Salt, Light and the Third Way
The early Christian church had a nickname that many Christians are unaware of. It was known as the “Third Way.” This title appeared as early as the second century. It was a reference to how some religious expressions catered to culture by co-opting and reflecting it, while others isolated themselves from it. As Gerald Sittser has written, the first would have “undermined the uniqueness of their belief system and way of life,” and the second “would have kept them safe on the margins—safe, … but irrelevant.”
Instead, Christians did neither. They chose a third way that engaged the world while not compromising their beliefs. As is commonly put, they were in the world, but not of it. There is nothing needed more in our post-Christian, digital world than men and women committed to the third way—people who have the unfiltered gospel in one hand and the internet in the other, with a heart beating for the lost.
So rather than decry a church’s foray into technology or the online world or the metaverse, consider anew Jesus’ words:
“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A town on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:13-16, NIV)
In Jesus’ day, salt was one of the most useful and important elements, but it wasn’t because of what it did for the taste of food. Back then, salt was mainly used as a preservative. People didn’t have refrigerators or freezers, and they couldn’t buy things in cans, so they used salt to keep their food from spoiling. If you had a piece of meat that you couldn’t eat right away, you’d rub some salt into it and that would keep the meat from decaying. When Jesus said we should be like salt, He meant that we should live in such a way that our very presence in the world staves off decay. John Stott once wrote that “the world is… putrefying. It cannot stop itself from going bad. Only salt introduced from outside can do this. The church… is set in the world… as salt to arrest—or at least to hinder—the process of social decay…. God intends the most powerful of all restraints within sinful society to be his own redeemed, regenerate and righteous people.”
Jesus also called us to make a difference by being the light of the world. Whereas salt is about taking a stand, light is about revealing what is real; it’s about showing the way. To let our lights shine is to make known what Christ is doing in our lives and the truth about what Christ wants to do in everyone’s lives. So you can think of it this way: Salt is a negative influence: it works against something. Light is a positive influence: it tries to bring something. Both are needed for influence. We work against moral and cultural decay; we work for truth. Again, Stott: “One can hardly blame unsalted meat for going bad. It cannot do anything else. The real question to ask is, ‘Where is the salt?’”
The online world is unsalted meat.
And if we fail in our mission to be the salt of the earth? What if the salt loses its saltiness? Jesus makes it clear: if salt doesn’t function like salt, it is worthless. Some people seem to think that Christians’ goal is to retain as much salt for themselves and in themselves as possible. They think the way to keep salt from losing its saltiness is to retreat from the world, to make sure they don’t interact with it, so they don’t get polluted and lose any of their saltiness. But that is the opposite of what Jesus is saying. According to Him, the way to lose our saltiness, the way to become irrelevant, to have no influence at all, to make the salt in our lives meaningless, is to keep from interacting with the decay of the world.
Avoiding interaction with the world will ensure not only that the world dies but that your church will too. This is the way salt works: it is either used proactively or it becomes destructive to the one who has it. Think of the Dead Sea. Why is it dead, with no life in it at all? It is because it has such heavy mineral content that the water cannot support life of any kind. There’s no outlet for the water that flows in. If water doesn’t flow out, it stagnates. It can’t support life. It dies.
The goal is not to keep ourselves as salty as possible by retreating from the world but rather to keep ourselves as salty as possible so that we can give that salt to the world, and we should do so where it is decaying the most. In this case, that must include the online world.
Malcolm Muggeridge tells of taking Mother Teresa into a New York television studio to appear on one of the morning shows. It was the first time Mother Teresa had been in an American television studio, and she was completely unprepared for the constant interruptions for commercials. On that particular morning, all of the commercials dealt with food that was being advertised as “nonfattening and non-nourishing.” Mother Teresa, noted Muggeridge, looked at them with a kind of wonder, “her own constant preoccupation being, of course, to find the wherewithal to nourish the starving and put some flesh on human skeletons. It took some little time for the irony of the situation to strike her. When it did, she remarked, in a perfectly audible voice: ‘I see that Christ is needed in television studios.’”
Yes, He is.
James Emery White
Sources
Adapted from James Emery White, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age (Zondervan), order from Amazon.
The earliest reference to the designation “Third Way” is in a second-century letter to a Roman official named Diognetus.
Gerald L. Sittser, “The Early Church Thrived Amid Secularism and Shows How We Can, Too,” Christianity Today, October 16, 2019, read online.
John R.W. Stott, Christian Counter-Culture: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount.
Malcom Muggeridge, Christ and the Media.
Photo Courtesy: ©Pexels/Ekaterina Mitkina
Published Date: August 14, 2025
James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook, and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.
Originally published August 14, 2025.
