I have to say this discussion has challenged my thinking. Some have already mentioned our actions and example. This is what makes a Christian attractive to those around him, i.
And in another place He uses the metaphor of honey in the honey comb for His word and the experience of meditating on it. I think Eduardo was making a different point. Scripture is so deep and vast that the parts which resonate with our hearts may differ because of our different situations.
I also want to add that, jesus is.. Hi, I hail from Brazil. You say skepticism is bad for a Christian, and exemplify skepticism as regarding sexual mores. Yet you claim to be from a science background, and your post has plenty of scientific data.
We all know science thrives on skepticism. The scientific method is investigative and demands that all hypotheses be based on naturalistic assumptions. Peer review is an additional layer of skepticism to keep a scientists moral integrity in check. In fact, there can be no such thing as the natural sciences without skepticism. How do you perceive the role of scientific skepticism in the life of a Christian?
Do scientific discoveries affect your theological views? Should a skeptically motivated naturalistic view of the cosmos influence theology? To what extent? Are you into creationism? Thank you for your attention, Alex. There was no application in this verse about not having doubts. Also, I thought I better mention this. Science is not by necessity naturalistic. In fact, skepticism would not assume the cosmos to be naturalistic at all.
This would be unreasonably unscientific, to disregard explanations simply because they do not fit within the worldview of naturalism.
A similar example would be the rejection of quantum physics last century. A mistake which many physicists made was to assume that realism was true which was perhaps intuitive, but funnily enough not actually accurate. This in itself is a little absurd. As I have just said, true science will not necessarily be naturalistic. Nothing about science requires God to be non-existent. There is no reason to make some kind of distinction between the world of our religion and the world of our scientific ideas.
Skepticism is a welcome idea, but I would warn you to be skeptical within reason. I find that people will readily put their faith in the most absurd ideas when they are labelled as science, but will try to believe the most radical alternatives possible before allowing the possibility of the existence of God. Very good, Ben! I would add one thing. God not only occupies our universe, He transcends it.
Because Salt Preserves, the only reason GOD has protected America for so long is because a strong remnant of His Children are still here praying and doing Mission work. His Children are the Salt that is preserving America from total decay. Jesus is So Sweet. Thank you Almighty GOD. Thanks for your thoughts. I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take away your crown.
Make sure you are one of those who washed their robes and are ready for his return! See Revelation These revelations changed my life dramatically and opened my eyes to the multitude of scripture that supports it. On the reference to Jesus washing the disciples feet John and asking or was that a command? Peter first refused to let Jesus wash his feet, then wanted to be washed all over basically when Jesus said if he refused, Peter would have no part with Him.
Jesus then told Peter anyone who had been washed [all over] only needed his feet washed. Jesus said they [His disciples] were not all washed [all over] referring to Judas Iscariot.
I see in this both an analogy for conversion, i. See Matthew This passage often tripped me up especially when I have backslidden and felt useless for God — I thought I had become useless and in effect, had. I felt hopeless because He says the salt cannot become salty again. However, Jesus made the statement — you ARE the salt of the earth. That is redemptive. We are redeemed sinners.
We are salt that has impurities with it. We can still choose to sin or to live for Christ. We need to put on Christ every day. We are having no effect on the world. We are still salt. The real salt was leached out of that situation and what was left was our carnal impure selves which is ineffective and people trod over us because of our hypocricy. However, the real salt, Christ in us, is still there Remember, we left him in the backseat?!
So, can we, or how do we become salty again? Repentance is the drying out process. We get rid of the impurities through repentance. We return to our true selves — salt, pure salt. We return to the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls and He makes us fit again, salty again. Thank you Jesus for the millions of second chances you give us. Your mercies never fail. The truth sets free!! God bless you — get salty again!
Thank God for the hard times in your life. Thank God for the dessert times. He is restoring your soul! Trust Him. He loves you. You are his child, and what child is there that does not need chastening. At the time, it is not pleasant remember getting spanked as a child?! God wants to heal and restore us to saltiness, effective use for His kingdom. Let him, dry out, get sober! Bible critics often claim that the Holy Scriptures say something they do not.
Any of us can be guilty of inserting our culture into the Bible. What Jesus meant by salt was not sodium chloride, but a substance that usually came from the Dead Sea that contained some of what we call salt but also contained white gypsum.
Salt has a different meaning today. The Pharisees are accusing Jesus of teaching heresy. Jesus is saying that the poor in spirit, the meek, the pure in heart, are godly.
The attitude of the day was that if you were sick or poor that it was a result of sin. It was your own fault you were in that condition, and if you did not have an acceptable sacrifice for the priests you could not be forgiven. To be forgiven you had to say the right prayers at the right time, have the correct sacrifice and be in good with the priests. The people had Roman soldiers taking their crops, killing their firstborn sons, and taxing them, unlike the scribes and Pharisees who lived in the Temple.
Jesus was trying to convince his followers to act within the spirit of the law, and that if they thought they knew the prescription for getting to heaven like the Pharisees they were wrong. All good things come from God. So if there are good things in other teachings, then they must be from God. The Truth is not capable of being diluted, but people are capable of being deluded.
I personally found your initial reflection and all the subsequent comments very enriching and thought provoking… Most has been said, but I want to contribute by expressing some my own thoughts. Fuller since I found his writing very enlightening on the overall meaning of this particular part of the Gospel.
He wrote:. They are all those things, and that because Jesus has called them and they have responded. How is this done? By good works. Our text Matthew does not specify what these good works are. It is more concerned to insist that good works are not the meritorious deeds of the disciples themselves, for the world that sees them does not praise the disciples for them, but the heavenly Father.
The good works of the disciples point away from themselves to the grace of God through which they were wrought. For example, see Isaiah , when he says that temple fasts, sacrifices and prayers are meaningless to the Lord if we do not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the oppressed and the homeless, care for the afflicted; if we do not remove from our midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech!
Because, right relationship with God is intimately connected to right relationship with our fellow human beings the one law of love. But, our faith as St. So, we cannot take pride in it; rather, we must, like Jesus, always place all we do and teach at the service of the Glory of God the Father. That way, others may come to know, love, praise and serve our awesome God.
Preserve my Saltiness The poem Is Your voice calm? Is it the still small voice? Is Your voice raging? Is it like a roaring storm? The cares of this world, the ever increasing want-list made me sweat for fear of being left behind. I forgot how to follow the lead of the Spirit. With each sunrise and sunset, I was drawn to wasting away.
I cried out for help and my friend led me to the light And by the chasteness of Your word I learnt to light the lamp for others. As deep calls unto deep I kneel before your throne, and receive the mandate to promulgate the promises of your Holy Word. Just wanted to confirm, like several others before me, that Google continues to throw readers your way on this topic.
Thanks to all who have weighed in on the subject. Thank you Michael…for reading and for your encouragement. Thanks for posting your thoughts, God started talking to me about this last night. But I believe that sin corrupts our character. Or dilutes the salt. Paul seems to go back and forth about the idea of sin, grace increases when we sin because God is faithful and just to forgive us of all unrighteousness. So what if Sin really did hold us back from the fullness of our destiny?
I decided to start studying the parables of Jesus Christ in Matthew. Who knew there was so much to know about salt!!
I would like to add something to your post. The idea of mixture. Mixture dilutes the flavor of salt. So lets use water as an example. If you use enough water you can not taste the salt at all. So what is mixture in my life. How I behave in church vs. How I say I spend my time vs how I really spend my time. Anyway, I thought you hit the nail right on the head! Thank you for this post!
Who knew an individual could get this excited about salt!!! Have a blessed day! Maybe in context, they used the salt from the dead sea, which may have a more complicated chemical composition.
I was just reading the Bible, checking a lot of scripture out about salt started in Leviticus 2 actually and came to this exact question: How DOES salt lose its saltiness?? I really like your literal and metaphorical stance-thanks! God bless. Not great exegesis, but you still got to a reasonable application. But Ben, in neither the content nor the context was the concept of salt as a preservstive mentioned. Flavor is the point. Thank you for this insightful article. It really answers the question the title poses.
Btw, what does the blog title mean? I tend to believe the Bible more literal and less allegorical. I believe if God says we can lose our savor, Then I want to know how so I can avoid that trap. It was certainly NOT my intention to dilute the Word with my post…it was quite the opposite. A blog written as far back as still impacting men? The Lord bless you and all who have contributed and will still do.
So I guess I have 2 questions: 1. Does salt really intensify a fire? There must be some reason for the bedouins to use it on their fires. How does salt lose its saltiness?
I turned to you because I know you have the science resources to find an answer. As a chemist, I think arguments about salt literally losing its saltiness really do not make much sense. Sodium chloride is one of the three or four most stable compounds in the world!!
Virtually no natural reaction can cause salt to turn into any other compound. Just last week in my chem class I told my students that there is literally no chemical reaction which can turn sodium ions in salt into anything else—that we must use electrolysis to extract sodium metal from sodium ion. So, I will return to the explanations I already gave you, which is that, according to scholars who are familiar with Palestine, there were certain sources of salt which were highly impure and which, upon exposure to water, could literally lose their saltiness, because the salt would be removed.
I know the chemistry of salt, so can respond to that, but will bow to those who know about the local sources of salt. Another possibility is that Jesus is speaking rhetorically. In other words, he might be saying rhetorically that if salt is not salty, then of what value is salt? He may not be describing an actual thing.
For example, I might say something like this. If human beings were unable to give love to one another, how terrible that would be. Not that human beings can literally lose this ability, as God gave it to us, but this would be a rhetorical example.
The Sermon on the Mount where Jesus spoke to His disciples. He went up on a mountain. The disciples came to Him and He spoke to them there. This was not a general sermon, an evangelistic sermon. This was to the people who had already decided to follow Him, and they were already experiencing life as it were in the kingdom of God because they were following the king of kings, and it makes a difference in their life.
All right. He continues right after the beatitudes with this analogy comparing his disciples to salt. What is that?
It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by man. In their day, they must have used salt in some sense that in an impure state that it could lose its saltiness. I have mentioned this very mystery in a previous Little Lesson. One of my dear friends from Colorado, which is a pretty nice place to live, named Patty sent me a little note from her study bible.
Some foods stand the test of time well. Salt is one of them. When you see a dusty container of salt hiding behind other spices for quite some time and is way past its date, you may consider throwing it out at first impulse.
But, can salt go bad? The answer is both yes and no. Natural salts without any additives can never go bad. After all, salts have been around for thousands of years, and they were used for food preservation in ancient times.
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