What does cooking have to do with Worldview Warriors, let alone a person like me who does have on record the ability to butcher even a Hamburger Helper? (Yes, I have done that.) One thing every cook, amateur or not, knows is to not serve uncooked meat. It does not matter if you prefer rare, medium, or well done meat; if you do not raise the meat to an appropriate temperature, you run the risk of potentially serious health issues. In any restaurant, no one likes undercooked meat and it leaves them unsatisfied.
Some meats can be grilled, some heated on a stove, some on the spit over a camp fire, and others need the slow cooking of a crock pot. Some meats, in order to marinate all the way through, need to simmer in heat for 6-10 hours. Others just need to be raised to the right temperature and can take just a few minutes, depending on the dish. But what is critical is that the mean must be cooked or it is not safe to eat.
The same is true about what we teach and what we write. Many of us have ideas percolating in our minds, however not all of them are ready to be shared because they need to cook longer. It is really easy to get excited about something you came up with and want to share it with everyone, but if you take the time to let the dust settle before you announce it, you may realize that what you discovered is not at all what you initially thought it is.
The media in particular is extremely guilty of this. They will jump at the slightest bit of anything they want and run with it before they take the time to find out if what they are reporting is actually true. This is true for politics, Evolution-based science, global warming, and many other topics. There are numerous examples of evidence cited for Evolution and blasted in the media that after more careful examination, the evidence showed to be nothing of the sort. Here is one example: “Flipperpithecus.” What was once thought to be a humanoid collar bone turns out to be just a dolphin rib. I do appreciate Tim White’s sense of humor in naming it.
But the Creationists have fallen guilty of the same issue. When the discovery of Homo Naledi was released two years ago, Answers in Genesis and the Institute of Creation Research released conflicted responses to the discovery. I believe they rushed their response. When this discovery was made regarding vast amounts of water under the earth’s crust, I was hesitant to join the fray. Many jumped on the bandwagon proclaiming it as evidence for the Flood. I decided to wait before using it. I have not heard much new about this discovery so I am still hesitant to use it in my arguments. What I do know is this: whenever you hear an argument about a new find about this or a new find about that, sit on it for a while. Let it simmer. Every evidence proclaimed by Evolutionists has fallen short and had they taken more time to let it simmer, they would realize their evidence never did what they thought it did. But Creationists need to be careful too. The desperation to “prove” one’s own case can be a strong pull and make one blind to what is actually happening.
It’s not just the creation/evolution debate where this is an issue. The same is true in our writing and our speaking. This whole past year I have written primarily about the journey God has been taking me on regarding prayer, intellectualism, and other issues. I’m far from a finished product, even on this phase of the journey, and when I finish this phase, I can’t stop because there will be another phase after that. All that said, as God begins to show me different things, I cannot just go write about them right away. I need to chew and process things so the “nutrients” of what I say will have any value.
It will be a long time before I run out of topics and posts for Worldview Warriors because each time I get an idea, I write it down on in my OneNote page. Some of the ideas I get are able to be written rather quickly without taking a lot of time to process. This is one of them. But others have required time to process, to think about, to gather information, and to simmer before I can write them. Then after writing them, I need to let that simmer a while and revisit them before I submit them for posting. Several times I have had to rewrite the whole post because it didn’t cook right before serving.
What can happen if we write too quickly without having taken the time for God to cook them? Like with scientific evidences, you can miss critical details that lead you to false teachings. One time I was reading through Luke 1 and I came across this verse. It stated that Elizabeth was of the line of Aaron and considering Mary was a relative of Elizabeth, I thought that gave Jesus legal blood-lineage to the High Priesthood as well as legal blood-lineage to David’s kingship. Then a friend of mine reminded me that to be a High Priest, you needed both parents to prove of the blood lineage of Aaron and that Jesus was of the order of Melchizedek, not of Aaron. I had jumped on this in excitement but did not take the time to let it simmer and process. Had I waited, I would have realized my “discovery” really was not much a discovery.
This example is a small one. There are others that are more severe. There are a lot of false teachings out there addressing legitimate issues in the church, however the solution is not cooked meat. Sometimes the solutions are just Jell-O at best, fluffy foo-foo with no actual nutrients nor anything that actually addresses the core issue. Sometime the solution offered leads the church even further away from the truth than the problems it attempts to address. What we need is a return to sound Biblical doctrine. If we see a problem and want to solve the issue, do not rush to try to solve the problem without thinking things through. Sometimes we can and sometimes we need a quick decision, but we need to learn to let our ideas simmer and cook before we put them out.
Those of us who are leaders to any degree need to learn this because we are responsible for any who follow us. I need to make sure all my writings and all my talks are properly cooked before I give them out. If you post on social media, you need to cook your posts before you post them. That includes me because I am often very quick with my keyboard in discussions (though I spend more time cooking my original posts).
How do you cook them? Start with Bible study and prayer. Is what you are writing/speaking reflective of God’s glory and consistent with his message and character? If you aren’t sure, cook it before you serve it. If the heat ruined it, then you should not be serving it anyway. Make sure what you serve is not just edible but a dish that would make Chef Ramsay proud. Likewise, when you write or speak, don’t just let your message be edible, let it be something that gives life.
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