The Cattywampus Files: #45 Mel’s Cattywampus House

by Tad Lindley

Mel’d be in his 90s now if he is still alive. I lost contact with a lot of those Fairbanks folks when I moved to Bethel, including Mel. But he was a good friend of mine in the Fairbanks years, a Tlingit bus driver on the Slope. As he neared retirement, he finally decided to settle down and buy a house. So he found a house on a large lot off of College Road. He had it remodeled, and so I never saw it in its original condition, but I quickly surmised that the remodel may have cost more than the house itself.

King of Cattywampus

We’re so blessed here to live in houses that are raised off the ground. Mel’s house wasn’t. It was sitting on the ground, and through the shifting of permafrost had gotten way out of level. The contractor who had done the remodeling had talked Mel out of digging the house up and leveling it. Instead he left the foundation alone and hung new sheetrock and new doors all over the house. He did a great job, the only issue is that there wasn’t a right angle in the place. The sheetrock had been cut into parallelograms and hung, mudded, and taped. It was an expert job. Doors had been converted from rectangles into parallelograms as well. Not a crack in a corner and yet it was cattywampus as all get out. It boggled my brain to look at it.

When your ground is bad

Out here in Western Alaska we have some of the most unstable ground on the planet. Our houses constantly need releveling. But we don’t have any other options but to move away, and who wants to do that? Jesus spoke to our situation in a parable: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7:24-27 ESV) Jesus, trust us, if we had rock here we would build on it.

The anti-cattywampus building strategy

The first thing you need to do when building or remodeling a house is to get the foundation level. If you don’t get that right, everything on top of it will end up cattywampus. Here we do it with piling or posts and pads. Large buildings incorporate those white ammonia refrigeration tubes to keep the ground frozen. Interestingly, the Bible also weighs in on building a level foundation: the household of God,built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone,in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22 ESV)

Elements of a spiritual foundation

Notice these three elements in the foundation for the household of God: 1) the Apostles, 2) the Prophets, and 3) Jesus Christ himself. Now you can’t go down to the Lumber Yard and order 350 linear feet of 8 inch Apostle, and you can’t barge in a pallet load of the Prophets, so where do we get these things? Well, you can find the Prophets in the Old Testament. These are the men that the Lord used to record his message to the nation of Israel. The Apostles are found in the New Testament. Their history is in the book of Acts and the following books through the Revelation. The testimony of Jesus Christ is found in the first four books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

A dwelling place for God

Now obviously we are not building our houses on stacks of Bibles piled up on pressure treated pads. This passage of scripture is teaching us that if our bodies are a temple (I Corinthians 6:19 says they are), then they are a place that can be filled with God’s Spirit. But our foundation must be solid. It must be built on the foundation of the apostles, and prophets, and on the Chief Cornerstone, Jesus Christ. This is why even 2,000 years later, people are still repenting of sin, being baptized in Jesus’ name, and filled with the Holy Ghost (see Acts 2:38), this is the pattern that was laid down by the Apostles in the book of Acts. And if you read Acts 2 all the way through, you will see that the Apostle, Peter is pointing to the Prophet, Joel and to the Lord Jesus himself.

No room for cattywampus Christianity

There is no room for cattywampus Christianity in eternity. This is why it is so important that we really study our Bible and know what it says. From a salvation standpoint, you cannot use anything less than the best and expect to stand before Him in the end and hear the words, “Well done thou good and faithful servant!”

Tad Lindley is a minister at the United Pentecostal Church in Bethel, Alaska.

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