Building my theology. Rock.

To begin, a house must have a foundation, a set place to be built. You can’t waver on where the house will set, because once it goes up it stays put. Except in certain parts of this county, where they’ll throw an old house on top of a flatbed truck and move it down the lane to make way for a new road! How’d you like to move in a house that had been moved off of its foundation and reset?!

What is my theology foundation? What is the lot I’ll build it on? I have to choose where to build. This may seem counterintuitive to current spiritual journeying, which says you ‘seek’ and search for truth and see where it takes you. That may be fine for a time, but at some point you have to put the stake down, or else the whole life is a game of seeking something you don’t even know exists. It’s called faith.

Charles Templeton. Brilliant, powerful, talented preaching friend of Billy Graham. Both had amazing ministries in the 1940s. But at an intersection of faith, Charles doubted what he was preaching to the masses and sought knowledge through a degree at Princeton. He begged Graham to pursue truth with him. In that dark moment, Graham wrestled with his trust in a real God revealed in a literal scripture. He made his decision that he would travel through life clinging to God and his Word. Templeton lived and died an agnostic.

So, based on my experience and what I have learned from scripture, I choose to start with a foundation of rock.

on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades* will not overcome it. Matthew 16:18

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. Ephesians 2

24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Matthew 7

I start with belief in fundamental truths about God. And from there the building begins.