SALT was a bone of contention in the early years of marriage as my wife, a doctor, who had warned me her hands were not made for cooking, managed to also keep the same hands very often from adding that extra bit of salt I sorely cherished. We adjusted, me, to her rationing, and she to my salty urges and we’ve got along fine, except for a furtive glance I give to the saltshaker, once in a while before a stern glance from her returns me to my healthy plate.
Jesus, must have also liked his salt, as he turns to the people while giving his Sermon on the Mount and says, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.” Whoa! Whoa! Here’s something new; a salt that has lost its taste. And I go back to my saltless plate and see my wife shaking her head and telling me, “Bob, I did put the salt!” “But it’s tasteless,” I say, not for a moment doubting her word. We look at the saltshaker, shake some into my hand, pass my tongue over it then shake my head sadly.
Have we the two percent of this country become the same? Shakespeare’s King Lear is based on another old legend, where the king asks his youngest daughter, “How much do you love me?” And she spoke in a firm, but low, voice. Some of the courtiers at the back of the hall had to strain their ears to hear. “Father,” she said, “I love you as one loves a pinch of salt.”
It was only later that the King realised that that pinch of salt was more than all the love that he could have got from anyone else in the world. Are we like that ‘pinch of salt’? Or are we like salt which has ‘lost its taste’? Do we make an impact on the people of our country, in our businesses, our housing societies, with friends, in our clubs, WhatsApp groups, walking teams? Is our country changing because of the flavour we add? Are we helping the peace process or adding to the hate mongering? Are we using our influence to put down others?
And then comes the warning by Jesus, that if you’ve lost your flavour, then you are only fit to be ‘thrown out and trampled under the feet of people!’ We may be just two percent, just a pinch of salt, but as I stare at the saltshaker on my table, I have to remind both you and also me, we have a job to do, are we changing the taste of our nation?
—Email: bobsbanter@gmail.com
