What’s Going on in Your Crawlspace?

Anyone who has bought or sold a house has experienced that moment in the sales process when the buyer makes an offer, but it is contingent on a home inspection paid for by the buyer.  The moment the inspector’s report is made available can be a tense moment. My wife Lynne and I experienced that tension the last time we sold a house.  When the inspection report came back, the inspector indicated that he had found three instances where floor joists had not been seated correctly on the exterior walls of the foundation.  I knew right away that if the sale was to move forward, safety concerns with the foundation needed to be addressed.  I secured a foundation expert to give me a price.  When he crawled under our house (with me right alongside him), I was quickly filled with joy when he told me the concerns raised by the home inspector were not an issue. But hardly had I gotten that smile of relief in position on my face, when he said, “But I’ve discovered three other places in the middle of the crawlspace that are of concern where floor joists are not seated properly on individual pillars.” Smile gone…along with $1500 needed to make repairs.

With mine and Lynne’s experience in mind, I’d like for us to ponder this question.  If you and I secured an expert to do an inspection on our lives, when he examined the crawlspace, would he find a solid foundation supporting our lives?  Let’s examine three key components of a strong foundation.

1. Would the inspector find a worldview supported by reality – a worldview supported by how things really are and not by something which we or someone else imagines or makes up to be reality?  Everyone has a worldview – a lens of understanding and judgment through which he views and interprets life. But not everyone has a worldview that is supported by reality. In the two examples that follow, which position is better supported by how life really is?
   
   First, let’s consider the incredible evidence of intelligent and intentional design and order present in the universe in which we live.  Many observe the incredible evidence of design and order in the physical world and conclude we are here randomly as a result of a game of cosmic evolutionary Survivor– with the inevitable conclusion there is no real intrinsic order and purpose for the world at large, especially for us as individuals?  At the same time, there are also many who look at the same evidence and conclude that since intelligent and intentional design exists, then there must be an intelligent and intentional Designer who had a purpose for bringing it all into existence.  Which of these worldviews is better supported by the reality of design and order in the universe? 

   Or consider the brokenness we find in the world at large, and especially in the lives of individuals.  Would inspection of our lives show we believe that mankind is basically good, but the reason the world is broken is because of social inequities found in the systems of education and government that have failed us – with the obvious solution being to pump more money into those systems.  Or would his inspection reveal we believe the world’s systems are broken because the people who develop and participate in those systems are spiritually broken? And that they are broken due to an inherent defect in the lives of everyone who has and will ever live – a defect the Bible calls sin.  Thus, the only way for the brokenness in the world to be fixed is for the sin problem within each of us to be fixed. We all need a Savior. Does reality better support lives broken by sin, or is it due to basically good people having to make do with prejudicial insufficient funding?

2. Would the inspection find that we believe in “live your truth” or that we believe in “live the truth”?¹ One of the interesting aspects of culture today is the amount of self-confidence many people have that they possess within themselves everything necessary to successfully define, describe, and navigate reality in their lives. Thus, they are confident that their interpretations and understandings of life are a sufficient “truth” by which to live. It’s the “you live your truth and I’ll live mine” mindset that sees truth as being relative (which when you think about it is a philosophical oxymoron).  In contrast is the mindset found in the phrase “live the truth”, which speaks to a belief that the only way to live life to its fullest level of success is to live it according to the absolute truth that has been revealed to us through the Bible and especially through God’s Son, Jesus the Christ.  As we conduct an inspection of our lives, a good question to ponder is, who is better able to define, describe, and help us navigate reality in our lives?  Is it we who are fallible, temporal, partial-knowing, with limited experience and understanding, or is it God who is the infallible, all knowing, all powerful, present everywhere at all times, eternal Creator of all that exists?
3. Would the inspection find the foundation of your life compromised by stinkin’ thinkin’ about God?  Nothing leads to more heartache in people’s lives than the presence of wrong beliefs and wrong thinking about God.  Whereas the ultimate stinkin’ thinkin’ about God is that there is no God, we would be remiss if we failed to understand that much of the inaccurate thinking about God resides in the hearts and minds of individuals who claim to believe in God. For example, to see God’s love, mercy and grace as meaning He’ll save everybody and never condemn anyone to eternal destruction, or to see God’s goodness as meaning He’ll never allow bad things to happen to good people, or to think that in spite of God’s holiness and justice, He will wink at or overlook a person’s sin, are all examples of stinkin’ thinkin’ about God.  Nothing can weaken the foundation of our lives more than erroneous theology and doctrine about God.  What we believe about God will be the foundation of our worldview and our understanding of truth.

Matthew 7:24-27 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

¹Alisa Childers, Live Your Truth and Other Lies (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2022), p.201.