Like Salt (Part III): The City
If you follow this blog at all, you will see that I have already entitled the last two blog posts, “Like Salt.”
I am launching a series of blogs addressing what it means for Christians to “seek the welfare of the city” and to live “like salt” in society.
The deep divisions and palpable confusion we see in the American church today makes this topic especially compelling to me.
The prophet Jeremiah sent a letter to the exiles who had been forced to march some 800 miles to Babylon and resettle there. It was a bitter defeat for them. “How,” they asked, “can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” (Psalm 137).
Jeremiah wrote to tell them. It was not what they were expecting.
“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:4-7).
The message would have surprised, even shocked, its recipients. The Babylonians were enemies who had conquered Israel, humiliated its people, and relocated them in a kind of in-house arrest near the capitol city.
You would expect Jeremiah to advise them to pray for Babylon’s defeat and to call a divine curse on them. But Jeremiah does the opposite. He counsels them to settle down, build houses, plant vineyards, marry, raise children, multiply, and seek the welfare of the city, even praying for it. Babylon’s welfare would ensure their own.
“Welfare” is a telling word to use. It implies both immersion and distance (instead of absorption and isolation), thus engaging with the city but also maintaining clear and obvious difference. They did NOT have to become Babylonians, which would only undermine their mission. The people of God were to remain faithful to God, obedient to his commands, and gracious in their conduct, like Joseph, Esther, and Daniel modeled. This godly difference would allow all people—including God’s people—to flourish.
This same theme continues in the New Testament. Jesus commanded his followers to live “like salt.” The genius of the metaphor is its simplicity and ordinariness. We know what salt does: it preserves food, it enhances taste, and it creates thirst. Society becomes healthier, happier, and thirstier because Christians live in it.
These two texts say nothing about the city itself. There are no qualifications, as if to say, “Seek the welfare of the city if it is the right kind of city, a city compatible with your beliefs and practices, a city that favors you (over your enemies), a city that protects your rights, a city that gives you freedom, a city that treats you nicely.”
Quite the opposite.
Through much of human history—and still today in many parts of the world—Christians have lived in social, political, and economic systems that ran contrary to God’s kingdom.
Consider the circumstances under which the people of God lived during the conquest. Babylon was a pagan, ruthless empire that gobbled up much of the ancient near-Eastern world. Yet Jeremiah commanded God’s people to seek its welfare.
Early Christians faced a similar set of circumstances. Romans worshiped Caesar Augustus as the Son of God; they followed a religion that contradicted pretty much everything that Christians believed and practiced. Yet Jesus exhorted his disciples to live like salt.
It seems that this command would be hardest to obey in places most hostile to Christianity, like ancient Babylon and Rome, or modern China and Iran. And easiest to obey in places most open and friendly to Christianity, like America.
Not necessarily.
Here is the trap into which Christians in America often fall. We assume our form of government (a democratic republic), our protection of individual rights (e.g., freedom of speech, assembly, and religion), and our system of economics (capitalism) is inherently compatible with Christianity.
Is it? Christians in America face a far more subtle and menacing danger. The assumption of compatibility can lure us into complacency, worldliness, and heresy.
We adjust, we settle, we compromise. We confuse being American with being Christian. We enjoy material prosperity but ignore the people left behind, even suggesting poverty is their own fault. We claim our rights and defend our freedoms but fail to protect the rights and freedom of the most vulnerable (from the unborn to the elderly, and everyone in between). We think America is for OUR people, but not for THOSE people. We elevate party over church, ideology over theology, demagogue over Jesus, insider (white, for example) over outsider. The result is a confused mixture of American and Christian.
We seek our own welfare, not the city’s. We shake salt on our own food, leaving the rest to rot.
I stand convicted. The city’s welfare includes presidents for which I did not vote and whom I do not like, parties to which I do not belong and with which I disagree, tribes against which I fight. The city includes rural and urban, fly-over states and coastal states, elite professions and the trades, white and black and First Nation. It includes everyone. It is not just for me and mine.
No qualification. Welfare for all, or for none. Salt on everything, or rot is sure to follow. This is an all or nothing proposition.