Rooting for Rust
How Ironclad Reigns, Rules, and Realities Dissolve
Last week, I went to place a 25lb dumbbell back on the rack we have in our basement.
For reasons still unclear to me, I ended up dropping the iron weight into its spot at an angle that also managed to pinch a significant portion of my ring finger.
“Ah!” I yelled to no one.
I knew in an instant that, at the very least, my fingernail was going to be black and blue by the next day (it was).
Because iron is an unforgiving substance, no?
There’s a reason we have phrases like…
Rule with an iron fist.
Iron sharpens iron.
That’s an ironclad agreement.
We are making clear just how unyielding, unbreakable, and relentlessly strong something is.
—
It is striking how often Jesus speaks of the elemental aspects of the world.
His teaching is never ethereal.
Nor does it require multiple degrees to understand. Or any degrees, really.
You are the salt of the world.
You are the light of the world.
Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.
Salt.
Light.
Water.
The simple elements that, at their core, are ways of helping us understand what it looks like when Love gets to work in this world.
SALT
Salt is small. It’s humble. It is so easy to overlook yet, goodness, you ever fogotten salt on your meal? You know immediately when it’s missing.
Beacuse salt is what brings out all the flavor.
Salt takes what is dry, dead, and dull and draws forth goodness, nourishment, and even delight.
Jesus-like salt happens anytime people live in the way of love.
It’s usually small. It’s humble. It is so easy to overlook yet, goodness, you ever seen a family gathering, a community, or even a whole society forget love? You know immediately when it’s missing.
Thank goodness for the quiet ways salt persists and draws forth from impossible terrain goodness, nourishment, and even delight.
Like the Vietnamese Buddhist monks currently walking 2300 miles across the country through rain, snow, and ice storms alike as a collective witness to another way to journey the terrain. Another kind of possibility. In a sentiment, a way of peace.
LIGHT
Even the smallest modicum of light transforms a dark room. Honestly, a sliver of sun creasing through the bottom of a doorway is more than enough to signal the promise of an entirely different reality at hand.
Jesus-like light happens anytime people live in the way of love.
It’s usually small. It’s humble. But goodness, have you ever witnessed even the smallest act of genuine care, truth-telling, or sacrifice? Is not that sliver of the Real Thing more than enough to signal to everyone in the room that there really is an entirely different reality at hand?
Thank goodness for the quiet ways light shines in the darkness.
Like the Minnesota neighbors in recent days using camera phones to shine light upon propaganda and providing in-home classes for children afraid to show up to school and delivering formula and diapers for families fearful to step from their homes.
WATER
Water is made known in tiny drops and massive waves. Achingly small puddles and impossibly deep oceans. We ourselves are mostly made of water.
It’s everywhere, and yet it always captivates us most when it’s Moving. Winding. Racing.
Carrying and shaping at once.
Relentless and inviting at once.
Sustaining life both within and without its body.
Jesus-like water happens anytime love is put into motion.
Such water is potent in every corner of creation, but it always captivates us most when it picks up speed and begins both carrying and shaping, pressing and inviting, nourishing alike those on the inside and those on the outside.
Thank goodness for the quiet ways water persists.
Like the leaders who - for all their profound anger and frustration and desire to make a better future - refuse to dehumanize those around them when it all becomes near-impossible even as they also refuse to lose sight of their calling unto the ones who have no voice. At once, they both carry the weight of civil leadership even as they shape a deeply humane vision of leadership.
IRON
Like us, Jesus lived in a time of ironclad ways and assumptions about how the world works, whose right, and who wins.
“We live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” - Stephen Miller
And Jesus never went straight to the Ironclad Emperor on Ironclad terms.
Sword to Sword.
Shield to Shield.
Strength to Strength.
Rather, he unleashed Salt.
And Light.
And Water.1
In the short-term, iron swords, iron laws, and iron pride likely laughed. They have long known how even a brief encounter with but a few pounds of their raw power will leave a notable mark.
Sometimes the iron encounter is made known externally via militarized might, money, and intimidation.
Sometimes the iron encounter is made known internally via the prison bars of resentment, regret, and fear that hold us - and that we assume will hold us all our days because, of course, did you see what the bars are made of?
And sometimes it’s an awful mix of ironclad outer realities and ironclad inner realities and it all feels incredibly… heavy.
But goodness…
You ever seen what steady Salt, Light, and Water eventually do to iron?
Rust.
Corrosion.
In time… the flaky remnants of the once-defiant iron drift away.
Each flake falling unto the soft soil of a new spring.
Which really is Love’s final gotcha.
Because it’s not only the fact that easily-overlooked Salt, Light, and Water ultimately prove far more powerful than the iron-strong laws, ways, and assumptions touted as unbreakable by each generation.
It’s that this Elemental Trinity is so powerful that they take the impossible iron itself and - with a grace that arrives like a massive dumbbell dropped straight onto the heart of our moral sensibilities - plant said iron right into the eternal story.
As essential nourishment and beauty for the New Season.
—
This is the real world.
Governed by the elements of Love.
And when Jesus does talk of ‘bringing a sword,’ the great irony is that he does not mean a literal one, but rather the kind of light-filled truth that so pierces the darkness that it divides and breaks it with sword-like force - unto wholly different ends, however, than the literal one.
Thank you Bobby. Your words touched me today
This articel nails something I've been wrestling with lately. The way rust becomes essential nourishment for new growth is such a perfect inversion of the power logic. Most people assume confronting ironclad structures requires matching their force, but the salt/light/water appraoch is actually way more subversive because it doesnt legitimize the framework it's dissolving.