Rub It In!
Ye are the salt of the earth.
Matthew 5:13
I have just read a statement of a religious leader to the effect that the salt of the earth needs to be rubbed in-even if it smarts.
I have heard and read many developments of the salt theme. The outline usually runs the same course: salt seasons, purifies, preserves. But somebody ought to remind us that salt also irritates. Real living Christianity rubs this world the wrong way. “The world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (Jno. 1:14). Godly living is in itself a rebuke to this age, and this world resents the light that exposes its corruption.
Billy Sunday used to say, “They tell me I rub the fur the wrong way. I don’t. Let the cat turn around.
We are going to a lot of trouble these days developing a brand of Christianity that will not irritate this world. The only salt that will not irritate is “salt without savour,” and our Lord said such salt, whether table salt or spiritual salt, is “good for nothing but to be cast our and trodden under foot of men.”