The Preaching of the Gospel

The Preaching of the Gospel

in ways that call us to all to a form of repentance that has includes the full dimensions of our many failures to fulfil our various offices – as husbands, wives, parents, neighbours, business people, nurses, teachers, politicians, students and public servants.  This was always a strong feature of Jewish spirituality, as may be indicated from a reading of the first chapter of the book of Isaiah.  Furthermore, it is worthwhile recalling that when those baptised for repentance by John the Baptiser, asked him what they should do, received a reply to the effect that ‘tax collectors’ should collect no more than they were appointed’ and ‘soldiers should rob no one by violence or by false accusation, and to be content with their wages.’  Modern Christianity seems to have fully accepted the Eighteenth Century Enlightenment dictum that religion has no place in secular life.  If we were to learn that the biblical preaching of the gospel does spill over into every sphere of human life, but that the power of the organised church has its own sphere of operation – one that includes a calling to preach the need for ‘salting the whole earth’ by those of its members who are not called to the euphemism of ‘full time ministry’, then something resembling ‘reformational’ Christianity might arise and indeed be salt to an earth that has got used to the sugary or acidic salt that has lost its taste.