Salt

Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?

It is fit neither fro the soil, nor for the manure pile; they throw it away.

Let anyone with ears to hear listen!

-Luke 14: 34-35

Objectively speaking it has never been easier to be human. We live in an age where once crippling and deadly diseases like Polio and Smallpox have been eradicated from much of the world, where the average human lifespan is now into the 70+ range for most of the world. Infant mortality rates are low, medical prognoses are improving for all sorts of diseases on a daily basis.  We have a staggering amount of entertainment and diversion available to us with a level of ease and affordability that would have seemed inconceivable even a few short decades ago.

And yet, somehow, we cannot seem to escape the crushing weight of existence. So many people still suffer from depression, anxiety and an almost endless array of addictions. The crisis of late modernity, into the postmodern era seems to be that people want, and maybe even need, to find something to numb themselves. Perhaps the opium dens of the Victorian era were a harbinger of a much larger crisis to come, perhaps the ancient struggles of people with alcohol and other substances tell us that this really isn't a new phenomenon.  Yet if you were to really take stock of the greatest crisis in modern American society, it would almost have to be the crisis of addiction.  People are addicted to drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography, social media, and even cutting themselves.  That is by no means an exhaustive list of available addictions, but it is a start.

In the twentieth century, Bill Wilson and Bob Smith, both members of an evangelical church called the Oxford Group, and both recovering alcoholics, got together to start the first 12 step program, the basic structure of which forms the basis of the numerous and varied "anonymous," recovery groups.  Churches (like GSPC) serve to house these groups, but we don't always connect with them as anything other than a space to have a meeting.  This is, I believe a case of two potentially symbiotic organisms being separated by something that is seemingly very thin and yet also quite impenetrable. There are people who exist in both worlds who are in need of the other, and in a real sense both worlds need each other.

I will speak here for the church half of the equation.  At our best we provide a place where you can find genuine community. There are, within a reasonably health congregation, ways to connect with other people in genuine relationships that are not based on consumption.  What I mean by this is that, in a healthy church, people are not out to see what you can do for them, they are there to be a part of something bigger than themselves. The 12 step programs have learned that the best way to maintain sobriety is to help others do the same. You learn things about yourself by helping others; not a solely Christian insight, but one that Jesus emphasizes rather often. A church community, could be and probably should be a place where someone who has found the lifesaving emergency care of a recovery program could find a way to build on that foundation in a positive direction.

The problem is that, even though we are often literally under the same roof, the two worlds never get connected. The how and why of this is not easy to sort out, but I suspect it has something to do with perception.  Those who are battling the grip of an addiction are likely to feel rather judged by a gathering of "shiny happy people," which is unfortunately the image that most churches actively seek to put out there.

One of the important pieces of the liturgy, and one which has been set aside by the more modern churches, is the prayer of confession. Protestant churches rejected the Roman Catholic tradition of actually confessing to a priest, and included in its stead a corporate confession of sin and an assurance of pardon in the traditional worship rubric.  They maintained the theological impact of confessing, while cutting the hierarchical and (as they had come to see) corrupt institution of the priesthood out of the equation.  All good and fine, except for the fact that people tend to glaze over corporate liturgical elements.  There are many fine and profound ways to collectively confess our sin and ask for absolution from God, if you are an attentive and curious worshiper, you will find what you need in the Protestant rubric.  However, and I don't think they will pull my ordination over this, the Roman Catholic sacrament of confession has a certain emotional impact that we certainly given up.

To go into a dark booth, and tell a man (unfortunately it's always a man) what you have done, how you have sinned, is both terrifying and cathartic. To come out with some prescription for absolution must feel rather nice to the pragmatic and casual believer.  It's one of those places where what I believe is good theology and what I know about human beings run into one another.  I know that Christ is sufficient, that I do not need another mediator, a priest, or the Virgin Mary, or one of the saints to intercede for me, because Jesus is all I need and all I could ever need.

I'm not sure though, that everyone who attends the average Protestant worship service gets this somewhat mystical idea of union with Christ.  Mystical ideas are notoriously slippery things.  Taking away physical practices of mystical ideas leads to a further erosion of people's connection with truth.  In the case of confession the erosion was from the difficult, dark and visceral feeling of the confessional, to the important, but often abstract, corporate confession, then to no confession at all.

And that, friends and neighbors, if how you lose your saltiness.  The reason why I was going on about the 12 step programs above is that I believe they have something to teach us about salt.  The first step of the 12 is in fact confession in another costume: "Hi, I'm (your name here) and I'm an alcoholic." It's pretty much the same as "Bless me Father for I have sinned..." 

Awareness of our sin is important because it keeps us from getting too impressed with ourselves and it helps us to honestly love one another.  If you are aware of your own sin (the log in your eye), and you deal with it, then you will be less dangerous to others, less likely to judge, and more likely to actually be a healer (as Jesus was).  As I find myself saying rather a lot, the people Jesus argued with all the time were the ones who thought they were righteous.  I can't find one instance of him actually berating a "sinner," while he's always got some choice words for the Priests and Scribes.

I suppose we can't always control whether or not people feel judged in our presence, but there are a lot of ways we can actively go about not judging, and the first part of that is to confess the ways we have been less than good.  It doesn't always feel good right away to confess, but it is an important way to stay salty.