What Happened to Salt and Light?

SOURCE:  https://www.thespiritlife.net/facets/75-process/process-reflection/5249-reflections-from-john-stott#:

KEYWORDS:  Salt, Light, World, Mission

Some thoughts from John Stott:

“We should not ask, ‘What is wrong with the world?’ for that diagnosis has already been given. Rather we should ask, “What has happened to salt and light? God intends us to penetrate the world. 

Christian salt has no business to remain snugly in elegant little ecclesiastical salt cellars; our place is to be rubbed into the secular community, as salt is rubbed into meat, to stop it going bad. 

And when society does go bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world; but should we not rather reproach ourselves? One can hardly blame unsalted meat for going bad. It cannot do anything else. The question to ask is: Where is the salt?"

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My own thoughts:  I couldn't agree more with Stott here, but where he suggests a retreat to "salt cellars," I suggest an additional temptation.  Some believe they are applying "salt" to the world, but it is a counterfeit.  It looks nothing like the gospel that Jesus embodied.  

"If salt has lost its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot" (Matthew 5:13-14).