Tasteless Salt

In Matthew 5: 13-16 Jesus talks about salt losing its taste.  How can it do that?  It must take beyond our lifetimes.  This translation must be wrong.  I posit that instead of taste, the word should portray usefulness. 

 You see, in Jesus' time, camel dung was used for fuel.  Salt was mixed into the dung. A slab of salt was placed at the base of the an oven and on top of the slab of salt was placed the dung patty mixed with salt. Salt has catalytic properties causing the dung to burn.  Eventually, however, the salt loses its catalytic properties and becomes useless.

How Does Salt Lose Its Taste?

This Sunday's Gospel talks about salt.  Matt 5:13-16  My Bible sharing group questioned how salt could lose its taste.  If you tried to water it down, you'd just make salty water like the ocean.  If you throw salt in soup, it doesn't lose its taste; it adds taste.  Would the people in Jesus' time know how to separate the chemical properties of chloride and sodium?

The conundrum was solved by Kevin.  Kevin usual knows.  He's a great reader.  Kevin said salt was used in making ovens because it held heat (think salting ice on roads).  People made their oven.  Then they put a layer of salt across the floor of the oven.  Tile was placed over the salt layer.  Now the oven held the heat.  Eventually, the salt's ability to hold heat lessened and was gone.  Then the salt was "no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot." Matt 5: 13.

Jesus is telling us not to lose our "flavor."  Glorify God by being His disciple and seasoning others with Christ's flavor.  A little salt makes the food taste better.