“If the salt have lost its savour” – By Roya
It is recorded in the Bible that Jesus tells us we are the salt of the earth, and adds, “but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men” (Matthew 5:13). I got a new sense of that passage today while reading the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel.
I had always read that passage as advising us not to lost our saltness — our spiritual sense. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be doing much good with our days. I was curious, though — how could salt lose its saltness? Well, one online source brought out the fact that pure salt — sodium chloride — cannot lose any of its flavor. Well, of course! From that basis, the passage takes a different tone. Salt can’t lose its savour! And neither can we. We are worthy and productive and can never lose our divine nature.
The original sense I saw of keeping aligned with spiritual sense is definitely useful, but I also enjoyed thinking of the absolute fact that we are salty salt, just as we are “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). We don’t lose our light — the city shines on and on through day and night.
I recently had a conversation that went in the direction of mourning. I was enjoying mentally sticking to the truth of the goodness of Life as this conversation continued, but later I felt a mental cloud overhead. After I gleaned this new revelation about our saltness, I realized that I was still taking these friends at their word to a certain extent — believing that they had lost some of their saltness as they worked through grief. Well, the Christ certainly corrected this thought! Now I understand better than ever the importance of keeping my thought clear about the individuals around me, as much as I do for myself. If our saltness is the fact of our being, there is nothing keeping me from seeing this truth manifested absolutely everywhere.
“Stick to the truth of being in contradistinction to the error that life, substance, or intelligence can be in matter” (SH 418:5–6).