Greg Proffit Writing

Tag: faith

  • You Are The Salt of The Earth… Not The MSG

    You Are The Salt of The Earth… Not The MSG

    salt of the earth
    Shutterstock Image licensed to Author

    Some Christians believe there is a biblical mandate to be involved in politics because they are to be the salt of the earth. They have not well considered the meaning of the verse or the phrase as used historically.

    “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.”

    ~ Jesus Christ, Matt. 5:13

    Poor fishermen and village folk comprised Jesus’ audience. His words affirmed their worth based upon their virtue. Itself based on the fact they were in the audience faithfully listening to him as a Prophet of God. 

    Salt wasn’t always a seasoning

    Salt, in olden days, was a valuable commodity. Sometimes it was currency. It was far too valuable to be used as a mere seasoning to add taste to food. Perhaps you are familiar with the adage which speaks of a hard worker being “worth their salt.”

    Salt was also a preservative in pre-refrigeration days. The verse does not imply that Christians are to “season” the world, its culture, or its politics. Christianity doesn’t transfer effects by mere presence or proximity. Nor is the aim of a Christian to “preserve” the world’s culture, or politics. For what, to a true Christian, is worth preservation of either worldly culture or worldly politics? Neither impress God.

    Rather, Christians derive value—to God, to one another, and to the world by virtue of their faith. 

    “Saltiness” comes as the result of a life lived by faith in the power of an indwelling Christ. It doesn’t come from infiltrating, influencing, and subverting politics for so-called Christian purposes. As if that could ever be a thing…

    salt of the earth
    Photo by Francesco Alberti on Unsplash

    Which of your laws can impart life and righteousness?

    It is unfortunate that Christians engaged in the effort to drag Jesus into politics forget the admonition of Galatians 3:21.

    “For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.”

    What policy, ideology, or law will instill spiritual life and righteousness when the 613 commandments enshrined in the Old Testament failed to do so?

    What do Christians (whether preachers, politicians, or parishioners) propose to enact (or strike down) that will grant eternal life or right standing with God? 

    When a greater than Moses appears once more, it will be on the last day. He won’t come seeking political office, or permission from a majority to act. He will not be carrying a party flag, nor running for any office. The King of Kings will bring his title (and His reward) with Him.

    Christians entangle and embroil themselves in politics to the detriment of both politics, and the true understanding of Christianity—which concerns another Kingdom, entirely. They are more like another ubiquitous modern seasoning.

    They are MSG perhaps—artificial, cheap and worthless, with the capacity to poison all it touches. But they aren’t salt.

  • An Easter Story

    “Why do you seek the Living among the dead?“

    This question is at the heart of the Easter story. Setting aside for now all the technical and theological aspects inherent in the Passion story, the essence boils down to finding and assimilating and celebrating life. Easter focuses the attention on expectation, disappointment, hope, and the kind of certainty that is present in true faith. 

    At the end of this Year Of Death, where now will we find life? Has death overcome it? The disciples came to look for Life in a cemetery, and specifically, in a tomb. They were scolded. They had received enough instruction that they might have known better. But the reality of what they had seen, overcame the reality of what they could not yet see. Being certain of what their eyes and experience told them, they acted as they did. They came to do homage to a dead body.

    It is thankful that their faith wasn’t the cause of God’s acting. Else, Jesus would still be buried behind that stone. Because they had none. No, they had been invited to believe in the Faith that God has in Himself to achieve what He achieves, with or without our believing. Their failure to give credit to what they had been told, more than to what they had seen, did not constrain God in the slightest. 

    But, it did cause them to look in the wrong place. And once there, this reliance upon their own ability to see caused them not to recognize Life in the form of a gardener. I guess if we must see something in order to believe it, then even when it is presented to the eyes, we won’t recognize it for what it is. Where have you been looking for life? What do you have to see to know if you’ve found it? 

    A gardener knows the secret to Life is patience. He is not a day-trader. He knows that there is much more going on beneath the surface than what can be seen above it. He knows better than to trust his eyes for determining truth.

  • Where is your faith?

    One of my favorite NT passages is in Luke chapter 8. Jesus is with his disciples and decides to go to ”the other side” of the Sea of Galilee. They get into a boat and off they sail. Jesus falls asleep in the boat on the way across, leaving the navigation in the hands of accomplished fishermen, many of whom have grown up around this lake and made their livelihoods from it. 

    But, a storm of high wind comes down on the lake, sunken as it is in the topography of the region, and the boat begins to fill with water, threatening to swamp the boat miles from shore.

    These seasoned fishermen, who have undoubtedly been in boats during storms on this body of water before, decide that now is a good time to wake up the carpenter from his nap to tell him, Master, we perish.. And the carpenter from Nazareth rebuked the wind and the waves so that the lake became calm again. Then, in my favorite part of the story, he turns to the disciples and says, ”Where is your faith…”?

    Luke’s narrative says, ”then they were afraid…”.

    Excuse me?

    Then…they were afraid?

    They must have been at least troubled, if not outright terrified, to have awakened Jesus to tell him the boat was filling with water and they were going to drown. And now that the wind and water are calm again these seasoned fishermen are afraid?

    You’d think that the act of waking him up would have shown their faith. It seems that Jesus would have had no need to ask where their faith was. They called on him, after all. But apparently, they had done so just so he wouldn’t sleep through the tragedy. Clearly, they were astonished by what he had done to save them. They sure hadn’t expected this. Now they are more afraid of the solution than they had been of the problem.

    Not exactly fear inducing, eh? Or is it?

    I try to see my place in this story. This small vessel is so tossed by wind-whipped waves out on the open lake that it is taking in water, yet Jesus is asleep? That would have been one heckuva rolling, bucking little boat, but he was undisturbed. Would that have inspired me…or angered me? Would I have remembered that at the start of the journey he had said, ”Let us go to the other side” and since we weren’t yet at the other side the journey wasn’t over? Would I have thought he didn’t care? (In another gospel, they did think that). When he finally does wake up to calm the situation just by speaking, would that have changed my life forever? Would I have finally realized who this person is, and in light of that, how foolish my fear is?

    Like all of us, these men had placed their faith somewhere. Maybe in themselves and their seamanship. Maybe in their ability to predict the weather. Maybe in general circumstances. Maybe they knew they were good swimmers. I can’t know. I’m sure Jesus’ question was rhetorical. He knew that all of us put faith in something, but in a pinch, it may not be the right thing.

    I suspect that Jesus knew these men were rugged, working class, tough, and pretty fearless. I suspect he knew they were self-reliant, independent, and resilient. They would have needed a pretty close brush with mortality, even though this was likely a very familiar occurrence to many of these men. But not at this magnitude. Not with wind at this ferocity.

    Jesus knows how to bring each of us to zero. He knows how to bring you to the end of yourself. He knows that as long as you’re trusting in you, you cannot be simultaneously trusting in Him.

    Not far from where this little boat eventually made safe landfall, Jesus said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs in the Kingdom of God. Only those who recognize their bankrupt spiritual state are fit for the Kingdom. He has a way of breaking all of us who say we want to follow Him. Even if it means we’re in the storm of our lives, and it looks like He’s sleeping through it and completely oblivious.

  • Thoughts On Cain & Abel

    It occurred to me today that the first murder recorded in the Bible was the killing of Abel by his brother, Cain. I’ve read the story many times, but it never registered that this was the first mention of homicide. More interesting to me today, was the realization that this was a religiously motivated murder. 

    So, combining the concepts, there is a lot going on. There’s fratricide, religious murder, and the first homicide all rolled up into the same event. 

    People have many different views of the Bible. The inclusion of this story has many lessons for the reader, no matter what view may be taken.

    One is this, all murder is fratricide. We’re all members of the same human family.

    Another is that a person who tries to earn favor with God by works (as Cain did in bringing an offering consisting of the works of his own hands), will be outraged when those works don’t secure the righteousness they think it will. 

    That rage can be multiplied and converted to murder when coupled with jealousy towards one who is deemed to be righteous, not by working for it, but by believing for it, as Abel was.

    It is curious to see the relationships between religious works, disappointment, jealousy, anger, and murder. It is sadly curious that the combination of these is stronger than blood.

    This thread runs through the Bible (and human history) and culminates with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ by the religious rulers of his day. Let’s take heed and try to treat each other with decency and respect, we’re family after all.