Foundations

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” – Matthew 7:24

David Brooks describes in his book The Second Mountain one of the things that happens when, “from the most structured and supervised childhood in human history, you get spit out after graduation into the least structured young adulthood in human history”—you get “insecure overachievers.” These are people who treat adulthood like a continuation of school, who look for direction through prestigious companies or programs telling them what to do. The term was first coined by Matias Dalsgaard, who wrote: “Such a person must have no stable or solid foundation to build upon, and yet nonetheless tries to build his way out of his problem. It’s an impossible situation. You can’t compensate for having a foundation made of quicksand by building a new story on top. But this person takes no notice and hopes that the problem down in the foundation won’t be found out if only the construction work on top keeps going.”

I see this around me, and I lived it myself to some degree in my early adulthood. You keep thinking you’re going to make it when you “arrive,” but there’s always something else—a house, a house in a better location, a husband, kids, “successful” kids, finishing the degree, getting hired, getting promoted, and on and on. “How do I succeed?” eclipses “Why am I doing this?” Jobs become careers, not vocations. Growth becomes about outward benchmarks, not inward transformation. Life becomes about doing, not being. We think we are free, doing what we want and deciding for ourselves, but really we are following external cues, turning ourselves into the kind of people who work where we work or live where we live, without intentionally considering what that is, or whether it is something that satisfies our souls. 

Several things are implied in this passage: first, we all build our lives on something, whether we are aware of it or not. There is rock or sand; nothing in-between. Second, external stressors are to be expected. They will happen. Third, the most important thing is unseen, subterranean, and in fact, the houses we build may look identical in every other aspect. But a house is only as good as its foundation. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes, “Though the difference between the two houses is not obvious, it is nevertheless vital, for ultimately the most important thing about a house is the foundation. This is a truth which is frequently emphasized in the Bible. The foundation, which seems so insignificant and unimportant because it is out of sight, is nevertheless the most vital and important thing of all. If the foundation is wrong, everywhere else must be wrong.”

How do we have the right foundation? Mere belief is not enough. Jesus is speaking here to people who would call themselves believers; his warning is not against non-Christianity but pseudo-Christianity, Pharisaical religiosity. Our foundations are not a matter of intellectual assent, external appearance, or stated ideals: they are what we hear and do, what we are attending to and living out. Our foundation is our faith, true faith, which without works is dead.

This is a challenge to all of us. If workaholism has distracted us from our spiritual lives, it is a challenge to examine what we are building our lives on. If we call ourselves Christian, it is a challenge to examine how well we listen to and live out the sermon on the mount. How well do we know Jesus’ teaching? Does it make a difference in how we live? This is the point on which everything, the entire construction of our lives, is based.