Cooking Up a Disaster

Some of you may know that I kind of like to cook. I'm not so much on cooking peas and cornbread every day, but I'd rather try new recipes. My family, for the most part, enjoys being my guinea pigs. I'm not expecting to get my own Food Network show anytime soon, but usually what I cook gets eaten. I'm also one of those people who looks at most recipes as suggestions. I can recognize what ingredients or spices my family is likely not to enjoy, and I can substitute something else that we will like. Or, I may see that it needs bacon or cheese (most recipes do, by the way). Around ninety-five percent of the time, it turns out well. Sometimes, the dogs get a meal. Experiments work that way. That's part of the fun. I used to collect cookbooks, but the internet has been a benefit to my recipe collection. I can now collect thousands, maybe millions of recipes, and they don't clutter up my kitchen anymore.

I love reading recipes on the internet, but I often get aggravated. You see, I find recipes I like, and I should just stop there. But no, I feel compelled to read the comments others have made below the recipe. I'm not sure why I torture myself this way. Every once in a while, I get a nugget of inspiration from the comments. Someone may share some helpful tip, like that you can shred cooked chicken breasts with a mixer rather than the time consuming two fork method. But the few helpful tips I get don't compare with the comments from the people I like to call the lazies and the whiners (sometimes also known as the dummies when I'm not feeling generous).

The lazies don't want to try anything on their own, but they also don't want to follow the recipe. They comment along the lines of “The recipe calls for chicken, but all I have is veal. Will that work?” Or “Sure it says use defrosted ground beef, but mine's frozen, so can I throw it in the crock pot anyway? How do I adjust the cooking time for that?” Or my favorite: “It calls for ¾ teaspoon of cocoa, but I don't have a measuring spoon that says ¾. What do I do? And can I use Nestle Quick instead?” They want someone else to do their figuring for them, to try their substitutions for them, and to think for them so they don't have to bother. They seem to think it's the recipe writer's responsibility to rework the recipe for their individual circumstances. They are annoying, but they are still better than the whiners.

The whiners get to me. They go their own way, but then want to gripe about how it didn't work, as if it is the recipe writer's fault. They swap out sour cream for cream of chicken soup, add ½ cup of hot sauce, throw in some sugar, cut the water in half because it sounds like too much, and increase the cooking time by an extra 30 minutes because they read one time that someone went blind from eating food that wasn't quite done. Then they complain that it didn't turn out good, was a waste of their money, and the recipe author is obviously a hack.

Some recipe posters are nice and try to answer questions. Others just ignore the comments, likely to save their sanity. I'm afraid I might have a sarcastic response or two if it were me. But the whole situation makes me think of how we treat God sometimes. We like to go our own way, and complain to Him when it doesn't work out. “Sure God, I felt you telling me not to date that person, so I married them. And now they've treated me so bad. How could you let this happen to me?” “Well, God, I know you don't like this particular behavior, but I only do it because (insert lame excuse here). Surely you won't hold that against me, right?” Or “I know it's not the right way to act, God, but every one else is doing it and I don't want to seem weird. If I ask you to make it all turn out ok, then I'm covered, right?”

God's law is His law. It's not situational. It isn't individual. It's not relative. Asking Him to make it all right when you do something wrong isn't going to change His mind, or remove natural consequences. If we are too lazy to learn His law, or if we insist on doing things our way, then we certainly have no right to complain when we pay the price for our actions. If we insist on cooking up a disaster, God will let us.

What about you? Are you following God's recipe for righteous living, or are you going rogue?