Here’s what’s cooking in our house this week!

Monday-Pumpkin Pasta with Creamy Sauce and Winter Salad
See previous post for recipes

Tuesday–Vegan Buddah Bowls
This is almost better as leftovers…almost.

Wednesday-Leftovers

Thursday–White Bean and Kale Soup and homemade rolls

Friday-Spaghetti (or as my son says, “Sghabetti!”) and Green Beans
We are not very traditional when it comes to how we like our spaghetti. No red sauce lovers in our house! Our favorite ways to eat spaghetti is with myzithra cheese and browned butter or with fresh basil, sliced green olives and a little bit of lime juice.

Also, some feedback on a couple recipes I’ve tried over the last few weeks. Remember the pickle and beef tacos? They were kind of, meh. It wasn’t bad, just didn’t have any real pop in the flavors or textures. I think I’m going to try it again with come really crisp pickles and see if that does the trick.

There are few things I love more than flipping through a beautifully complied cookbook. The sense of possibilities is almost overwhelming. I picked up the the Pioneer Woman’s newest cookbook this week and am so excited to try a couple new recipes from it. It is one of the most beautiful and fun cookbooks I’ve seen, full of photos and yummy, approachable recipes.

Monday–Turkey with Mushroom Cream Sauce and Winter Salad with Poppy seed Dressing

Tuesday–Beef Stew and Bread
With most food I cook, I see a recipe as the guidelines and within those guidelines there is a great deal of room for creativity. I think soups and stews are the perfect place to start playing around with your creative side. Use the recipe I linked above as your guideline and add from there. Maybe a little red wine? Perhaps you like wild rice in your stew. Taste, add, adjust, repeat. And most importantly, have fun.

Wednesday-Hamburger Steaks with Mushroom Gravy, Salad (from Pioneer Woman’s new cookbook!)

Thursday-Leftovers

Friday-TexMex Butternut Squash Soup (also from Pioneer Woman’s new cookbook!)

It’s a busy week, so I’m breaking out some of my tried and true favorites. But I also threw in a new recipe for some excitement. I’m still developing the pumpkin pasta recipe but I can tell you it is so, so yummy. Until it’s ready, here’s the link to the recipe that inspired me. Enjoy!

Monday–BBQ Chicken and Black Bean Salad
No real recipe for this one. Just bake some chicken in your favorite BBQ sauce (I use Sweet Baby Ray’s). Remove and let cool. Then cut it up and pull out a can for black beans, rinsed. Chop up some lettuce and tomatoes. Pull out any toppings that sound delicious to you. We like shredded cheddar, corn, jalapeños, and black olives. I like to mix together some BBQ sauce, ranch dressing, and a dash of hot sauce for the dressing. Eat with chips and salsa.

Tuesday—School Fundraising Night
Means dinner at Papa Murphy’s! 😉

Wednesday–Pumpkin Pasta and Roasted Broccoli
I’m SO excited to share this recipe with you! Soon!

Thursday–Good old Red Curry and Rice
Warms you up inside!

Friday–Beef and Pickle Tacos
This recipe is new and it intrigues me. Pickles?! I’ll let you know what I think. P.S. Joy the Baker is one of my most favorite bloggers and Instagram accounts. If you don’t follow her already and you love food (duh), you should be. It’s a no brainer.

It feels like fall here and so it’s time to break out the warming-your-insides recipes.

Monday–Fried Rice and Trader Joe’s Potstickers
(Check out my Instagram feed for my favorite short-cut fried rice recipe.)

Tuesday–Leftovers

Wednesday–Pasta with Creamy Pumpkin Sauce, Green Salad
(recipe in development, if it’s good, I’ll post it)

Thursday—Chicken Pot Pie with Cream Cheese Biscuits

Friday–Butter Chicken, Rice, Cauliflower

Happy Fall!

As we approach the end of the year, we often like to make some suggestions about good giving opportunities, based on research of what has been effective in making an impact in the lives of the poor. While we have a page with giving suggestions, I wanted to write a little bit about a giving opportunity that has received  some attention lately: giving cash.

Giving cash may be the simplest way to help the poor, but it has some very interesting implications. It may be a very old way to help someone, yet it has received a lot of attention lately, due to some more recent reasons. First, giving cash has typically been a high-overhead venture, as you need to pay people salaries to distribute money. With advances in cell-phone based payments, organizations like GiveDirectly are able to transfer money with extremely low overhead. Second, there has been significant, detailed, and careful research on how people respond to being given cash, with very positive evidence and robust results.

I believe that the success of giving cash should cause us to stop and think about how and why we give. While this has been touted as the result of economic research, the basic premise and motivation for giving cash is surprisingly simple. If we want to do for others what we want done to us, it behooves us to turn the tables, and think how we might want to be helped if we were in need. If you were in severe poverty, and someone had $500 to help you out, how would you like them to help you? I think most of us would agree that we would probably choose cash as our first option. This would give us the most freedom in using the money for exactly what we need. We might use some to buy food and some to pay for school fees for our kids. If we needed shots or medicine, we could use some money for that. And maybe we could save some of it. Generally speaking, if someone has money and really wants to help us with our most pressing needs, most recipients would naturally say that they have a better knowledge of what they really need than the donor, and the freedom of cash would be the best way to help.

If we think about this from the perspective of a recipient, this seems quite obvious, yet as donors we rarely choose this option. Why is this? Why would we almost all choose cash as recipients, yet choose completely differently when giving? This seems like a strange contradiction. I think there are several good and bad reasons for this discrepancy.

First, we may often have a natural reaction that this will create dependencies. However, the great success of cash transfer programs should force us to challenge this reaction. In fact, dependency itself is not negative, it is actually positive. If we look at any successful organization, society, or group, you will find that people are heavily dependent on each other. However, there are harmful side effects that are sometimes (mis)labeled as “dependency”, like perverse incentives, displacement, lack of accountability, and market crowding which definitely should be carefully considered and avoided. But simply “avoiding dependency” without a more nuanced consideration of how the poor respond to donations and incentives can easily lead to the wrong response.

Second, probably the worst reason that we might avoid giving cash, is that it is not that exciting. Videos of wells with fresh water, children racing to school, and smiling medical recipients is certainly more engaging than someone who has received a cash transfer and used it for 10 different parts of their budget that were lacking.

The next reason one might avoid cash is that we claim to know what recipients need more than the recipients themselves. This generally suggests a fairly arrogant and paternalistic attitude. Again, turning the tables, if you were a recipient, you may well be grateful for whatever you receive, but the idea that someone thousands of miles away knows what you need better than yourself, may feel a little demeaning.

However, this isn’t always a bad reason. While it may be difficult to avoid the paternalism accusation, it is possible to do enough research to find opportunities to help, that may actually be better than what that someone might choose for themselves. In fact, we probably have personal experience with making bad financial decisions, where outside objectivity might have helped. And sometimes we even constrain our own immediate financial freedom, with tools like retirement funds, for the sake of our future self. But, we must approach this motivation very carefully. It is a very high bar to really claim you know what other people need better than they do.

Finally, probably the most legitimate and substantial reason to give to something other than cash is the social reason. Playing the table-turning game again, let’s remember that there isn’t just one person in poverty when we give. Imagine for instance if instead of being personally given $500, a donor said that they were going to give $5,000 to 10 of your neighbors. Now how would we like to see the money spent? This could clearly lead to very different preferences. Obviously many things, like food and clothing, might be very appealing for yourself, but it doesn’t do you much good when your neighbor spends the money that way. On the other hand, there many things that your neighbors or community might purchase that would really benefit you. Spending money to prevent infectious disease and building infrastructure like well/water or schools are the types of community improvements that might not be your own first priority of your own money, but would really be helpful if the money is being distributed or shared with others as well. And, in fact, efforts based on the collective needs of a community, fighting infectious disease, providing clean water, and improving education are some the most effective and helpful types of programs we can invest in.

I personally prefer other giving opportunities over giving cash, and I have mentioned a few considerations of this type of giving, but there are definitely some very compelling reasons to donate with cash. It is extremely low overhead, the poor can directly receive nearly the full value of your donation with hardly any administrative expense. It is a very “safe” and well-established mechanism as well. And finally, if you believe that offering the gift of freedom, personal-responsibility, and opportunity is the greatest of gifts, it is hard to beat the freedom and opportunity that cash in the hands of the poor will give them.

I didn’t read a lot of books in 2014. For the latter half of 2014, I have been involved in searching for a new pastor for our church, and helping to lead the church through that process. Consequently, I spent some time reading specifically about the search process and lots of resumes. Some of these books were very short; which actually seemed quite appropriate for the subject. Here are the books I read (at least partially), roughly in order of preference:

The Locust Effect by Gary Haugen – This book received a lot of attention in its genre, so I started to read it. I haven’t finished this book yet, but I have been very impressed with it. I came to the book with a bit of skepticism about the difficulty of showing that criminal justice work can really compete with other charitable efforts in efficacy of helping the poor, but I will certainly admit that I found Haugen’s statistics, research, and arguments are very compelling. This is naturally a subject where it is very hard to precisely determine cause and effect, but the stories of outrageous injustice against the poor, and the case for providing a better legal system (that we take for granted) is powerful.

Pagan Christianity – I read this book, as we were in the midst of a church transition, and I wanted to re-examine some of the foundational ideas of how church works. This book provides some provocative critiques of practices of the modern church, and how they have likely originated more from various cultural (and even pagan) traditions, than from scriptures. While I think we can positively redeem many of modern church practices that are criticized, the critiques and suggestions are indeed very valuable for shaping a church around Biblical guidance instead of just cultural expectations.

When the Word Leads Your Pastoral Search: Biblical Principles and Practices to Guide Your Search – This is a longer book about finding a pastor, that was helpful for specifics of things like handling resumes and coordinating a candidating visit. I had some chuckles at how this book was obviously written specifically for Calvary Chapel churches and their culture, including addressing topics like whether or not you could ever consider a pastor who has given a topical sermon at some point in their life (fortunately grace can be extended for such a grievous sin). However, beyond these rather amusing idiosyncrasies, the book offered some good practical details on many of the processes involved, which was certainly beneficial.

Overrated by Eugene Cho – The core message of this book is certainly important and noteworthy: that we need to be engaged in living sacrificial lives, and not just talking about it. However, I didn’t really enjoy the style of this book. The author seemed to be trying too hard to be trendy in his references to social and popular media. The author transparently offered some good life experiences learning to live out his faith, but the core message didn’t really take that long to say, and almost felt like a greatly expounded tweet.

The New Breed – Second Edition: Understanding & Equipping the 21st Century Volunteer – I read this with church leadership to consider how to recruit more volunteers. This had some good tips on how to engage and encourage with different generations, but overall wasn’t particularly memorable.

With ISIS making headlines and recent remembrance of the 9/11 attack, our attention is again on fighting terrorism. For Christians, our response should be guided by scriptures. One of the most innate responses to attacks, and stories of beheadings, is to seek revenge. But, one of the clearest directives in the Bible it for us to not seek revenge (Deut 32:35, and quoted in Rom 12:19), but rather to love our enemies (Matt 5:44):

Deut 32:35: It is mine to avenge; I will repay.
Matt 5:44: But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

The principle is clear and unambiguous. While Christians often fail to live out scriptures, there is generally at a least a desire to be obedient. However, this is one teaching of Christ, where Christians actually seem unashamed to boldly and blatantly defy and contradict Christ.

One of the strategies for some is to try to twist Romans 13:4 into an excuse for governments’ to enter the business of vengeance:

For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

Out of context, this might indeed sound like a justification for vengeance, but with more context, it becomes clear that this is definitely not the case, for several reasons. First, starting from the beginning of chapter 13, it is clear that Paul is not addressing leaders or government, but rather subjects (leaders can learn from this passage, but only as long as they understand the context). We can not understand Paul’s words as a directive to leaders or governments to seek revenge, when he is not even addressing them. Instead, Paul is indicating that the government’s actions, as they pursue the common good of the people may legitimately engage in punishment (not as the one how is being satisfied by revenge) and taxation, and in doing so, may inflict punishment on you, to deter and restrain you from others, and this punishment may also serve God’s purpose in inflicting divine judgement. However, the vengeance or wrath mentioned is not man’s, they are acting as “agents”, not as a divine judge.

This verse also can not be used as a directive, since it is completely insufficient in declaring what crimes deserve what revenge. Deterrent justice, the legitimate form of justice that governments can and should pursue for the well-being of their citizens, can be empirically determined (we can verify how much punishment it take to significantly deter crime). However, when we endeavor to seek revenge, the only clear measure of the appropriate level of punishment for crimes that the Bible offers is that every crime is deserving of punishment beyond repayment, yet we are shown grace. How should a government’s endeavor enact this? And isn’t the greatest offense we can commit, to reject God? Should governments then started punishing anyone who is not a Christian? This didn’t turn out to well in the Crusades, one of the darkest points in Christian history. While government’s may inflict deterring punishment, that may be used by God for His judgement, it is absurdly unjustifiable for governments to actually take up the divine act of seeking revenge themselves, and it completely contradicts the clear Biblical message that vengeance (the act of deciding the deserved recompense for offenses) belongs solely to God.

Not only is revenge clearly condemned in scriptures, the desire to see others avenged for their wrongs is fundamentally in contradiction to the very foundation of the Christianity, the grace we find at the cross. The reality is that we were deserving of a punishment what we can never payback, and yet God, while we were still in sin, showed as grace. To turn around, and demand divine punishment on someone who is no more deserving of God’s wrath than we are, is to trample on that grace, to reject Christ, and the cross he bore.

I am not pacifist either. The reason I am not, is that I see pacifism is a form of legalism. While Jesus definitely taught us not to violently respond to enemies (it doesn’t get any more non-violent than loving your enemies), Jesus also clearly taught (particular in Matthew 12), the purpose of the God’s laws was not to define a mechanical process to satisfy God, but to reveal his purpose. When he make pacifism a mechanism of obedience, rather than a revelation of his purpose and vision of peace, we risk legalistically following a set of motions instead of looking towards the goal. However, in defense of pacifism, in practice, this actually seems to be relatively rare problem, as we most always err on the side violence as humans, instead of sacrificial peace.

I believe this gives a proper framework for understanding Romans 13, and government’s legitimate role in punishing people. In isolation, it is impossible to justify a punishment that is clearly harming a person. In the broader context of society, the purpose (rather than just the mechanism) of Jesus teaching, the ethic of loving others, loving the whole community, it be comes quite clear how punishing one person benefits the greater society. We can prevent future crimes, and in doing so we are benefiting the community, the society. This doesn’t need to be motivated by a desire to avenge past wrongs, but rather motivated by the legitimate and loving act of protecting future potential victims.

With the whole of scripture in view, Romans 13 isn’t a new revelation of a new ethic, or a new exception. It is in fact, simply a recognition that a well-functioning government that cares for its citizens (driven by Christians wholly devoted to Christ’s ethic, or even non-Christians who also recognize the need for collective actions and providing victims from injustice, which actually was the case of the government Paul was under), may be punishing (and taxing people), and stern warning that evil behavior may earn you a legitimate punishment from that government. There is nothing fundamentally new here, Paul is completely aligned with Christ here. He is not trying to correct a failure in the Christian ethic, he is simply expressing a legitimate expression of the ethic, and how it may affect us.

It is indeed tempting to think that Christ’s teaching, His ethic needs to be excepted for governments. I used to think the same thing. However, as I have studied scripture more, I have realized Christ’s teaching needs no limits placed on them. They are wholly perfect, consistently applicable to every situation, to all people, individuals, groups, societies, and governments, without error, never falling short of guiding us rightly. We don’t have to come up with fixes for Christ, where He didn’t quite foresee how His teaching wouldn’t quite work right for larger governing bodies. As Abraham Kuyper said:

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”

The recognition of how dangerous the urge for revenge is in perpetuating violence is why the Just War principles were articulated (by Augustine and later expanded by others). When the only thing needed to justify war is a feeling of righteous superiority and a desire for revenge, virtually every war, battle, and atrocity can be justified. It is only through an objective analysis of the whether war will actually yield better results for the common good of all, that combat can really be justified.

So should we bomb ISIS? If we have learned anything from the last two decades of middle east conflicts, it is that fighting terrorists is incredibly difficult, costly, and complicated, and can often produce the opposite of the intended effect. We are completely ignorant if we think there is some simple way to take out terrorists, so I certainly don’t claim to know the best tactical approach forward. But I do know that the values that drive our strategy our critical. When we take up arms out of revenge, we can be quite certain that we will indeed succeed at the immoral and unethical pursuit that we undertake. And as title, states the greatest victim of revenge is the avenger, and indeed our hunger for revenge has cost hundreds of billions of dollars (if not trillions), as well as thousands of lives, and to pursue revenge now will cost us more.

Again, I don’t know the right tactical strategy, and we are equally at fault if we ignore the oppression and sufferings of the thousands who have been persecuted and displaced at the hands of ISIS. And we may very well be close to erring on the side of doing too little, in this case, and ignoring their plight (it seems very likely that we have done too little for the sake of the oppressed Syrians). But, we can only embark on truly ethical, moral, and just tactics of armed combat, when we start with a foundation of having first forgiven, and recognizing that the death of any human, including a terrorist is a great tragedy. To deny that a fellow human needs God’s grace exactly as much as myself, is to deny the cross itself.

The greatest victim of revenge is the avenger. We, unwittingly, in our hunger for revenge, become our own victim of bitterness, and in our pursuit, costing ourselves the most. And God, in His infinite foresight, undertook the most ironic, and beautiful twist of fulfilling this. As the rightful true avenger, He willingly became the true greatest victim. Indeed, the greatest Victim of revenge is the Avenger.