Building my theology.

I’ve never built a house, but I’ve watched them being built all through my neighborhood. In the three years I’ve lived in this subdivision, there has been a non-stop caravan of work vans, delivery trucks, and construction machinery swarming from job site to job site. How do they know where to go? What needs to be delivered to each site? What needs to be done? How is it assembled? What do they do with all that ‘stuff’?

I am in a steady stream of books, e-zines, podcasts, websites, blogs. New teachings, old teachings, old thoughts with new clothes, new thoughts with old clothes. How do I know what to do with all this stuff? Do I just keep taking in every new post? Does it fit with what I’ve already accepted? Do I just close the door and say, “no thanks, I decided everything in college. Please, no more new thoughts?”

Bottom line is that I have to have a house to live in. I can’t sit on an empty lot and watch the delivery trucks go by, seeing the stacks of building supplies pile up in the yard. So, I must assemble all I hear, see, read, experience, know, believe into a living theology, a creed I can travel with. It doesn’t mean I won’t renovate and redecorate along the way. But I have to have a place to live spiritually. I have to know “this I believe.”