If Jews have salt, why can’t Christians?
Retired barber Joe Godlewski says that when television chefs recommended kosher salt in recipes, he wondered, “What the heck’s the matter with Christian salt?”
By next week, his trademarked Blessed Christians Salt will be available from seasonings manufacturer Ingredients Corporation of America. It’s sea salt that’s been blessed by an Episcopal priest.
The company’s president hopes to market the salt through Christian bookstores.
And you want to know what’s sad? People will buy it. I used to work for a Christian bookstore, and people would buy the craziest things — Christian mints, t-shirts, keychains, chocolates, gum…
(via)
K: I think that the virgin birth story was part of the anti-sex anti-personal-freedom propaganda of the... 
Erp: Interesting. Many years ago I helped my aunt sort out some of her late mother-in-law’s... 
Peter Cross: The Age of Reason is sometimes published and sold without Part 3: Examination of the... 
Mark D: Let Ed sell his plane and give the money to the Red Cross 
nomad: You’d love it, Custador. It looks and tastes just like it sounds. Nomnom. 
Matt: I find it very interesting that there are so many people out there with such sad lives as to sit... 
Tyrrlin: Wow… I’d like to buy apostrophes for most of those commenters. Apparently belief in a... 
Mathurine: I’m not so sure that they wouldn’t have. The father in the case is... 
57 Comments
I would buy it to use on slugs.
What self-respecting Christian is going to use Episcopalian salt? I insist that they switch to Lutherian salt at once!
Ok, I’ll admit I had to go look up “kosher salt” on Wikipedia. Could this guy be any more of a huckster? There’s no way he didn’t know what it was, or at least had to find out along the way.
VorJack! :) I think that’s exactly why it is Episcopalian – if they had a Baptist preacher bless it they might even have to question the use of it on Sunday dinner.
Okay – seriously Daniel… quit adding posts! I have work to do!!!
Of course they will buy it. They buy the gospel, don’t they?
The fundies have gone off message, so this is part of God’s plan to turn them all into pillars of salt. One teaspoonful at a time.
I’ll never forgot the first time I saw “TestaMints”.
As a Christian, I find it sad as well. There should be no market for such stuff.
This reminds me of all the Jesus Junk that televagelists will send you for a “love gift”.
Yea, as newborn believers we tend to focus on the external, things of matter. As we allow Father to incorporate His presence and nature within we become less externally sensitive and more internally sensitive. After all, that’s where the kingdom of heaven is…within us.
The sensitivity to the external world is a product of the rebellion, the eating of the tree of independence whose fruit was death (separation) as we lost our acuity to the divine, spiritual realm and took on the lower, fleshly nature. Now are desires are mainly earthly, strongly tied to the sense realm of appearances, the eyes, sensual pleasures, etc.
The spiritual regeneration restores our true identity and spiritual understanding and sensitivities back to the original matrix. The interior life blooms and once again we walk with God…in us.
Spirituality is beautiful, religion is oppressive and not what Christ offers.
Ha! I spent a year selling bibles to Christian Bookstores. What a collection of wackos. One of the big sellers (until the media picked up on it) was “The Whale”. Yep…a leather strap in the shape of a whale. No need to spare the rod and spoil the child when you could, with God’s blessing, give your kids a jolly good whaling. Just think…now that we’ve got Christian salt, some holy entrepreneur could parcel it up with the whale and sell the two together:
IS WHALING YOUR CHILD IN GOD’S HOLY NAME NOT TEACHING THEM DISCIPLINE? WE’VE GOT THE CURE–JUST RUB GOD’S HOLY SALT INTO THE WELTS ON THEIR LEGS AND JESUS WILL MAKE DARN SURE THEY DON’T TRANSGRESS AGAIN.
Praise the Lord and pass the condiments.
A friend of mine owns a clothing retail business. He secretly prays over every piece of clothing sold.
He explains to me that this prepares each clothing item as a holy “garment of praise”. This is meant to bless the person and protect them from a red dude with a pitchfork.
And he truly believes it.
And in case you haven’t seen this:
http://www.sandofchrist.com/
I’m always astounded at the gullibility of people. Maybe I should start a website selling swiss cheese as “Holy Cheese” that has been blessed by an Episcopal priest. I could be a millionaire!
Isn’t that against the holy rules or something.
I thought anything blessed could not be sold.
That’s sad…
“The naive believes everything, But the sensible man considers his steps.” (Proverbs 14:15)
I know a lot of you will respond to this quote saying “Aha! More evidence of hypocrisy in Christians!”
This question is not directly related to the salt post, (which is so stupid that people would do this) but this: What is it about religion that people are so drawn to? I’m fascinated how passionate, sucked in, and totally immersed they become with faith. Is it psychological, emotional? Fear? Family induced guilt? All of the above?! Seriously, how can these people sit in a church on a Sunday, then walk outside and start being so cruel to their fellow man? That whole “What would Jesus Do” thing? I’ve seen these “devout” people be horrible in word and deed. They scare me. Just thinking out loud here…
I used to work for a Christian bookstore, too. If you are a Christian and you want a reason to rid yourself of your religion, go work at a national christian retail chain store. The memories just made me throw up in my mouth a little.
So sticking a cross on it is enough to get Christians to buy it?
Hmmm …
Hey–any Catholics out there? I have several dozen boxes of rubbers blessed by the Pope–Only $39.99 a box!
Hmmm. You know, I just took a look at the image from the site selling this stuff. It appears to me that this “Christian Salt” is pretty fine-grained. Which, of course, means that it won’t fill the same role as kosher salt in recipes. Kosher salt is very coarse and chunky, resulting in a slow dissolve. You also use a greater volume of it than table salt because it doesn’t pack into the container as completely.
So people using this instead of good ‘ol Morton’s Kosher Salt will end up with ruined and very salty food. It’s a small and petty thing, but somehow that makes me feel good.
A former boss of mine, who was an evangelical Christian himself, had a similar view as yours…. He told me about a time when he used to manage one of those Christian book stores, and they had a framed reproduction print of a very nice classical landscape painting, hanging on the wall for sale. It hung there for months, he said; beautiful as it was, still no one wanted to buy it. So one day as he was marking down “stale” merchandise for clearance, he had an idea — he got a little brass tag engraved with a Bible verse made, attached it to the frame of the print, and then raised the price on it. The print sold within a couple of days.
I’m kind wondering about the “Episcopalian” salt myself. It’s been a while since I attended service, but I don’t remember us being big on blessing random things.
[Token "Episcopalians & booze" joke.] My guess is that Episcopalian salt is the kind you put around the rim of your margarita glass. [Done.]
“Oh there goes Father Barnaby, ooh, he looks drunk again. [Tsk.] Well, that’s why we Lutherans use grape kool-aid for the Blood of Christ.”
You should crucify a slug, and then use the salt on it.
Agreed, the guy’s either a moron or a huckster, with a hint of anti-semitism to boot. It’s called “kosher” because it’s used in preparing kosher meats, not because it’s been blessed by a rabbi (and even actual kosher foods aren’t blessed, just inspected to ensure they were prepared in ways that don’t make them ritually unclean for Jews).
You’d be shocked how much people just sort of run with their initial assumptions.
Most peoples’ instinct is not to go look it up on Wikipedia. (But wouldn’t it be nice if it were?!)
I love that movie. But it took a little research to remember which one it was.
Seriously though, this product is a perfect example of how wrong Christian Americans have it. They get their religion all tied up with consumerist, neo-imperial patriotism, they forget their savior was a socialist anarchist pacifist.
This reminds me of a great comic about American Jesus:
http://www.thepaincomics.com/Jesus%20vs.%20Jeezus.jpg
Damn, I came here to say exactly this.
A few years back, I saw “Jesus bread” in the grocery store… no lie! It was actually pita bread.
It is a funny one, eh? A nice absurdist satire.
For the rest of you folks, the movie we’re talking about is Drop Dead Gorgeous. Highly recommended for a light weekend rental. :)
And this concerns the topic… how?
Nothing about salt in there.
“For thou shalt refer to http://unreasonablefaith.com/2009/03/01/father-stabs-son-for-wearing-hat-to-church/#comment-18958 for thy holy actions.” (Mutton Chop 22:38)
-”sky god”
The symbolism in John C’s writing always runs deep, so let me see if I can bring it down to a level you guys can understand.
You see, when John says ‘external,’ he means a chlorine atom, or Cl. When he says ‘internal,’ he is referencing the Sodium atom, or Na. In our innate state, before the fall of man, the internal and external were separate. But when we eat from the tree of life, and share electrons to complete our outer shell, we try to be like the noble gases, or God.
The problem is that Sodium, or the internal, gives to the external. The external is hungry for a part of us: our precious electrons. We are always having our electrons, or innocence, stolen from us. We are constantly seeking to give our innocence up. This is our burden to bear, also known as original sin.
Do you see? You have to open your soul to Jesus, and he will show you so much about your soul. The evidence is all around us. Even in something as simple as table salt.
Winter…I was just following up Daniels last paragraph about Christian paraphanalia, items…ie key chains, etc. When we are new in Him we are still outwardly focused, as we grow (which, paradoxically means less of our old selves) the Lord begins to turn us inwardly where the real life is, thats all I was trying to say…sorry if as usual I failed miserably…but its been my experience as well in my life going from external to internal.
The problem is, most folks abandon ship before God is allowed to do the deep, internal work of the spirit, before He completes this process of Christ (His nature)being formed in us. Remember our recent Herod discussions?? Herod is the king of pride (old man within) bent on making sure this new born babe does not arise (within) and threaten his kingdom rule. So, many fall away thinking they have been duped, etc.
God is faithful to do all that He promises in us and thru us if we will just persevere, trust Him and cooperate with the Holy Spirit.
Elliott…
That was clever my friend, creative, very impressive. Not quite what I meant in my post but still I appreciate the thought, time and effort…I enjoyed reading it. You have a knack for good writing, seriously. All your posts have a clarity (unlike mine ha) and I always appreciate that degree of skill.
Hmm…makes me wonder? Where did that creativity (in you) originate?? lol
Take care,
JC
Eliott!
You friggin rock!!!!
(That was the best!)
Do you have a point here?
It seems the most common reaction is actually “huh?”.
No, he just wanted to chime in “stupid is as stupid does.”
Bill,
It appears to me that Dan’s point in this post is to illustrate how gullible Christians are. They’ll believe anything, even that salt blessed by an Episcopalian priest has magical powers, and is worth paying for.
My point is that, in my opinion, the Bible speaks against such gullibility.
There’s a scene at the end of the first Godfather movie, where the mobster is in church getting his baby baptized. And the camera keeps cutting back and forth between the Mass, and places where his henchmen are at that very moment carrying out hits on his rivals. It goes sort of like:
Agnes Dei…/*bang*/…qui tolis peccata mundi…/*bang*[scream]/…dona nobis pacem…/*bang**bang*/…..
Is this where the expression “whaling on someone” comes from???
as in, “dude, I’m soooo gonna whale on him!”
wait, wait, wait! then why does the packaging on some kosher products say that it is blessed?
But wouldn’t it be better if they actually used a more credible source (or would be too much to ask)?
Well, Kosher doesn’t mean “not blessed”. Something could be both Kosher and blessed….
What wintermute said. Something can be Kosher and blessed, but not everything Kosher is blessed.
There’s always Ezekiel 4:9 bread. Because the Bible is a cookbook.
One wonders if they follow the instruction in Ezekiel 4:12, where it says <i.thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man….
I could be wrong about the blessing part (though I doubt your average food processing plant has a rabbi on staff to pronounce a baruch on every item that comes off the line ;-). I should check with my authority on Jewish practices — my wife ;-).
Kosher food is blessed by a Rabbi, in fact most Jewish restaurants even have a rabbi on staff.
Burnspeed, here’s the definition of kosher food:
“Kosher foods are those that conform to the culture of Jewish religion.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher_foods
It doesn’t have to be blessed, it just have to conform to what the Bible defines as “clean.”
Honestly, no. For casual knowledge (as opposed to highly technical or functional knowledge), a secondary source is infinitely superior to primary sources, mainly because primary sources are less accessible to a layperson.
And as far as secondary sources go, it really is pretty hard to beat Wikipedia. I know that its epistemological methodology (primacy is given to verifiability instead of truth) gives traditionalists the heebie-jeebies, but honestly it stacks up pretty well against traditional secondary sources (i.e. encyclopedias). IIRC, someone did a side-by-side comparison of a bunch of articles in Wiki to Encyclopedia Britannica, and experts in the field for those articles gave the Wiki entry higher marks for accuracy than the Britannica.
You shouldn’t use it as a primary source to write a paper or do research, but anyone who is writing a paper or doing research already knows that. For everything else, it is eminently serviceable.
“You shouldn’t use it as a primary source to write a paper or do research,”
Right, and that holds true for ALL encyclopedias. They’re not meant to be your primary or secondary sources, but they should provide you with enough understanding to get you started on a topic, or provide you with background on something that’s ancillary to your primary topic. Wikipedia is a good, quick source for getting your feet wet.
Elliott, was it really necessary to chime in and call me stupid?
Yeah, it just wants you to believe that God created the world in 6 days, that the red sea was parted by Moses, that ax heads can float, that the earth stopped rotating so Joshua could kill more people (that is, the sun stood still), that Jesus was born of a virgin, raised dead people, and raised himself from the dead.
I don’t know, it seems to be someone has to be a little gullible to believe those things without any evidence.
Mmmmphh *snort*
But you have to be so gullible to read it!
Sorta like a “Liars’ Club Handbook” saying:
“We speak out against telling lies”
*snort*
Ow. my diaphragm hurts from laughing.
One of the main chains just decided to put warning labels on books written by MaClaren and other emergent authors as espousing ideas not accepted by traditional theology. I guess they could decide not to carry them at all.
Ahhhhh! Marketing! The unabashed manipulation of the masses… kinda like religion…
One Trackback
[...] gicmo posted a noteworthy aricle today onHere’s a small snippet [...]