Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Your Spiritual Resumé

If you had to write a resumé for God’s consideration, what would you list on it?

You’d probably assume that you should list all the good, noble, and praiseworthy things you’ve done.

Your perfect church attendance, your faithful donations to Christian charities, and your decades of volunteering at the soup kitchen would certainly top the list on your spiritual resumé.

You’d also want to throw in your kindness to others, your endless good deeds, and the fact that people consider you a saint.

It probably wouldn’t hurt to mention your lack of even so much as a parking ticket on your driving record.

All this would surely carry weight with God, wouldn’t it? Your impressive list of virtuous accomplishments would undoubtedly factor into in His decision as to whether He would accept you or not.

Or would it?

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Cake Mix Religion

Photo by Roadside Pictures on Flickr CC BY-NC-2.0

Is there such a thing as something being too easy?

The original developers of cake mixes seemed to believe so.

When cake mixes first debuted in the 1930s, all the baker had to do was add water and then bake. It was as easy as pie, so to speak.

But they soon realized they had to tweak the recipe. First off, the powdered eggs in the original mixes didn’t taste that great.

Later, psychologists thought that bakers wanted to feel more involved in the cake-baking process. Home bakers found the mixes a bit too easy, as though they weren’t putting in enough effort. There was a sense that baking a cake from a mix didn’t really count.

So the cake mix companies changed their recipes to require home bakers to add fresh eggs in addition to the liquid. Putting the eggs back in the hands of the bakers proved to be the winning formula.

I sometimes wonder if we apply the same logic to our faith.

Does trusting in Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross for the forgiveness of our sins seem like it’s only part of the recipe?

Are we sometimes tempted to add in some effort on our own part to make it “complete”?

Does faith alone seem too easy?

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