Gen Z vs. Jesus on Being "Salty"

Gen Z is admittedly creative when it comes to slang invention. The far-reaching utility that the internet offers has undeniably served as a primary catalyst for the expansiveness of the etymological bog that so many new-age colloquialisms hail from. The scrapyard of the worst of humanity's anonymous selves, and simultaneously the mega-factory of endless creation, the internet unsurprisingly forms some of the strangest concoctions (and sometimes monstrosities) of man's imagination. These concoctions are often distortions of aspects of the real world.

One such distortion is the concept of "saltiness." A neologized term meaning angry and snippy these days, "salty" has had a wide variety of meanings. Critical, impolite, tough, grounded, pertaining to salt -- these are just a few of the wide-ranging definitions of the word. But the term as it has surfaced throughout the internet is one relating to vexed behavior. Irate gamers who lose are salty. Incensed commenters online are salty. Ill-tempered, aggressive road-ragers are salty. Trading slurs and swear words is the essence of being salty. And so, somewhat appropriately, Gen Z implores others and one another not to be salty, though often with sarcasm and provoking smiles.

Jesus, interestingly, implores us to do quite the opposite. Yes -- the Man-God worshipped by more than a fourth of the globe actually encourages us to be salty.

In this case, however, salty means something much different, and yet, it still refers to a behavioral phenomenon. Whereas today's generation partially condemns saltiness as something distasteful, Jesus reframes our perception of salt in the Bible as it exists in the real world -- salt is tasteful. Reversing the distortion, Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:13 that "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." Taking a much more assertive stance, Jesus taught that being salty is actually what gives us value, while social media influencers teach us to lose our salt.

It is honestly a fascinating distinction because Jesus's use of the salt imagery in the Gospel of Matthew is based on a cultural practice of the time that is still used today. This practice is called meat curing, which is when salt is applied to cuts of meat, thereby reducing the moisture content and preventing bacteria from forming, and thus preserving the food. It also forms a protective layer around the exterior of the meat, which is a method still used on salami, bacon, pastrami, chorizo, bologna, and several other types of processed proteins.

So when Jesus spoke about being salty, he was telling his followers to maintain their own senses of self. Their flavor, their personality, their energy, their good parts, their worthy and useful and productive parts, their innermost essence of worth, unmarred by the chaos and death of bacteria and sin. He was teaching them a process of preserving or "saving" themselves by comparing it to the known and oft-used procedure of meat curing.

So what does it mean that people today discourage one another from being salty? It's not necessarily that they're counteracting Jesus because the definitions and connotations are not the same, right? Well this difference in etymology might in fact indicate a deeper interplay at work. Of course, the modern use of the word does informally refer to undesirable behavior, but this actively comprises the issue at hand. We have forgotten the long-living meaning of the word. We have left behind the original purpose and conception of salt. As superficially trivial as it seems, the colloquial redefinition of "salty" and the etymological changes in our perception of it is symbolic of our departure from true self-worth. Being salty is not a worthwhile trait anymore, even though all of our forefathers would have disagreed. There is, in the ethos of saltiness, an established sense of order that provides the building blocks of who we're supposed to be. We can't lose that. We need to be willing to preserve the good things about ourselves and our world again.

I, for one, don't want to face the maggots.

Stay salty.