Saltiness
Salt serves many purposes in my life. It…
- Flavors my food
- Ferments cabbage to make sauerkraut
- Keeps my contacts clean (i.e., saline solution)
- Is a vital nutrient for my physical health
- Treats water to counteract harsh chemicals
Too much salt in any of these areas is distasteful and/or unhealthy. A balanced amount, though, is highly beneficial and flavorful. Understanding how salt functions for us physically helps us understand what it means for to be salty as Christians.
“Salt is good for seasoning. But if salt loses its flavor, how do you make it salty again? You must have the qualities of salt among yourselves and live in peace with each other.” (Mark 9:50)
Salt doesn’t exactly lose its saltiness, but it does vary in its level of purity. Impurities make salt grow stale (e.g., the Dead Sea). When salt becomes mixed with too many other minerals, it becomes impure and loses its effectiveness (e.g., taste, ability to purify).
Be Salty
Salt only “loses its flavor” when it becomes so diluted, you can’t taste it anymore. Likewise, we become less salty – less able to flavor the world – when we become diluted by busyness, distractions, wrong teachings, deception, etc.
Stay salty by refusing to let the world corrupt you. This must be an active refusal, though. Doing nothing results in lost saltiness. As we deliberately pursue truth through God’s word and learn to be faithful to him – as we are Motivated by God’s Faithfulness and orient our lives around What Matters to him – we remain salty in a world that continually tries to dilute us.
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1:27)
