We encounter all sorts of labels whenever we go to a grocery store. There are carbonated drinks that are sugar-free. Other soft drinks are caffeine-free. There is whole milk, and then there is fat-free milk. Certain types of products such as pasta are gluten-free, and then there are soups and such that are advertised as “low sodium” or “salt-free.”

I did a post four years ago on the metaphor of salt as used in the New Testament. It was not sodium chloride or potassium chloride in a literal sense, but rather in a symbolic sense. Jesus used salt in his parables in a metaphorical way. But “salt” as it applied to early Christianity could be literal as well. And lethally so. Salt mine workers then as now inevitably inhaled salt dust, causing hypertension, stroke, COPD, accelerated heart dysfunction and kidney disease. St. John, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus, was sentenced at an age older than I am now under the Roman Emperor Domitian to work in the salt mines on Patmos. But he survived and went on to write Revelation, the last book in the Bible. As far as my original post on salt is concerned, I was satisfied on how that post turned out, and I don’t want to repeat myself here. So, think of this post as a Part Two, updated for these recent times. You can find my original post by clicking on the photo below:

OVERVIEW OF THE USES OF SALT

Let me begin with a sort of interim summary or transition from the post “Salt as a New Testament Metaphor” to what is being discussed here. Instead of repeating myself, I’ll come at the subject from a different angle.

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL

Humans are not the only creatures on Earth that need salt, and other lifeforms need it for the same reasons we need it. One of the miracles in the wild kingdom is that animals know when they need salt. They go out of their way to find it. Herds of elephants, for example, have been known to travel many miles to a remote and often arid location that contains salt. Birds need salt and search for plants, seeds or grain, and so on that provide salt. The migratory flyways of birds take them over salt marshes or salt flats where they can pause on their seasonal trips. Insects are a source of salt for birds because insects need it to sustain their life functions. They get their salt from tree sap, honey, decaying animal life and so on. From here, it winds up in birds, perhaps chickens and then is transferred to other predatory animals higher up on the food chain (including people.)

SALT IN MEDICINE

Salt is much more than just a seasoning. Without a certain amount of salt in our bodies, we could not survive. For example, we need salt to stay hydrated. Salt also has antimicrobial properties, by drawing poisonous fluids out of a wound. When I worked post-op, we would sometimes irrigate surgical wounds or bladders with normal saline. The normal salt concentration that doctors and nurses inject or infuse into a patient’s body is .9, which means nine grams of salt per liter. While reviewing some studies on bladder cancer, I noticed that normal saline was administered into the bladder of patients in the control groups. There were unexpectedly minor, but promising, effects of salt on cancer cells. Now, normal saline has no known use in fighting cancer per se. It does not affect the biology of the cancerous cells. Still, it has curious, though as yet unknown potential in the fight against cancer. As per AI:

“Some studies have explored the use of hypertonic saline (higher salt concentration than regular saline) in experimental settings. Research has indicated that hypertonic saline may have effects on the tumor microenvironment, potentially influencing cancer cell behavior, but these findings are still in preliminary stages and are not yet part of standard cancer treatment protocols.”

The current thinking is that saline may affect the bladder pressure in some beneficial way when certain chemotherapeutic agents are mixed with it. The dilution of the medication with normal saline in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer allows the medicine to better reach all of the urothelial lining of the bladder.

So, we are still discovering potential new uses for salt in the clinical setting. But once again, salt by itself is not a currently approved or effective treatment for cancer and may actually do more harm than good if recommended by some shaman or quack.

If your body lost all of it’s salt or the sodium level in your body dropped far below a certain minimum, you would likely die. Cells in your body could not perform normally. Nerve cells could not transmit impulses from synapse to synapse. Muscle cells would not contract normally. And, because your heart is basically one large muscle group approximately the size of your fist, it would not pump because the muscles would not contract. Nor would the neural impulses telling the muscles to contract reach the heart muscles. Your blood pressure would drop dangerously or fatally low. And there are other serious, life-threatening issues as well that could develop.

OTHER USES FOR SALT

In the ancient world, salt was sometimes used in war. If there was a particular hatred between two opponents, the victor would plow salt into the fertilized land that the losing side used to grow crops. The salt would then “poison” the land so that nothing would grow for a century or more. Today, salt can be used as a weed killer or to control pesky plants such as poison ivy. It can be used as a barrier to keep ants away from something of value. It can be used to extinguish a grease fire. It can also be used to brighten your teeth, but don’t tell your dentist that you read it here.

SALT IN THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS

In the Judeo-Christian traditions, salt is used ceremonously in the Kiddish (the blessing) where salt is sprinkled ceremoniously on the challah bread. It is symbolic of the covenant between God and His people Israel. In Leviticus 2:13, Moses wrote of the need to include salt with the sacrifices to God. In that context, salt was symbolic of purity and preservation (the uses of salt as a preservative are discussed in my post cited above.) In the New Testament, Jesus continued the theme that tied in salt with preservation, purity and the covenant. If the church loses its salt, then it has become somehow adulterated and no longer representative of the New Covenant. At that point, people stop attending (as is happening in America today.)

A covenant in the Bible is a promise that God makes to the people of the world that has the same weight as a legal document. In a nutshell, God promises that whomever comes to Him for absolution will receive forgiveness for their sins and be restored to full communion with God through His son Jesus Christ.

In my mind, the salt of Christianity is the power of the Gospel (the Kerygma) coupled with our personal witness to the world. It includes an active, living faith which is much more than an intellectual acknowledgment, such as “I believe that Lexus makes a comfortable car to ride in and I also believe that Jesus is God’s son.” The Gospel, especially supplemented by a personal witness, has a power to resonate, heal broken hearts, and save lives. As Paul writes in II Corinthians 10:4,5:

“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

Consider just one historical example from Indonesia circa 1965 (below.)

THE REVIVAL IN INDONESIA

In the early 1960’s, the Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI, known in the West as the Communist Party in Indonesia was riding a sea of dissent against the government in power.  President for Life Sukarno, who had no family name or middle name, was getting older in his years and increasingly accommodated the belligerent PKI.  The PKI fought anything they thought was reactionary (i.e., anti-revolutionary.) The communists railed against capitalists, the U.S., and especially the Christians in Indonesia.  They brutally hunted Christians down for imprisonment, torture and death just because of their Christian faith. Just because. The Partai Komunis Indonesia or (PKI) was such a stronghold in that country as the verse from Corinthians implies. For the sake of the freedom of the Indonesian people and the Gospel ministry in that country, it needed to be demolished.

On the night of September 30, 1965, the PKI staged the assassination of six of the senior generals in government and threw their bodies down a well.  This was an attempt to completely take over the government of Indonesia by decapitating the military leadership who might have twarted the planned coup.  But one remaining general (Suharto) staged a counter-coup, and now the communists didn’t have a chair as the music stopped.  The hunters now became the hunted.

As the government started murdering communists without mercy in the streets in retaliation across the Southeast asian archipelago, communists and their families fled for their lives seeking places to hide.  The Indonesian people by then were sick of all this chaos and violence and refused to open their doors at night when some communist and his family begged for mercy and shelter.  But the Christians did.  They opened their homes, hearths and hearts to these fearful human people who never showed any mercy to them.  A year or so later, the famous Indonesian Revival broke out and many former communists who by then had abandoned Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, were won over to another revolutionary, Jesus Christ.  They were won over by the unconditional love that Christians showed them when others in their society despised them and attacked them viciously in the streets.  For perhaps the first time in their lives they saw love in action.  And they saw the power of that love, and the salt in the lives of the Indonesian Christians; Catholics and Protestants alike.  Jesus Christ could through the agency of the Holy Spirit completely transform human nature in ways that Lenin could only dream of.   And “Yes!”  There were miracles in that revival which you can read about in the book Revival in Indonesia by Kurt Koch.  There are several books on the revival, but this one is the best and most documented and theologically sound of the selections available. The book is available online.

As with other revivals, the true miracle is the metamorphosis in the hearts of the converts as they pass from eventual death to eternal life.  And even Christians, themselves, are changed during a revival.  They are convicted of unconfessed sin, of what they have done and what they have left undone.  The power of forgiveness that the Indonesian believers had to welcome their former enemies came once again from the salt in their spiritual lives, which allowed them to love their enemies (Matthew 5:44.) Without this salt, it would have not been possible.

ARE CHRISTIANS IN AMERICA BECOMING TROLLS?

I don’t know for sure if there is such a thing as a Christian troll in America? I hope not. Maybe its the Russians (via their Internet Research Agency with its Kremlinbots?) But all of a sudden, it seems like every mother’s son (except for me) has received posts on Facebook, Quora, Reddit, X, etc. blaming certain groups for the fires in California. Again, I have not seen any messages first hand, but I understand that these trolls are painting the fires in California as God’s punishment for presumably ungodly behaviors. Curiously, I hadn’t heard of people in North and South Carolina and Kentucky blamed for causing the hurricane damage to their states or the people in Texas for the perpetual drought they been facing. But then, those are Bible-belt, red states that in the eyes of some can do no wrong.

Again, I don’t know first-hand about these posts, but I am familiar with trolls. Trolls are cowards. They use phony names to disguise their identities. I do know about nationalism, however. Nationalist impulses are incubated in the populace when everyone has a flag in hand to wave, a patriotic song on their lips, and a tear in their eyes. It doesn’t matter if you’ve ever actually done anything your country has asked you to do (like serve in the military in times of war or emergency.) And some people are particularly patriotic when they are juiced up. Nationalism requires an expansive foreign policy, gobbling up land that belongs to other peoples and nations. Like Ukraine. Like Greenland. And nationalism requires a “boogeyman.” This boogeyman is a whipping boy used to blame bad things on (like stock losses, unfavorable news reporting and wildfires.) The whipping boys in the past (in America) have been the Catholics, the freedmen, the Chinamen and the Democrats. Tomorrow, who knows? Members of the GLBTQ community? Hispanics? Like the Jews in Hitler’s Germany and the communists in Suharto’s Indonesia, tomorrow’s persecuted groups in the U.S. will need people of the Christian faith and of good salty character to stand up for righteousness and justice. To stand in the gap. You may not support what a community believes in every instance. I do not agree with everything in the Advocate. But we are our brother’s and sister’s keeper. All lives matter, whether black, gay, trans, and white.

GOD AND CIVILIZATION

Historically, God has destroyed cities and civilizations, like Sodom, like Canaan, like Babylon. It’s a fact, perhaps an inconvenient truth, but one nevertheless and He admits it. More often than not, however, we destroy other civilizations, ourselves. God intended Sodom to be a warning to future generations (II Peter 2;6.) Yet, how many people today have ever heard of Sodom and of those who have, how many believe the story of its destruction? How many people in the year 2525 will have heard of America?

And, as St Paul says in Romans (11:34a) “Who has known the mind of the Lord?”  So, I don’t know what God is thinking and I don’t know anyone who does. Why are the fires happening today and why in California? Is there a reason, or is here no reason, but just a random chain of events? Will the fires on the West Coast be extinguished today? This week? Next week? How did they begin if not from lightning? Is God fanning the flames? If not, then why does He not at least extinguish them. Again, I don’t know what God is thinking.

But, if past is truly prologue, we should keep these historical lessons in mind as we press against, challenge and defy the walls and rails of acceptable behavior (acceptable to God, that is.) When God sent an angel to destroy Jerusalem over a grievous sin, King David met the angel on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite (Samuel 24:16-17 and 1 Chronicles 21:14-17) and stood in the gap until God relented and the angel was recalled.

In Ezekiel 22:30, God said “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it [i.e., Judah], but I found no one.” In Genesis, He was willing to spare Sodom for the sake of ten righteous people to stand in the gap. Will there be ten righteous Americans in a nation of 340 million if the angel comes our way? Is God asking too much of us?

PURITY, PRESERVATION, AND THE COVENANT

In Christianity, the Church is represented as a virgin who waits patiently for the return of her espoused. Her fidelity to her future husband is of vital importance. God similarly spoke harshly of Israel’s unfaithfulness when she (Israel) ran after false gods, disobeyed His commandments and introduced forbidden practices such as divination, necromancy, idol worship and so on into the nation. To God, this was a spiritual form of adultery. As soon as the wheat (i.e., the message of salvation) was sown, the devil scattered the seeds of thorns and thistles among the germs of the wheat. The “tares” as they were called consisted of false doctrines, such as involving the need to perform good deeds as a prerequisite to enter heaven or that gentile converts to Christianity must first become Jews. Tares that said we must keep the Mosaic law, that Jesus was not God, Himself, but rather just a good man, or that he did not rise from the dead. For this reason, the creeds which are nothing more than statements of belief were developed. They were sort of a checklist. Purity is important to God. Yet, I know of no one (certainly not myself) who meets the purity test. Yet, God has provided a means by which our sins are washed away and our unspotted lives restored. No sin is too great for God to forgive.

In our physical lives, salt is a preservative. You may have heard of salt pork? This is pork which has been coated with salt. The properties of the salt draw the moisture out of the meat which keeps the meat from going to rot. Or, in centuries past, meat might be smoked or dried in the sun. Today, we use machines to accomplish the same thing. You may have noticed the odor of meat when it spoils. At that point, it is unsafe to eat and there is no useful purpose for it. When a church today introduces partisan politics to the exclusion of or at the expense of the Gospel, then there is no longer any salt in the message and no power to transform lives and no reason for people to even attend. In the last year, churches in American have invited “patriots” accused, charged or convicted of politically-motivated felonies as guest speakers. There is a church no more than ten or twelve miles from where I live that advertises a raffle each January where the winner gets an assault rifle. What does an assault rifle have to do with the “Prince of Peace?” The religion preached in these churches is tainted with patriotism instead of seasoned with salt. Now, patriotism is fine as long as it does not involve breaking the law. But patriotism is not the basis of salvation. Being patriotic will not save your soul.

Our covenant is with God. We also have a very different sort of covenant with our country and beyond the laws enacted by our elected assemblies which we must all obey and the institutions which we must honor, there is the social contract. In a democracy, usually there is little conflict between the two covenants. But when a fundamental, once-in-a-thousand-years difference, arises, “we must obey God rather than men.” Otherwise, our responsibility to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s . . .” That means respect, obedience, and taxes to mention just a few responsibilities.

PERSECUTION? NOT!!!

Fortunately, Christians in America do not know what persecution is. I’ve heard nurses complain they were persecuted when told to remove their necklace with a cross while in surgery. That is not persecution. That is making sure the necklace does not accidentally wind up in the patient’s common bile duct. Other Americans as a condition of employment agreed to work on a Sunday. After being hired, they changed their minds and refused to work on that day for religion reasons, and now they are out of work–that is not persecution. If someone follows a another around day after day, badgering them about the Bible after they were asked to cease and desist, and they are arrested for stalking, that is not persecution. If a church violates its tax-exempt status and is sued by the government, that is not persecution. If ministers unlawfully entered the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 and were arrested for that, that is not persecution. Lunacy? Yes! Persecution? No!

A MESSAGE FOR THE REMNANT

If you are one of the minority of evangelicals who have not bowed down to false gods, sworn on the genius of Caesar or have not “kissed the ring,” then God bless you!  But be warned.  There may come in America when the pendulum swings the other way and those Christians who have left their First Love will awake from their slumber and finally understand what has happened while they slept.  No, it will not be like Indonesia.  But those Christians who have fanned the wind may reap the whirlwind.  They may be blamed by ordinary angry Americans for the political choices they have made and the ruinous consequences that followed, and our churches will become even more desolate than ever.  The sedition pastors who applauded the unprovoked attack on our Capitol on January 6, 2021 will wring their hands in despair over where the money will come from to pay the costly mortgages on their churches long after many congregants have left.  But these beguiled brothers and sisters in Christ will need love and acceptance and healing, and we’ll need to step up to offer this to them.  Someone will have to stand in the gap. This healing for our Nation and this revival for our churches will come from heaven, not Mar-a-Largo. This is a call to the faithful to prepare your minds and to open your hearts. Be sure your salt is adequate to the challenge.

Remember the words to the old Gospel song “They will know we are Christians by our love?” Note that it doesn’t read “They will know we are Christians by our vote.” Make love your aim. The very last words St John said before he died in his sleep were “Little Children, love one another.”