So Mom and I had a problem. It was a serious problem. It was an ice cream problem. It was, what I believe to be, a rather common problem. It dealt with a carton of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. Now this flavour happens to be Mom's and my favourite. But why do we love this ice cream? Obviously, because of the chunks of gooey cookie dough. But herein is where the problem lies - there is just never enough chocolate chip cookie dough in the ice cream! And we've purchased our fair share of this ice cream, so maybe we just got a dozen bad cartons ... or maybe there's just something wrong here, some lurking evil at play ...
We went with the latter option of course. Something evil has got to be involved if it's taking away the cookie dough from our ice cream. So we decided to conduct a little experiment. We would make our own chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. We'd whip up a batch of cookie dough, buy our own carton of french vanilla ice cream, mix, and voila! We'd have the best cookie dough ice cream, better than Dairy Queen and Brahms and Farmers and Breyer's and Mishoo's and Mayfield and ... well, you get the point.
So last night we conducted this experiment. It was ... interesting. We bought the ice cream, made the cookie dough and then combined. The results were something neither of us had ever anticipated. One spoonful and we were in love. Two and we were hooked. Three was magnificent. Four was great. Five was good. Six was okay. Seven was getting a little sweet. By eight we were ready to be sick. Nine didn't make it our mouths. We didn't get halfway through the bowl.
So, our results? We now recognize why there is only so much cookie dough in ice cream, and we recognize and appreciate the fine art of ice cream making and realize that it is not for us. Yes, we feel shame. But. It did get me thinking about something of more importance that ice cream. And that is the Bible.
How often do we - or others - get in our heads that the Bible needs beefing up? Sweetening? Shortening? Simplifying? Altogether to be easier to swallow? But that is a false and sinful attitude. Even though it may seem better at first, just like those first bites of ice cream, and you may feel like you've improved the Word of God, you'll soon realize what terrible thing has just been committed. It's disastrous:
"I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book." (Revelation 22:18-19)So what has my ice cream experiment taught me? When we take the Bible into our own hands, we are committing a sin of terrifying consequences. And when we try to make our own cookie dough ice cream, only disaster can ensue.