The Question Nobody Asks

Here in Florida we have a particular relationship with the ground under our feet. You cannot take it for granted the way people can in other parts of the country. The limestone beneath the peninsula is ancient and porous, and over time the water moving through it dissolves the rock from below. Everything looks fine from the surface. The grass is green. The driveway is solid. The house sits exactly where you put it. And then one morning the swing set is gone, the corner of the garage has dropped three feet, and there is a hole where the ground used to be. Nobody announced it. Nobody warned you. The ground simply gave way at the moment it no longer had anything left to give.

Jesus was not thinking about Florida when He told the parable of the two builders. But He was thinking about exactly this. Two men. Two houses. One storm. Same rain, same floods, same winds bearing down on both structures. One house stands. One house falls. And great, Jesus says, was the fall of it. The Greek word He used for fall carries the meaning of total ruin. Not partial damage. Not a repair job. Complete and enduring collapse. The house is gone.

What made the difference was invisible before the storm. Both houses had walls and a roof. Both had furniture inside. From the street they looked identical. The difference was what each house was resting on, and that difference only became visible when the storm came.

Jesus specifies something that gets missed when this parable is read quickly. Both builders heard the same words. Matthew 7:26 says the foolish man heard His sayings. He heard the same sermon as the wise man. He heard the Beatitudes and the antitheses and the Lord's Prayer and the instruction on anxiety and the narrow gate. He heard all of it. And then he built on sand. The hearing was not the problem. The foundation was.

This book is asking you one question. When did you last check what your faith is actually resting on?

Not what you believe. What you are resting your believing on. There is a difference, and it matters more than most people in the church are ever encouraged to consider.

I want to say something clearly before we go any further, because this book is going to disturb some ground and I want you to know why. The inspection I am inviting you to is not an attack on your faith. It is not a skeptic's project dressed in theological language. It is not designed to leave you with less than you started with. If anything, it is the opposite. The things I am going to examine are things that have been placed in a position they were never meant to occupy, and when they are moved back to their proper place the thing they were blocking becomes visible. The rock is still there. It was always there. The inspection does not threaten the rock. It clears away what has been piled on top of it so you can actually see what you are standing on.

You are safe. That is the first thing I want you to know. The love from which nothing can separate you is not conditional on you having the right view of any secondary question. Romans 8:38–39 does not say "neither death nor life nor angels nor powers nor things present nor things to come, unless you have incorrect geology." The love holds. The knowing that is eternal life holds. The Spirit who bears witness to your spirit that you are a child of God holds. None of that is threatened by an honest look at what the tradition has added to the text.

What is threatened is the assumption you may not even know you are making. The assumption that the tradition's additions are the same thing as Scripture itself. That assumption costs people their faith every day, and it costs the church its credibility with every honest person who examines it carefully and finds the coat does not match the life underneath.

The sinkhole does not announce itself. The inspection is the better option.

Chapter One