salt and stumbling

I've decided that today's passages (Mark 9:41-42, 50) really defines the philosophy of my life and my faith. They talk about two things: stumbling blocks and salt. What do the two have to do with each other? Well, not much at first glance but a whole lot if you take a little time to think about it.

Jesus commands us not to put a stumbling block in front of 'these little ones'. What does this mean? I always take it to mean that we, as Christians, must never ever ever do anything to prevent people from coming to God. We must never think ourselves as so good or so righteous that we exclude others from God's love. I don't ever want someone to look at me and think, "God must love her more because of this or that." I don't ever want someone to see the things I do and think to themselves, "I could never do that, therefore I am not as good." I don't want these things because I share two things with everyone in the world: I am sinful and God is love.

When you strip everything else away, that's all you're left with. We are sinful and God is love. We're all broken. We're all damaged goods. We all make bad choices. But God is love. God loves who we are because he created us. Once we REALLY begin to understand these two concepts, that's when we find hope. That's when we start to realize that our mission is not to be 'good' people. Our mission is to be God's people and to show his love to this sinful world.

The other part of this verse is about salt. I don't know much about salt except that it makes your food taste better, melts ice off roads and can be used to preserve fresh foods. The weird thing about salt is that inspite of the fact that it has it's own taste, what it really does is bring out the truer flavor of the food. Too much salt and you notice it, but just enough and you don't even know it's there.

As Christians, we need to be salty. We need to bring out the true flavors of God's world. God created the world perfect. We're the ones that messed it up. But we can work to regain that perfection. We can be God's salt that begins to reveal the true flavors of this world.

The one other thing that struck me from this verse was the instruction to "Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another." Getting along and being at peace seems to contribute to good saltiness. Interesting.

I hope that I can be salt and not a stumbling block.