00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode six, 27 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Mark ahow author of building wealth and living in faith. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling, having a right relationship between faith and money is key to doing that.
00:00:33 And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader. This is what it means to be solved ourselves in today's time to be brave enough, to stand up, to be brave enough, to speak out and to be brave enough, to recognize that as hard as this is as complex as this is as many different sides as there are,
00:01:12 and that you can actually see this a lot of different ways that doesn't make you wrong. Welcome, and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast.
00:01:36 We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world In today's spiritual foundation episode about developing your influence. I talk with you about why Christians are called the salt of the earth, what that can really mean to us. And some ways that you can seek out and be salt yourself and Matthew chapter five,
00:02:09 verse 13, Jesus said you are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? Is it then good for nothing, but to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men? And that phrase has always struck me as a little funny, the salt of the earth. And in fact, if you look up salt and various idioms,
00:02:31 you'll find that most of the idioms, most of the expressions that use salt actually use it in somewhat of a, a negative connotation. You know, someone's salty. Then they tend to be kind of rude or, or someone that's a little off color, those sorts of things. But here we're using salt in a, in a positive way. You know,
00:02:54 we, we talk about you are the salt of the earth. What does that really mean to be the salt of the earth? Well, going back in time and looking at salt, it was always considered an amazingly valuable resource. In fact, our word salary comes from the same word root word as salt, because salt you've probably heard was actually used to pay people back in Roman times and other times,
00:03:25 because salt was so valuable and so difficult in some ways to get in a pure way. And nowadays we know biologically that the human body does not function without salt. Your cells actually work using salt. And if you don't have the right balance of salt, your cells can actually begin to break down and not work any longer. So salt is inevitably going to be looked at as a beneficial thing.
00:03:57 In some ways, salt is at a flavor enhancer. Obviously it can be used as a cleansing agent for wounds. It can be used as a purifying and preserving agent for food and even water. It's a way of cleaning and killing germs. And it's been used that way for a long period of time. But then Jesus talks about what if salt loses its saltiness.
00:04:26 It's only good to be thrown out and trampled upon. See the truth is that salt, a couple of other uses for it. It would be mixed with gypsum and use to seal roofs. And it would also be mixed sometimes with gypsum and put into the roads by the Romans to harden the road. But they would tend to use the salt that was already damaged in some way.
00:04:50 It already gotten wet or otherwise exposed to the elements. And therefore it wasn't quote good salt and it lost its use. It was worthless to be used as a preservative or as something that could be cured or used to help people. In fact, the word gypsum actually means bitter. And if you think about it, it was mixed with something better. And I think that's an example of how we can lose our saltiness.
00:05:18 When it comes to being the salt of the world, we can become bitter. We can become angry. We can begin to look at others and become hardened in our views. You know, I, I look at what's going on in the world right now. And I recognize the fact that I know there are things that I see in the world that are not the same as other people's experiences,
00:05:43 whether it's a black man who's pulled over by the police and treated in a way that I would never be treated as a white man, or whether it's a woman who is being looked down upon by others. That truth that they have is not the same truth as I am, have. I recognize my own privilege. And there's times that I struggle with that because I don't know what to do about it.
00:06:13 I become bitter. I become frustrated. I become paralyzed. Sometimes I even become silent, but the truth is my silence is not because I don't recognize it, but because I don't experience it. And I sometimes don't know what to say. I become more active and actively speaking out against people who maybe are not always seeing what I see is reality. It's really a complex situation though.
00:06:45 And it becomes really difficult. And so as being the salt of the earth, what that really means, I think is being willing to speak out for those who are not able to take care of themselves or for those who are looked down upon by society. Those who are mistreated, those who are oppressed, the orphans, the widows, and yes, even black men and women who are being mistreated in the American society today.
00:07:16 All of this is part of being the salt of the earth. And when we're called to be the salt of the earth, I think what we're called to do is to be loving, to be open, to listen to other's experiences and not to reject them out of hand, but to listen with an open mind and an open heart and recognize that your reality may not be what others have experienced as their reality growing up,
00:07:49 I challenge you to, to seek out diversity in your view, if you feel that all police are evil, then seek out an opportunity to meet some police that are not. If you feel that all blacks are crooks, seek out and find a way of reaching out to some folks and you will find out that that is also not true. If you think this isn't about race,
00:08:17 but it rather it's about police brutality, then seek out an open up your heart and your mind to listen to other's experiences and recognize the fact that there is a racial component to this. This is what it means to be salt ourselves in today's time to be brave enough, to stand up, to be brave enough, to speak out and to be brave enough,
00:08:43 to recognize that as hard as this is as complex as this is as many different sides as there are, and that you can actually see this a lot of different ways that doesn't make you wrong, but it does mean that you have to be willing to listen to other's experiences that have gone out into the world and experience something different than you and hold that in your heart openly.
00:09:09 And honestly, with love. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoy this episode, do me a favor, go over to facebook.com/inspired stewardship and like our Facebook page and market that you'd like to get notifications from us so that we can connect with you on Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there until next time,
00:10:03 invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact the world.