On Being Salt and Light

picture by John Vanderkruk

A quote from David Turner (a member at All Souls and a friend of John Stott’s since 1972):

I recall early in my legal career going to see [John Stott] to discuss the possibility of leaving the bar, at which I was just beginning to practise, to explore possibilities of ordination. He was gracious but firm in discouraging me from that route. “We need Christian lawyers” he said. The seriousness with which he took so-called ‘secular’ work was wonderfully affirming. There was no message that such work would be ‘second best’, there was no arena in which God’s people were not needed, where they could not serve effectively.

I know he reflected a lot on the ‘salt and light’ metaphors of Matthew 5. He liked to stress the radical difference that Christlikeness demanded. To that distinctiveness, however, there needed to be added permeation of non-Christian society. Salt did no good if it stayed in the salt shaker. Finally, he was powerfully persuaded of the capacity of Christians to change society. Salt hinders bacterial decay. Light dispels darkness. This was not a call to create a perfect society – John knew that was an impossible brief – but it was a call to be incarnated in society, to be ‘in it but not of it’, to improve it. That teaching, which I heard and read in many different strands from John, has proved vocationally steadying for me in what is by now nearly thirty-five years as a barrister and judge.