Are You Salty?

“Why are you so salty?”

If you spend time on social media you have probably seen someone refer to someone else as being salty. According to dictionary.com, salty is slang, and it means to be irritated, angry, or resentful, especially as a result of losing or being slighted. If someone complains on social media about not getting their way, they are accused of being salty. In our culture, being salty is not a good thing. “Easy bro. Don’t be so salty.” 

In the Bible, being salty is a good thing. In Matthew 5:13 Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.” Christians are called to be salt. We can think of that in terms of adding flavor to life through our love and good works, or as being an agent that creates thirst that only Jesus, the Living Water, can satisfy. The most likely characteristic of salt that Jesus had in mind was that of preservation. Before refrigeration people used to pack their meat in salt so that it would last longer. We can be preserving agents by leading people to Christ so that their souls can be saved for eternity. 

Satan wants to spoil the world through perversion, but we have been called to save the world through preservation. 

Did you know that different bodies of water have different amounts of salt? If you were to take a ton of water out of the Pacific Ocean, and then remove the salt from that ton of water, you would have 79 pounds of salt. If you did the same thing with a ton of water from the Atlantic Ocean, you would have 81 pounds of salt. If you took a ton of water from the Dead Sea, the saltiest body of water on earth, you would have 500 pounds of salt. 

In the same way, people can have different levels of saltiness, but it isn’t supposed to be that way. Jesus has called us all to be salt. You should not be less salty than anyone else. The world may not want you to be salty, but Jesus does. You are the salt of the earth. How salty are you?