(January 15, 2025) Mama Lava challenges…

Can a recipe be tweaked and still considered authentic?

How many tweaks do you think I need to make to a recipe before I call it mine? If I change a few things, is it still the originator’s creation, or is it now my own? Have you ever thought about this?

Tweaking Online Recipes
When I read online recipes, I often read the comments also. Most of them say something along the lines of ‘Great recipe! I substituted this for that, or used this other kind of pan, or adjusted the cooking time this way.’ And I often think those comments are unfair to the author, who was gifting the community with their original recipe.

Those changes infuse the ideas of someone else and offer an alternate recipe. It isn’t vastly different, at first, but if I continue to read the comments, I find people who have tweaked the tweaks and the recipe quickly becomes something entirely new.

If I tweak a recipe in any small way, is it still the original, or now mine? What if the author doesn’t like my adaptation? Would they want to keep credit for something they didn’t authorise?

If it were one of your legacy recipes, what would you say? Could I change it and still use your family’s name? Would that be fair or honest?

Tweaking God’s Recipe
You know, God gives His recipe for salvation in His word. He outlines what He requires for a relationship with humankind. He explains why we can’t approach Him on our own and gives us Jesus as the answer— in John 14:6, Jesus Himself said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ Acts 4:12 confirms Jesus’ declaration: ‘There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.’

God’s recipe is simple and cooks up to perfection. (See The Gospel in a Nutshell) But we resist adhering to it, don’t we? We want to adjust His recipe to suit our tastes.

How many tweaks can we make before it becomes our word and no longer His? What if we toss out a passage or two, distort the meanings of just a few terms, or add/subtract a required ingredient, is it still His word?

• If we take a recipe, that of God or anyone else, and change it— even slightly— then pass it off as the original, are we not committing fraud?
• Who then is served if we taint God’s plan with our own ideas?
• Are our loved ones better off adopting our thoughts— or those of the Author of Everything?

‘“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts”’(Isaiah 55:8-9).

Whose recipe will we follow? Tweaking means twisting something sharply. Peter warns that the ignorant and unstable twist Paul’s letters and God’s word to their own destruction (2Peter:16ESB: also Message).

How many tweaks can we make before God’s recipe is no longer His? I don’t think we can make any. What do you think?
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Mama Lava delights to share openly and honestly from her heart. She sincerely believes in making the big world a bit smaller through caringly connecting, that Jesus wants to remove our anxieties and give us His joy. In her encouragements, Mama Lava regularly tells of life experiences from an unapologetically Christian viewpoint. Link: Mama Lava’s Back Porch (Doses of Maternal Love).
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