Ours was not a salt-blindly house. When the food came to the table, we didn’t salt it before tasting. You could say it was a somewhat heart healthy home.

So many of the other people around me most of my life have needed to watch their sodium intake. What is communicated by this is that there is too much salt around us and we need to be careful. There is an abundance of salt. But that isn’t a neutral experience of the world.

When we recall that salt continues to be the most essential resource for flavoring and preserving, helping humans survive for thousands of years, this other picture of salt becomes…odd. Distorted.

It is one thing to locate ourselves in a world too reliant on salt. But I’m not sure that’s as valuable a message. When Jesus compares us to salt, he’s comparing us to something far more valuable than diamonds.