DIY Disaster

In his pride the wicked man does not seek him;

in all his thoughts there is no room for God.

-- Psalm 10:4

Do you like to DIY (Do-It-Yourself)? 

If so, you’re certainly not alone. According to the Home Improvement Research Institute (yes, there really is such an organization!), home improvement product sales at retailers like Home Depot and Lowes grew by 5.9% to $346 billion in 2016, and the organization forecasts 4.3% growth for 2017. From building a backyard deck to installing indoor lighting, consumers can save thousands of dollars doing their home improvement or repair projects themselves rather than paying a licensed professional. Websites, magazines and even entire cable TV channels are devoted to showing DIYers how to do it right.

Of course, this all comes at a hefty price for the many would-be handymen

and handywomen who discover that they’re in over their heads—and then have to call in the pros to fix the mess. The This Old House website features a DIY Disaster section that chronicles the woes of homeowners who thought they could do it themselves. One Colorado women wrote that because of her area’s extremely-high property values, she bought a condemned home for $160,000 just to get into the market. She thought she could afford to re-pour the house’s foundation—but failed to calculate the additional cost of re-wiring, new duct work and landscaping. And when the house was lifted during the foundation repair, the back 300 square feet of the structure collapsed! In the end, the ambitious DIYer paid $12,000 to transform her 2-bedroom house into an uninhabitable 1-bedroom shack!

In many ways, this DIY disaster story has much in common with passages we find throughout the Bible. A recurring theme is that God has a grand vision for his people and a plan for achieving it. But mankind—through its arrogance and ignorance—decides it knows better than the Creator and sets out to do it itself.

Predictably, the results are both tragic and disastrous. In one of the earliest passages of Scripture we read that the devil convinced Adam and Eve that God was holding back from them and preventing them from reaching their true potential. Naively falling for Satan’s lies, the first man and woman ate the fruit that their Creator had commanded them to avoid. Unintended consequences such as illness, crime, poverty and death have plagued mankind ever since.  

Yes, there are some relatively simple household tasks that we can do ourselves to save time and money. But for the larger, more important projects that we can’t afford to foul up—whether they involve our homes or even our souls—it’s always best to depend on a Pro.