SALT AND LIGHT

"Our culture, society, government, and law are in the condition they are in, not because of a conspiracy, but because the church has forsaken its duty to be the salt of the culture”. So said Francis Schaeffer.

This is an interesting comment as recently, the bush fires in Australia (February 2009) were attributed by a leading Pentecostal cleric to the legalising of abortion in the State of Victoria.

If we are to believe the word of God and one would hope that this is the case, then we cannot ignore the fact that judgment begins at the house of God (1 Peter 4:17). It says that if the righteous scarcely will be saved what will the end of the ungodly be?

It would be more helpful if we asked ourselves if the bushfires are more a commentary on the church than on the world. Could they be happening because judgment has begun on the church because it is no longer salt and it is no longer light? Could the legalising of abortion be due to the fact that the church is no longer salt and light and God is using it as a wake up call to us, not the world?

If that is the case, we have to face the fact that we would rather blame the world than face the reality of our own situation. In 2 Chronicles 4:17 it says that God would heal the land if we… not if they.

What is the “if we?” Humility, pray and seek God’s face. When was the last time your church did that? In most of them, prayer is all about God blessing what we are doing. Rarely is it a vehicle to find out what God is doing or saying. Rarely is it admittance that without God we can do nothing.

I know that most churches say that prayer is of the utmost importance but their actions show that this is a complete lie. In many churches prayer consists of 15 minutes before the Sunday morning meeting and that is all. The rest of the time it is left to individual believers praying in their homes despite the fact that the New Testament Church came together daily to pray.

Francis Schaeffer had his finger on the pulse and is credited with being a voice for and to the church. But now that he is dead, it seems that the conscience that he raised is dying with him, for the church has gone back to its lethargic, slumbering ways to avoid responsibility at all costs for what is happening in the world.

How does the church become salt and light again? The first thing that it has to do, not if it wants to, is to make corporate prayer the centre of the churches life and practice. It has to, not if it wants to, meet daily for prayer and it has to humble itself and pray and seek God’s face.

Will it happen? I doubt it unless we are squeezed by civil society to the degree that without God, it will be impossible to go on.