A Real Taste of Salt

Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land nor for the dung hill, but men throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear! - Luke 14:34-35

Yesterday evening at the beach, my kids and I were swimming in that little tide pool between the sandbar and the shore, when a little girl came wading up to us. Like always, my children made fast friends with her and her brother. She was five years old and from Dallas, Texas. With wide eyes and a slight Texan drawl, she proudly declared, “This is our first trip to the beach - I’ve never been in the ocean before!” Then, with the most animated expression, she described how the salty water got in her mouth, made her choke a little, and made her whole face “do this” - as she scrunched it up to demonstrate. It was a moment of wonder - and maybe a little discomfort - but it was real: her first true taste of the salt water.

In Jesus’ day, salt was incredibly valuable. It wasn’t just for flavor - it was a preservative, used to keep food from spoiling, especially meat in a world with no refrigeration. Salt was also sometimes used in small amounts to enrich soil or to help prevent decay in compost or manure heaps (what the text calls the “dunghill”), where organic material would break down before being used as fertilizer. But for any of these purposes, salt had to be salty. If it became diluted or corrupted - especially with impurities like gypsum, common around the Dead Sea - it looked the same, but it was useless.

Jesus said that salt that’s lost its flavor is no good for food - and “neither fit for land nor for the dunghill.” It’s not useful in the soil, not helpful for fertilizer - so it gets tossed out. Likewise, a professing believer who has lost the distinctiveness of Christ - who has been assimilated into the world, has no preserving power, no spiritual flavor - is missing the very thing that makes them useful in God’s kingdom. A Christian is only useful when he or she bears the nature of Christ.

We are not called to blend in, but to preserve. Not to impress, not to chase comfort, but to reflect Christ. Salt that loses its saltiness doesn’t just become bland - it becomes discarded. It’s useless.

There’s a haunting Old Testament picture of this in Genesis 19. As God rescued Lot and his family from the judgement falling on Sodom, they were warned not to look back. But Lot’s wife turned her eyes - and her heart - back to the world she was leaving behind. The Bible tells us she became a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26)

It’s a strange and sobering image, but it fits. She looked like she had left, but her heart never did. She bore the outward resemblance of someone preserved - but without the true inward distinction of obedience and faith. A pillar of salt - stuck, stagnant, and ultimately useless.

So here’s the question we each need to consider:

Am I living with the nature of salt - marked by the character and distinctiveness of Christ - or am I blending in so much that I’ve lost the very flavor that makes a disciple a disciple?

Let’s not settle for a bland version of faith. Let’s walk in the real thing - even if it stings, surprises, or makes us scrunch our faces a little at first.

Heavenly Father, help me to reflect You today - not just in words, but in a life that tastes like grace and truth. In Jesus name Amen.