God the Builder: Crutch or Scaffolding?

by    2nd October 2008    0 responses

If you take a look at the parables of Jesus you will see a lot of analogies with things people at the time would have known about.  Farming techniques, fishing, dealing with tax collectors, vineyards and olive groves.  All these were common knowledge for the people he was speaking to.  I wonder if the meaning is lost on us sometimes, because we’re not living amongst vineyards and suchlike.  It takes a lot more effort for us to understand the meaning of the parables, because we have to do research into what it was like at the time, and what the significance of everything was.

I was pleasantly surprised, then, when the other day I stumbled across an analogy that was scriptural but relevant to our times.  When I say “scriptural”, it isn’t actually in the Bible, but it does tie in nicely with what is said in the Bible.

First, some background.  It was Back To Church Sunday last week, and as part of the service our vicar invited me up the front to answer a couple of questions.  One of them was something along the lines of “what difference does faith make to your life?”  This isn’t an easy questions for me to answer, because I’ve been a Christian so long that I can’t really compare my life now to my life without God.  However, I did think about it (I had been primed the day before to give me a chance to come up with a suitable answer), and stumbled across this little gem, which is shared in church and felt I could share here too.

The difference God makes to my life is that I don’t have to work in my own strength.  What I do as a Christian isn’t limited by how strong I am, how intelligent I am, how skilled I am, or indeed how much faith I have.  With God, all things are possible, which means that with the Holy Spirit working in me I am capable of far more than I would be on my own.  This is a great reassurance, and takes some of the pressure off!

However, it does raise a question that a lot of non-Christians will use against us – is God just a crutch for the frail?  It’s a valid question, actually.  Without God, where would I be?  Struggling, most likely.  So is God just a crutch, bringing me back to the level of everyone else?

The conclusion I came to was that God was less like a crutch, and more like scaffolding round a building.  You can try to build a house without scaffolding, but you’ll find it more difficult and less accurate, and eventually you’ll reach a point where you just can’t reach to put the next layer of bricks on the walls.  Scaffolding supports the building while it’s being built, and allows growth to happen more easily and more effectively.

God is my scaffolding.  God provides a framework around me, which I can grab hold of and use to build myself up.  God supports me and helps me until the work is finished and I am perfected in heaven.  As illustrated many times in the Bible, God is our “firm foundation”, Jesus is “the stone the builders rejected” and the “cornerstone” of our faith.  The Bible is full of references to building, and with good reason.  God wants us to grow, to be built up, and provides a framework around which he encourages us to build.

Now, at this point I expect you may be wondering what these frameworks may be.  I didn’t go into this on Sunday for time reasons, but it may be helpful here.  On the one hand you could look at this ‘framework’ as being a way of describing the Church, Christianity, the organised religion we are supposedly a part of.  Indeed, there are ways in which that perspective works, in that the framework of the Church encourages personal growth and gives us a community in which to grow.  However, I know many people resent the idea of organised religion, which tells us what we must believe and how we must live our lives.  I personally don’t agree with that idea, because from personal experience I have not been forced to believe or do anything I didn’t want to do.  The important thing here is that if the Church is framework, it must be flexible, just like a framework.

Scaffolding isn’t the building.  What is built within the scaffolding is far more detailed and complex than the framework describes, which is the whole point of the framework.  Behind the metal scaffolding are walls build of any number of different materials, windows, doors, alcoves, balconies, inset details, architectural sculptures.  The scaffolding doesn’t determine what the building looks like, it just helps it be built effectively and safely.

In the same way, God’s laws and commandments aren’t there to restrict us, but to help us.  Take, for instance, the Lord’s Prayer.  The disciples asked Jesus how they should pray, not what they should pray.  I often struggle to pray the Lord’s Prayer, for precisely that reason.  Like scaffolding, the Lord’s Prayer is a framework, a template for prayer that we are supposed to take on board and make our own.  Reciting the Lord’s Prayer without relating it to ourselves is like building a house with no windows, doors or features because the scaffolding didn’t explicitly say where they needed to be.  God encourages creativity.  Rather than just saying the words because they’re written down and everyone else is saying them, I would rather use the Lord’s Prayer as a template and use my own words to bring the meaning back into reality and make it my prayer.

We go to church on Sundays, not because God dictates that we must, but because it’s a framework that can be helpful.  What you do in church is up to you.  And of course you’re not limited to only meeting with God on Sunday mornings!

Clearly there are some things that God says are most definitely right or wrong, and they’re not really up for discussion.  But to say that everything falls into that category is like taking some scaffolding and building four plain walls inside them.  A person who only does what they’re told without relating it to themselves and using their own intellect is simply a drone, a robot following instructions.  Yes, the building will be built, but will it have an identity and a character of its own?

So, God is my scaffolding, not my crutch.  With God I can grow taller, stronger, faster.  But God also gave me my individuality, and wants me to use that within the framework he’s provided.

What are you building?

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Matthew has long had a strong involvement with Christian websites. He was a keen contributor to the original Crossring site, and subsequently launched his own website, Focus On Faith. Focus On Faith was incorporated into Crossring in September 2009, and Matthew took on the role of lead writer for the site. Matthew works as a web designer, and lives in the West Country with his wife, Ellie.

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