Baking Faith
December 11, 2010
I realized something tonight as I began my Christmas Cookie Extravaganza:
There are quite a few people in the world who approach faith like I approach baking. These people gather a few recipes from what they consider reliable sources and try it out.
Let me assure you, this is a very good approach to baking. I can quickly discern if I like particular flavor combinations or if the family hates the experiment.
It is not such a brilliant approach to faith.
For one, when you botch a baking experiment, you can look at the outcome and clearly see what you did wrong. ‘Ah. That I cooked too long,’ or ‘Less flour next time,’ are quick and easy assessments. This is not so with faith.
With religions, a person is not able to clearly say why one religion does not work for them. Very often in America, people will come up with some PC excuse as to why it did not fit their particular needs, but in fact, it’s usually a very superficial and muddled reason.
Secondly, in baking, you can usually still tell if the recipe COULD BE good. Sure you baked it too long, but had the bottoms not been burnt, the cookies would have been perfect. Maybe the cookies didn’t stick together so well because of all the flour, but they were delicious! When you experiment with different faiths, there is no leeway to make such small tweaks to the overall structure. You must accept the faith as-is, or you must leave it behind. (Claiming only a watered-down version of faith is, in fact, leaving the true faith behind).
Maybe the world would be a better place if we all looked at religion, faith, like I look at cooking.
Yes, I love to try new recipes, but I’m not going to put the effort into a lasagna from scratch if I’ve never tasted lasagna. It’s a lot of work for a ‘maybe’. And I’m never going to serve my guests blowfish because I don’t want to accidently poison them.
Just a thought…
