Forgive me if this is not your cup of tea - but I love the building analogy for talking about the experience of one’s faith journey.
In this analogy, parts of the house can correspond to beliefs, practices, and even the texture of one’s lived experience. This analogy doesn’t have to just be used in the context of faith - it could apply to any system containing beliefs and practices in politics, education, parenting, science, etc.
The analogy comes in handy because many, if not all us, will have a season where we discover that parts of the house aren’t doing what they are supposed to anymore.
A support beam, originally designed to hold the whole thing up, has been so weathered so as to collapse at any moment and needs to be replaced.
Little fixtures on the walls fall off and need repaired, re-adhered, or simply tossed out in favor of a new accent piece.
Your house is too big and needs to shrink - enter the tiny home movement, getting down to bare essentials.
Or now the house is too anemic, impoverished, and needs some rooms for luxury and lavishness.
And maybe there’s nothing objectively wrong with the house - nothing needs obvious fixing - but you just aren’t comfortable there anymore. Something or someone is calling you to move out and just find a new damn house.
I could keep going, but what I love is that you, the reader, could substitute in whatever little belief or practice in for those descriptions. It’s a helpful heuristic to get us thinking about our worldview.
I’m not trying to tell you what correspondence that items in your worldview should take with the above and other possible analogical descriptors. You can intuit that for yourself.
There are times when I’ve felt like my “house” was really just one of those fake-cardboard houses you might see as a prop in a Looney Tunes cartoon. A 2-D cutout designed to not raise suspicion from the road, the house has nice curb appeal, but there’s nothing to it, and I’m actually just homeless behind the flimsy facade.
And yet other times I’ve felt like a king atop the highest turret of a mighty castle.
Different seasons of life, the hills and valleys, may lead to a varying perception of our house.
And we live in the complex nexus of roles as owner, inspector, general contractor, and resident, each role with its own joys and challenges.
I hope Open to Truth can be a place for you to grow in your capacity in each of these roles. I’ve by no means at all have arrived - I barely just got my licenses (okay too far, I’m done!).
I’d encourage you to take a few minutes for reflection today before you jump to your next email or social media session. What’s your house looking like? How does it feel to live in it? And if you had the budget, what needs renovated?
Tony and I have a candid discussion about the deconstruction process in this week’s episode Are You Doubting Your Faith? If you have found OTT valuable for you, the best ways to support us is 1) to leave a comment on Youtube, 2) review on your favorite podcast provider, and 3) sharing the link to this blog with a friend.
Stay Curious