The Salt of the Earth

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” – Matthew 5:13 What does it mean to be the salt of the earth? As we consider our response to this question, we can easily lose the significance of the analogy because we don’t understand the historical context. Unlike today, when salt is cheap and common, there was a time when it was considered precious and valuable. In fact, 800 years before Jesus, there was a town in Italy that had its own salt mine. Because that mine was so important, they built a road to it called the Via Salaria (which means view of salt), and it became the first in a network of roads that would ultimately comprise the Roman Empire, one