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YE ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD!
THE SALT OF THE EARTH.
IF THE SALT LOSES IT'S FLAVOR, IT BECOMES OF NO USE.---MATTHEW 5:13,14[paraphrased]
Nowhere is the tragic tendency to conform more evident than in the church. Called to combat social evils and be light to the world, we have remained silent behind stained glass windows. Called to salt the earth[or soup, as Pastor Yemi Amusan once said] we have chosen to salt ourselves. We have often failed to realise that every true christian is a citizen of two worlds---the world of time and the world of eternity. We have swallowed hook, line and sinker the words of the popular hymn - "this world is not my home, i'm just passing thru". We fail to link the scripture that says "we should lay all our treasures in heavenly places" and the one that says "we should salt the earth". We spiritualise and go around with the charasteristics of the softminded - laying hands and healing the sick without healing the "diseases" of our nation, our world. We battle crippled limbs, strokes, malaria, blindness, cancer and even aids without as much paying attention to corruption, hunger and the other inefficiences and decay that are like cancers eating deep into the fabric of our nation. We attack the blindness of the eyes and let roam the blindness of the mind. We are so transformed by the renewing of our minds that we leave the runnings of our nation and world to "unbelievers" while we face the more expedient matters of heaven! Yet live on this earth we must and salt it we've been commanded.
Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendecy of most is to adopt a view that is so ambigous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. We divide into two distinct groups - the "spirits" that walk around with halos on their heads and do not dirty themselves with the mundane matters of our country and the second group - the "conformists", that merge so well with the world you can't tell the diffrence. One group has learnt to blend in, the other has revised the beatitudes to read "blessed are the pure in ignorance for they shall see God"!!
Longfellow said in one of his essays that "In this world, a man must either be hammer or anvil". He is either a moulder of society or he's been moulded by society. Who doubts that today, most men are anvils and are shaped by the patterns of the majority. Or to change the expression, most christians are like thermometers that record or register the temperature of majority opinion, not thermostats that transform and regulate the temperature of the society.
We are either makers of history or made by history. It is time that christians come out from "among them and be seperate". If salt was not of a diffrent substance from the soup, then it cannot give the soup flavor. The bible puts it this way, if the salt loses it's flavor, it is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trodden underfoot by men! Little wonder our society is in chaos. A lttle leaven leaveneth the whole lump. One man affected the whole of America on racism and segregration because he dared to stand for the truth as it's found in the bible. He dared to be salt! What would you be?
Osekita Tolulope studies management and accounting at the Obafemi Awolowo University ile-ife and attends Christ Love Fellowship on campus.
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Tolu Osekita
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