The beginnings of some thoughts on salt.

Some people put salt on tomatoes, some people put it on chips. I have never heard anyone say, “Ooh, nice salt!” But I have heard people say, “Emmm, nice chips.” 

The job of salt is not to make you think how great the salt is, but how great the food is upon which you have sprinkled the salt. 

Jesus asks us to be salt and to not lose our saltiness so that we might point people to him as their true food.

The challenge

Show your God-flavours. By being salty, by authentically leading Godward lives, we will lead others to thirst for Jesus. 

Salty relationships

True before nice

As well as drawing out the flavour of foods, salt is an antiseptic. My husband, who had eczema as a child was encouraged by his mum to wade into the sea on holiday even though it stung like crazy. After the pain subsided, the healing began. In a similar way people might feel stung by your saltiness. We are called by Christ to be the salt of the earth and so to work with him to disinfect a diseased world, loving people enough to be honest with them because Jesus calls His disciples “the salt of the earth” and not “the sugar of the earth.” 

Are there times when we are called to challenge one another, call each other to the greater call God has for each of us. 

It's good to be accountable to someone in your Christian journey and for your life, in general. Choose someone who is adequately salty, whom you trust, someone with spiritual maturity and let them speak into your life. When you have built relationship, speak into their life too. Be bold because you are salt, not sugar. You can't sugar coat Christ's call to holiness, telling people only what they want to hear. Salt has a bite to it. The tang of salt heals any infecting wrong attitudes. Pray. Relating to one another should be characterised by love and grace. In Col 4:6, we are told “Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.”  

Salty church

Can a church lose its saltiness? 

Is Jesus pushing us? 

Maybe there are no half salt measures. 

Is salt that loses its saltiness like water that loses its wetness? Not salt anymore? 

Strictly speaking, salt cannot lose its saltiness; sodium chloride is a stable compound. But the salt in Jesus’ day was not pure. The “salt” around the Dead Sea contains a mixture of other minerals, and the pure salt could be washed out, leaving a useless residue. Whilst in the first–century it was possible for salt to lose its saltiness, for us, like water losing its wetness, this should be impossible if we are led by the Spirit. If we are truly who we are made to be as God’s people, we are the salt of the earth. This all occurs at status-level. Just as we are children of God, we are the salt of the earth. Saltiness is a status-thing. It's interesting that Jesus does not tell us to become salty, only to stay salty.

Highly flavoured? 

Beware:

• We can become a tasteless church even when our salt shaker or church building is attractive. 

• We can think that it is all about counting the salt grains: the bums on seats at our worship services when really we must be focussed on salting our community. The whole point of salt is that it leaves the shaker and hits the meat and the meat is out there on the street. We have to leave the building and go out into the world once we have refreshed ourselves as a gathered community because we need to give the people of God's world a taste of Christ.