Jesus called His followers the “salt of the earth”—not because salt just enhances flavour, but because it preserves. It prevents decay. He was speaking not of food, but of moral and spiritual preservation. Christianity, and those who faithfully embody it, exert a stabilising, life-preserving influence on society.
When Jesus first spoke these words, they had to be received by faith. They had not yet been tested. But two thousand years of history have proven this claim true. Wherever Christianity declines, society declines with it. As the faith is pushed to the margins, our institutions, public life, and cultural foundations weaken. The salt has not merely been removed—it has lost its saltiness.
We are living with the consequences. The more salt you remove, the faster decay spreads.
William Wilberforce once warned: “The loss of the church would itself be attended with the most fatal consequences. No prudent man dares hastily pronounce how far its destruction might not greatly endanger our civil institutions.”
Today, this is not a point that needs proving. The unfortunate truth is that it is evident to us all. We see the consequences unfolding around us every single day. The question for us is, what are we going to do about it?
We can complain, watch nostalgic videos of the good-ol’ days, dream of what the world could be like had we not been derailed by compromised politicians—or else, we could regain that “saltiness” of which Jesus spoke.
If Wilberforce was right—and recent history has proved he was—then the only faithful response to our present moment is to recover the saltiness we have long neglected. A decaying world has only one remedy: a salty church—and the only question is whether we will be that church.
