Joseph Kempf, Class of 2016
鈥�(And Jesus Said) You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.鈥� Matthew 5:13
You are鈥 people of faith. You are鈥 city on a hill. You are鈥he Salt of the Earth. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls his followers salt, of all things! Don鈥檛 get me wrong, salt is delicious and needed. But we could be something great! We could be legends, we could be a mountain, instead Jesus charges us with salt. While there are numerous interpretations of what exactly is meant by being the Salt of the Earth, I personally hold this verse in the Gospel of Matthew to indicate how followers of Jesus should engage in the world. I am going to do this with a little bit of Chemistry.
I wanted to be scholarly and a little rebellious so I researched what Salt of the Earth even means. According to the Wikipedia page devoted to Matthew 5:13, it reads 鈥淪alt itself, Sodium Chloride, is extremely stable and cannot lose its flavor鈥�(then some author notes) Jesus is 鈥榥ot giving a chemistry lesson鈥欌�� I鈥檓 almost a little offended. Who are they to decide when chemistry stops. If there is one thing I learned at Augsburg鈥hemistry never stops. Since Jesus clearly was not teaching chemistry, I think I will step up to the plate so to speak.
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