Choose your chef wisely

Ever since I bought my first home last December, I've had a desire to make it a place that is open to my friends and family. I truly believe God gives us all that we have so that we can glorify him by caring for and loving others. So on Labor Day, I decided to fire up the grill and invite a few friends over my house for a time of fellowship and fun. We had such a great time hanging out together. My brother and I were working wonders on the grill, Dwayne brought some of his signature "you're officially invited to every event I have at my house" macaroni and cheese, Christiana FINALLY brought the fruit tray that she promised to bring to the last barbecue, and my parents came over late as usual with a few African dishes that the barbecue just couldn't be complete without. We all had a great time together. 

That evening after everyone went home, I decided to do some cooking to relieve me from the guilt of the burger/hot dog/mac-n-cheese feeding frenzy I enjoyed earlier.  While baking some maple glazed salmon to eat with vegetables for lunch this week and preparing spaghetti for my brother and I, a thought came to my mind. One of the biggest barriers I've had in my quest to learn how to cook has been my indiscriminate taste buds. You see, I've always been the kind of person that likes a lot of different kinds of foods and doesn't tend to be very selective or picky with the foods I eat. A large reason for this is because...well....most things tend to taste ok to me. I know it sounds strange to some, but I don't care if two foods in my plate mix. If the food I select at a restaurant doesn't taste that great, I usually won't send it back, and it's not because I'm a passive guy who doesn't want to offend anyone or make them do something out of their way, I'm just not that selective. It's probably because to me, it really doesn't taste that bad. Here's the other strange twist to this...this is NOT the case when I eat African foods.  Growing up, my mother and grandmother were great cooks and were constantly complimented by people who ate the food they prepared.  As a result of eating the same kinds of foods with distinct tastes over a long period of time, I could easily tell what was missing or added in an African dish and developed a very selective taste of African foods.

The problem this presented as I attempted to cook was that my indiscriminate tongue didn't taste what was missing in a dish. It accepted almost anything.  And since I wasn't highly selective in my likes and dislikes and didn't pay attention to the distinctive flavors and spices in the foods I ate, it didn't matter much to me.  So I was the perfect chef...as long as I was cooking for myself because it all tasted fine to me.  Over time I have become much more aware of the flavors in dishes, and a bit more picky as a result.  The transition began to take place when I became intentional about learning to cook with a desire to host dinners at my house in the future and learning the appropriate taste to look for through intentionally eating foods that were prepared well and asking how they were made. All of a sudden, flavors and spices mattered so much more, and knowing that I'd be cooking for others was additional motivation.

One of the things I try to do and encourage others to do as believers is to live lives where everything we do is shaped/fashioned by the gospel and try to use our everyday lives and experiences as a means of reflecting on the truths of the gospel.  While cooking, this reflection came to mind.  If you had to choose between two chefs to cook a meal for an important event, would you pick the one who has developed a keen sense of taste that enables him to know the fine details of how to make a dish taste just right...or a chef with an indiscriminate tongue? One who enjoys what he cooks up, even though it might not taste the way it should? Now consider the words of the bible that mean much more than food or drink. Would you prefer to have a person preaching to you who has studied the scripture and has taken the time to carefully understand key doctrinal matters in order to make sure the words he uses are not passively spoken, but carefully understood and defined for the listeners? One who teaches and shepards in a way that encourages the listeners to live a life shaped by clearly defined truths?  Or would you be fine with a preacher who proves by his handling of the word that he does have some sort of concept of important truths of the gospel but does not have a firm grasp on them?  One who passively speaks about them so that the congregation ends up having an assumed understanding of important things, but they don't have any depth in their knowledge of these VERY  important and essential truths?

Like the cooking example I gave, this is often the case for speakers and hearers alike; the dangerous practice of speaking and listening with an indiscriminate ear. Some of the keys that result in developing an indiscriminate ear are the absence of consistent teachings that have a high view of God and the truths explained in the word, and the absence of the examples of lives lived out which clearly show that they are shaped by these truths. I developed a taste for African food that helped me to be able to know the difference between a properly cooked African dish and one that was missing important ingredients through consistently eating well made dishes. We learn to know sound doctrine and theology through consistently hearing sound theology and checking for consistency with the word. As we hear them, the Holy Spirit aids us in understanding rightly what Christ did for us, giving us an appropriate understanding of scripture that we can learn to follow.  On the other hand, we learn to hold tightly to wrong doctrine if we are constantly taught it and don't look into scripture to see if it's correct (as scripture commands).  If the chef never learns to know the difference, his customers, if they eat at the same place consistently for a long period of time, will learn to develop a liking for food that tastes similar, but is not prepared properly. And they will possibly develop a distaste for the food that is prepared right. The distaste for good food is a result of a paradigm that has been shaped by the wrong foundation of the untrained chef's cooking standard.  If we are consistently taught the scriptures wrongly, the result is that even when something sound is taught, it is understood according to a wrong paradigm and becomes useless .

A wise way to prevent this is by looking for a church that has a high view of scripture.  Some signs are:

• A church with biblically qualified leaders. (Titus 1:5-16 9*)
• Exegetical preaching: preaching of the word that goes through the text and emphasizes what was actually meant by the text and does not add meaning to what was inspired by God. (2 Tim 4:2, 1 Cor 1:17, 1 Cor 15:2)
• Practicing of biblical church discipline. It honors God's word and shows a trust for God's means of lovingly dealing with sin. (Mat 18:15-20)
• A church that clearly defines terms such as atonement, justification, conversion, and most importantly, gospel.

If these things are not clearly seen in a church, chances are you may have a chef with great intentions who presents a meal that is very similar to what you ordered (the gospel), but it's not what you ordered at all.  If there's one place where it helps to be a picky eater, it's with the most important food you'll ever eat; the word of God.