and spoils because all living things must die. All things in the universe have a certain amount of energy, and once that energy is used up, it dies. We as human beings cannot escape this fact; once filled with energy, our bodies slowly fade, and our energy slowly begins to fade.

I consider the moment of the fall and how, in the fall, the law of entropy was introduced. Again this is an idea and not gospel truth, but an idea that makes sense in my mind. With the fall, death was introduced into our world, and where once we could have enjoyed a body that was eternally in its prime, we now must each grow old and eventually die. The single greatest fear that plagues humanity is the fear of death, and we have entire industries that exist for the singular reason of prolonging and avoiding the effects of aging, but it is ultimately futile. We try to stop what can’t be stopped. We try to create eternity on an earth that is no longer meant for eternity Hebrews 13:14. As I was considering writing this idea out, I found myself thinking about how Jesus told us to be salt and light to the world. Matthew 5: 13-16

13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

What did Jesus mean when he told us to be the salt of the earth? Now to be clear, I don’t want to imply I definitively know what Jesus meant by this, but I think we can look at that instruction, and by understanding the ancient use of salt, we can see what Jesus meant. Jesus is calling us to preserve as salt preserves, and He is calling us to preserve the good of this world; Jesus is calling us to preserve His original design. Again the idea here is that our world was not intended to decay and rot. It was meant to be eternal, but unfortunately, we messed it up, and now the current world is no longer fit for eternity. 

I consider the phrase “everything is going to hell in a handbasket” this is fundamentally true. With the fall, forces were introduced into our world, and we can not remove them. This is why we wait for God to give us a new body. We wait for God to create a new heaven and earth that will be free of the law of entropy and decay. The natural laws that demand the decay and destruction of God’s original intended design. Death is a part of our world today, and we can’t change that. So Jesus gave us the command to be salt to the world and preserve what He created until He returns and makes everything new and good.

I think we often forget this command today; in a world that has abandoned God in many ways, we as Christians often fall into the trap of nihilism and feel like everything is meaningless. We seem to think we shouldn’t or don’t need to do anything to improve the world or our lives. Because what’s the point? Why try and preserve what good is left? What’s the point it’s all going to die and end in ruin anyway? The answer is simple because Jesus said so. 

We look at a society that introduces ideas that oppose God and His will, and we throw up our hands and say, “what’s the point.” Many today choose not to have children because what’s the point? Why would we want to bring a child into a world that is in such decay, such moral depravity and perversion? The answer is simple because God said so. He told us at the beginning to be “fruitful and multiple,” and we are to be “salt and light” to a world that needs us to do our part always to preserve what is good. We are to protect the innocence of children, ensure justice is carried out, and protect the defenseless. We are not to abandon our post, and we are not supposed to throw our hands up and say it is pointless. We are called to be courageous and take up our cross, and we are called to take a stand for the good in the world; we are to persevere until Jesus comes back. 

You see, we are told of such days; we are told of the days when the world will call good evil and evil good. Isaiah 5, Romans 1, 1 Timothy 4, and 2 Timothy 3 all speak of mankind abandoning the will of God and pursuing their hearts and desires. Again the idea is that through this natural law of decay now exists a world (due to the fall) where creation is now bent toward disorder and chaos. Only through a focused pursuit of God and following His commands can we hope to be the salt that preserves what He designed. The magnitude of this for me personally was truly a revelation. We see today a total abandonment of God’s design in so many places. We see many forsaking the marriage arrangement between one man and one woman, the abandonment of the plan of sex and how it was created to unify and unite a man and woman in marriage, and the fundamental design of the human body abandoned for what we see as better. We rebel against what God designed, what He created, and we call it progress.

We as Christians must take a stand for what God designed and be what Jesus called us to be. We are to be salt and light to this world. By being salt, we preserve the design of God, and by being light, we point to the designer. Ultimately, we can not save the world, but we also cannot abandon it. We must preserve it and be salt and light until Jesus returns.