Salty Salt

IL News 003/2019

Opening Mass for 2018 Second Semester – Aletheia Theological Seminary, Malang, January 8th, 2019

Budi Setiamarga, Leimena Institute, Jakarta, led opening mass for 2018 Second Semester at Aletheia Theological Seminary, Lawang, on January 8th, 2019.

He started by showing rotten fish image. Then he threw a question: “Why does fish rot?”. Everyone is quiet. Then he explained further, “The nature of fish is to rot”.

The question is, “Where is the salt needed to prevent rottenness?”. The world is like the fish, will rot because of sin nature. We need to ask where Christians are.

In knowledge sphere, Christian knows very well his identity as salt. But it’s still far from practice. Just like salt in plastic, Christians are still in plastic not doing their functions to salt the world. The plastic is worldview that politic is dirty or minority syndrome.

Budi Setiamarga explained, Indonesia has changed since 1998 reformation. 1945 Constitution Amendment resulted in numbers of principled changes for Indonesia. One of them is change from authoritarian government to democratic government.

Democracy in Indonesia is not majoritarian democracy, but constitutional democracy. It’s not what the majority says, but what constitution says. All citizens are equal in the eye of law. Hence, debate on majority and minority is not relevant or substantive anymore.

Christian should not waste democracy tap which was opened and guaranteed by Constitution, by being busy inside the church. Christian should go out of church wall and act as change actor in preventing and dissolving rottenness. Only then, the salt is useful. Only then, democracy has meaning.

Photo ilustration: Amorpost.com