Unsalty salt
“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.”
What does it mean for salt to lose its taste; to lose its saltiness? Table salt—sodium chloride—is an extremely stable compound. It doesn't just lose its saltiness.
I recently finished a book by John Stott titled Reading the Sermon on the Mount. In it he explains how salt can lose its taste—the only way salt can lose its taste: by contamination. Salt can become so diluted with impurities that it's really no longer salt.
The obvious parallel is that Christians can become so contaminated with the world that we are no longer able to season culture. Apart from Scripture and godly community this drift can be surprisingly easy and unnoticeable.
