Lemon Meringue Pie

In honor of National Pie Day (3/14 is like 3.14 = pi), here's a tasty lemon pie recipe. It's very refreshing, with a sweet and tangy citrus flavor.

Filling:
1 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/4 cups water
2/3 cup lemon juice
2 tablespoons butter
4 egg yolks

Meringue:
4 egg whites
6 tablespoons white sugar

In a medium saucepan, whisk together the sugar, flour, cornstarch, and salt until well blended. Stir in the water and lemon juice. Cook over medium-high heat until it comes to a boil

Note: If you have fresh lemons, you can use the juice from 2 lemons plus their zest instead of the lemon juice and increase the water to 1-1/2 cups. I don't keep lemons on hand, so bottled juice works fine for me.

When the lemon mixture comes to a boil, stir in the butter. Beat the egg yolks in a small bowl or mixing cup and add about 1/2 cup of the hot lemon mixture slowly while whisking. Then, pour the egg mixture back into the lemon filling and whisk well. Bring the mixture back to a boil and continue cooking and stirring for a couple minutes, until the mixture thickens. Remove from heat and pour into a baked 9-inch pie crust.

Preheat the oven to 350. Beat the egg whites until they start to foam. Add in the sugar very gradually as you continue to beat until stiff peaks form. Spread the meringue over the top of the pie, sealing all the edges around the crust. Swirl the top to add some texture. Bake in preheated oven 10-15 minutes or until the meringue is golden brown. Refrigerate pie until chilled before serving. Enjoy!





Ok, I don't usually use paper plates for pictures, but we ate this pie in a hurry and this is the only picture I got. It was so good.

God Has No Feminine Side

I hear the statement that God is both masculine and feminine or that God has both male and female traits now and then, and I think it is worth clarifying the issue because it is easy to be misled into an erroneous view of God. It is not uncommon to hear people claim that God could just as easily be referred to as Goddess or to hear them speaking of Him as Mother God or something of that nature. Even those who don't go that far might be a little confused about God's gender, if you will. So perhaps this will be helpful.

I should think it obvious that God the Father does not have a body and thus has no sex. He is not male or female and has no attributes of male or female bodies. So we must distinguish in this case between biological sex and personal attributes such as masculinity and femininity which could apply even to a spirit being.

What people often mean when they claim that God has both male and female traits is that God exhibits all the good traits which we attribute to both men and women, including some that we might associate more with one gender or the other (such as caring, nurturing, compassion for females or strength and courage for males). This part is true. God does exhibit all good traits.

However, such character traits are not necessarily either masculine or feminine. We often associate certain traits more strongly with masculine or feminine roles, but the traits themselves, in being good and noble, are not solely the province of either gender. A man can be caring or compassionate and do so without being feminine. A woman can be courageous or strong without being masculine. So the roles of masculinity and femininity are not merely a collection of traits.

I would claim that the underlying basis for masculinity and femininity are in their contrast to one another and their emphasis more so than individual traits, and especially their contrast with regard to authority and leadership. The masculine role is one of leadership, authority, protection, and provision with respect to the feminine and the feminine role is one of receptiveness, submission, vulnerability, and willingness to be led with regard to the masculine.

Given these definitions of masculine and feminine, as contrasts to one another rather than a list of traits, it does not make sense to claim that God has both masculine and feminine traits. Traits have no gender. Masculine and feminine refer to roles, not merely a group of traits.

Under this definition, God is only masculine because He holds only the role of authority, provision, protection, and leadership with regard to everything else that exists - His creation. God does not hold the feminine role. Ever. He submits to no one. He is not led by anyone. And thus while we can acknowledge that God can and does exhibit compassion, nurturing, and care for those in need, these do not make God feminine any more than they would make any man feminine. They are noble and good traits and have no inherent gender, even if the female sex is more associated with them, and perhaps exhibits them more often.

God's role with respect to His creation is the role of the masculine, and thus we should only refer to God with masculine pronouns. That is also, not coincidentally, the way that God has revealed Himself to us. It is a serious error to claim God is feminine, and we must be careful to avoid this error.

If You Want Children, Make Wise Choices

The common feminist advice given to women to live in the moment, travel the world, go drinking, hook up, and have fun in your 20's and even 30's and then settle down and be a mom when you've had your fill is absolutely terrible advice for many reasons.

1) A woman's fertility is not guaranteed. Waiting until the 30's or 40's to have children all too often means not being able to have them at all. Not naturally, anyway, and often reproductive technologies can't even help. Fertility, unlike travel or luxuries, won't wait. Use it while you have it.

2) Having children doesn't prevent women from having fun, as so many assume. Yes, children tie you down to some degree, but they're not little ball and chains. Your life isn't over when you have kids. In fact, having children helps us realize what really matters about life and have a far richer and more fulfilling experience than any party lifestyle will ever provide.

3) Being irresponsible, drinking, partying, and hooking up are terrible choices regardless of what age you are or whether or not you have kids. They're bad moral choices and also harmful in many other ways.

4) Being a party animal doesn't prepare a woman for being a wife and mother. Quite the opposite. It teaches her to live for her instant gratification and not consider others or the future. It teaches her to resent children as little burdens that stop her from doing what she wants to do. It teaches her to care only about herself. In short, it turns her inward rather than outward and fuels her natural selfishness, which is exactly the opposite of what is needed in a good mother.

5) Partying, drinking, and hooking up make a woman a bad wife, and bad wives are also, by definition, bad mothers. The kinds of habits that cause a woman to be a good wife, to knit her heart with her husband's, and to put others before herself also help to ensure that her children will grow up in the stable, married home they need. Premarital sex undermines marital stability. A habit of selfish indulgence doesn't magically end when the wedding is over. The habits we make follow us for a lifetime.

6) Selfish, irresponsible behaviors like drinking heavily and premarital sex cause disease and reduce a woman's chances of having healthy children. Alcohol kills brain and liver cells. Some STDs can be transmitted to a child, cause cancers of the reproductive organs, or cause sterility. Fertility isn't assured for any woman as she ages, but it's even less sure if she is engaging in behaviors that put her and her reproductive health at risk.

7) Smart, loyal men who want to settle down and have a family don't pick partying women for that role, and for good reason. The 30-something living weekend to weekend just to party or hooking up with a string of different men is not good wife material. So when she finally decides, in her mid-30's, after being all used up, that she wants a husband and children, she is very likely to find she has zero prospects. Men aren't going to marry her now. They're not stupid.

The bottom line is that women who want a husband and children need to plan in their teens and early-20's to pursue behaviors that help further that goal and prepare them to find a good man and make use of their fertile years. They need to be cultivating the kind of character that makes good wives and mothers. They need to be making wise and healthy choices. Those who do the opposite and think they can party like there's no tomorrow will likely find that their family goals never come true, and all because they made poor choices. For good or for ill, we reap what we sow.

White Chocolate Hot Cocoa

My husband and I are very fond of white chocolate. To us, the very best kind of hot cocoa is white chocolate. We've tried a couple different brands, but they're expensive and hard to find. Then we found this Ghirardelli white chocolate powder, and it's awesome. It only comes in a big 50 oz can, but it's about 1/3 the price, ounce for ounce, as other brands and it tastes better. Plus, it can be used for more than just hot cocoa. It's just powdered white chocolate, so you can add it to coffee or cappuccino, dust cakes with it, use it for frosting, or any number of other uses. The hot cocoa is a great wintertime treat, and we like to curl up on on the couch with a hot mug and watch a movie after the kids go to bed.


Per serving:

8 oz milk
1-2 drops vanilla extract
3 tablespoons white chocolate powder
Whipped cream (optional)

Pour the milk into mugs and microwave until hot (around 1.5 minutes, depending on your microwave). Alternatively, the milk can be heated on the stove. Add a drop or two of vanilla extract and the white chocolate powder and stir until dissolved. Top with whipped cream for an especially decadent experience.

Note: This post contains affiliate links which do provide us with a small percentage of any purchase made through the link. All opinions are my own. Purchasing through the link does not affect your purchase price, but does help support this blog.

Should Christians Be Cremated?

It is common for people today to ask whether it is acceptable for Christians to be cremated. Many have a sort of vague idea that it's not okay, but don't really know why. Others instinctively believe cremation to be perfectly fine because it's accepted in our culture and they can't imagine what would be wrong with it. In times past, being buried was an extremely important issue to many, with some even believing that they could not enter heaven unless they had been properly buried. Sailors often wore a gold or silver earring in hopes that if their lifeless body were to wash up on shore, the precious metal would cover the cost of their burial.

But is it really all that important what happens to our bodies after we die? Is cremation wrong? To clarify the issue, it is helpful to ask a couple of questions.

1) Does being cremated prevent a person from going to heaven or having a resurrection body?

2) Should Christians choose to be cremated?

There is a distinction between these two questions that is not always apparent when discussing cremation, but I want to answer these questions separately because they are separate issues.

In response to Question 1, I think it's clear from scripture and scriptural principles that being cremated does not prevent anyone from being resurrected or going to heaven. God does not need an intact physical body in order to provide us with a resurrection body. A person can't be prevented from going to heaven by what someone else does with their dead body. Whether a body decays, is burned, is eaten by animals, or whatever else may happen to it, this does not affect the eternal future of that person. We are safe in God's hands when we trust in Him. We don't have to worry about whether someone will burn or otherwise destroy our bodies after we die. The early Christians were often fed to lions or burned alive, and they knew that they were going to be safe in heaven when their ordeal was over. Nothing that man can do to our bodies can separate us from God.

On the other hand, the symbolism and tradition of burial among Christians contrasted with the burning of bodies by heathens is not something to ignore either. Christians have always buried their dead as a symbol of the hope for bodily resurrection while many who reject God have used the burning of dead bodies to symbolize returning to the earth and a distinct lack of hope in a future resurrection.

Christianity has always taught that our bodies are not merely physical stuff that is irrelevant to who we are. We are not souls who have a shell of a body to live in for a time. Rather, our embodied existence was always intended to be an integral part of who we are. And that is why we will have resurrection bodies in heaven, because a part of our enjoyment of heaven comes from a physical experience and part of God's eternal plan for us is that we are to be embodied souls rather than just a spirit.

Thus, when we treat the physical body with respect during our lifetime and when we treat it respectfully in death by not purposely destroying it, we show our respect for God's plan that we are to be embodied creatures.

Burning our bodies is not respectful of our bodies or their Creator. Just as burning a flag is a way to show contempt for the flag and thus the country symbolized by that flag, burning a human body shows contempt for that body and the God in whose image that person was made. There's a reason so many enemies of Christianity burned the bodies of Christians - either alive or dead. There's a reason cultures all over the world often burn the bodies of their enemies. There's a reason burning a cross is easily discernible as a sign of disrespect. People burn things that are considered sacred to show that they do not hold them sacred or worthy of honor.

We should not treat our bodies with contempt or disrespect. Others may do so to our bodies after we die, and we cannot prevent that entirely. But we should not make the mistake of choosing to have our bodies burned because then we are the ones showing disrespect.

We should not treat the body as irrelevant or an anchor holding us down. Our bodies are given to us by God as part of His perfect plan. We aren't godlike spirits that need to be freed from houses of flesh, as some false religions teach. We don't need to escape our bodies to become perfect. Flesh is not intrinsically evil or base. Rather, God will perfect our bodies.

On the other extreme, we should recognize that our physical bodies are not the entirety of who we are either. We are not merely dust of the earth that will return to dust and that's all. We don't cling to the empty hope that we will live on by returning to the soil and being recycled into another living thing over and over as many atheists do.

Both of these extreme views - that the body is everything or the body is nothing - are a corruption of the correct and Biblical position that both body and spirit are integral and important parts of who we are. Choosing cremation or any sort of burning of the body claims either that the body is nothing, and thus can be disposed of with impunity, or that the body is all there is, and thus is not sacred. Treating a dead body with honor and respect means not purposely destroying it. The symbolism of burial affirms that we are not merely a body, but also that the body is sacred and important, not a useless shell that can be destroyed when we no longer need it. And that is why Christians have buried their dead for thousands of years, and why they should continue to do so.