Over the last few decades, one of the trends in the field of home remodeling has been to open up spaces by removing some of the walls that had previously been used to define specific rooms that were associated with specific functions. One of the favorites was to remove walls that separated the kitchen from the living room, thereby allowing for the free flow of people and conversations even as one person needed to be preparing a meal or cleaning up afterwards. Someone who would have previously been removed from the party atmosphere can continue to enjoy fellowship if the internal architecture allows for the unimpeded movement of people within the open floorplan.
The primary challenge facing the remodeling crew is to understand whether the walls that the owner wants to remove filled an additional purpose beyond simply separating one space from another. Architecture must always account for two critical and ever-present factors – gravity and the supporting strength of materials. In the initial design process, the architect will strive for an aesthetic purpose for every wall, but some of those walls will serve to carry the load of the home components that stand above that particular area, whether it is another floor, the attic space, or the roof system. Purely aesthetic walls can be knocked down without issue, but load bearing walls require serious engineering considerations before attempting to remove them and create a more open space. The person who attempts to renovate or remodel without first understanding why certain things were done the way that they were puts the home and their lives at risk.
We are a nation with countless traditions and laws that govern our daily lives. Some of those date back to even before we became a nation, while others have been enacted in recent years. To the observer who is trying to take in and understand the life of an American citizen, it can sometimes seem that these laws or traditions prevent or otherwise hinder an outcome that is thought of as more desirable. Without an understanding of why certain things were created as they were, it is easy to suggest changing them without appreciating what the consequences might be. We have several load bearing walls in our nation, and it is easy to target them for demolition without understanding the important role that they play in sustaining our country. Yes, the Constitution and Bill of Rights provide the blueprints for our nation’s governance, showing us those load bearing walls, but the underlying engineering that determined where a wall should be placed and how thick the supports should be was performed not with mathematical calculations and physics, but with an understanding of human behavior as provided by Christianity.
Two unchangeable forces are in tension in this nation and must be accounted for when looking to make changes. First, that the natural condition of the human heart is to abuse power and seek to have sway over others. Second, that there are certain inalienable rights given to all by God which provide protections against the downward inclinations of the human heart. The Founding Fathers understood these two points better than any others before or since, and put in place checks and balances and constitutional prohibitions to account for that tension. That our nation is still standing 250 years later shows that they understood the engineering principles and applied them correctly. There was a well thought out “why” to go with their “what.” Changing the “what” without addressing the “why” could have a result that is even more catastrophic than taking out a load bearing wall without putting in some other structure support.
Friends, this isn’t to say that we need to keep doing things the way that we have always done them. However, it is to say that we need to understand why it is that we do certain things in the first place. Sometimes conditions change, and the underlying assumptions that caused a certain choice no longer apply. And sometimes the people who set the plan in motion were just as smart as we are, and they took into consideration things that are still important today. The “why” matters, so perhaps we should spend more time figuring out the answer to that question before we decide to make changes to our home.
Peace and blessings – Pastor Aaron