Some pictures in the Christian world are common, nearly mundane in their familiarity and regularity. They lack the creative vibe they once had, and they fail to pack the punch they deserve to have. We understand the idea of removing the plank from our own eye, we get the idea of not casting the first stone and we embrace the concept of the Good Samaritan. Sigh. Yawn. It’s been overdone.

Enter salt and light. Another classic. Another mandate. Another picture. Another once-compelling call to followers of Christ, made dry, banal and predictable. But not this weekend. This past Sunday I sat thinking I knew how the message at church would shape up. “You are the salt of the earth.” I know. Now tell me what I know is coming—the anticipated application. But I didn’t get that part. I didn’t hear what I was expecting. I got something completely different.

Salt. For all practical purposes, used to season. Used to spice. Used to improve whatever food or dish it is being added to. Without it, there is a bland quality, mediocrity and certainly nothing memorable. With it, there is a kick, a level of tastiness and excellence not there before. Salt makes things better.

But salt hurts, too. Salt rubbed in our open wounds stings. Salt in our eyes burns. Salt on our skin itches. Salt used properly improves, but salt used poorly harms. And so this question was posed to us: In our attempt to “be salt” to the world, have we misconstrued our purpose, misused our saltiness, maybe even driven people away, cringing, from our poor salt execution, instead of drawing people in to our flavored environment?

I have considered it this week, wondering if Christianity as a whole has produced, maybe even earned, the not-so-favorable reputation that sometimes engulfs it. I have mulled over the adjectives the world associates with those claiming to be followers of Jesus and realized that whether they are true or not is not really the point. They are often the perception. The world, upon seeing our “saltiness,” is running in the opposite direction.

Then this morning I argued with my husband. Something to do with celery and cucumbers and plastic bags. It was all very lame. But I left the house frustrated. And it was hours before I thought about the picture of salt and the world, and realized that a corporate failure to properly utilize salt was actually personally relevant in a ridiculous lovers’ quarrel. Maybe being the salt of “the earth” means being flavor to a much smaller realm than this huge world—maybe, more specifically, my daily world, my tiny world, consisting of me, my husband and the little baby called “oneness” we are nurturing.

So I thought of my husband. I thought of this morning. And then I thought about how sometimes I don’t always treat my husband as someone who can be wounded. I don’t behave as though I am liable for the way I treat him. As a result, our tiny, exclusive world does not taste very good. Because sometimes I use salt poorly.

That isn’t really what I am going for. And I don’t think that is what Jesus was going for, either, when He told us to be the salt of the earth. To learn to be salt, I have to start in my world. And if my husband is not on the receiving end of this glorious flavoring, then I am failing on a much larger scale than my marriage. I am failing in my love relationship with God.

My husband was the one who gave the message on Sunday. He was the one who was teaching when I was sitting there thinking that this comfortable picture and familiar explanation of being salt to the earth would offer nothing different than what I had already heard. And I was wrong.

I need to live like I am accountable to this world. But first, I want to be accountable to the world that is our marital unit. I want to look into the eye of this man who embodies the beautiful picture of redemptive love and have him know that before anyone else, he has my promise to be better. To love better. To flavor better. To be salt.