I’m not qualified to preach on simplicity – anything related to simplicity seems to me to be more by accident than by intent. I’m not naturally an aquisitive person, I don’t tend to want a lot of stuff. When we moved to Stratford Lorrie and I were both thrilled that we were able to sell our car and so become a one-car family. Rarely do I wish that I had a ‘bigger/better house’. When the economic down-turn hit 2 years ago now I watched and listened as families struggled and learned how to live on one salary. Lorrie and I have been doing that for the whole time that we’ve been married – 11 years now. And while I don’t consider ourselves poor or dollar-stretched by any stretch of the imagination, I also know that our family income is well below what many people think they can get by on. A few months ago Lorrie came across an article on how to make your grocery dollar stretch the furthest, and then was disappointed to see that we were already doing most of the things on the list: things like eating more vegetables, making our own meals, not eating out, eating our leftovers, were all things that we do as a matter of course.

So I’ve not really thought of myself as a simple person – or at least not in lifestyle. I’m not a greedy person, I have many other vices, but greed isn’t one of them. Having said that, neither have I intentionally made decisions to live simply for its own sake – by and large we live on one salary and drive one car because it just kind of turned out that way. If we do live simply it’s not because we’re especially demuring

I garden, but not because I am choosing to be simple – it has more to do with the fact that I have a euphoric enthusiasm as I watch things grow. Gardening has increased my sense of connection to all the food that I eat, but not in what I would call a ‘positive’ way – thanks to my hapless gardening I am have a very strong sense of the fragility of our food and our food supply.

I love canning and making salsa – I don’t do it because it is ‘simple’, I do it because it brings me great joy.

So, I’m no expert on simplicity. Why then are we preaching on simplicity? I think that culturally we crave it. It is September and we are all busy, and we wonder why do we run ourselves around like this? Why do we live like this? Why are we running around after more? Why are we not content? What are we so hungry for? Why is it that our time-saving devices leave us more tired? Why is it that our things do not leave us more relaxed? Why is it that we still wake up in the middle of the night with a brain that won’t stop spinning and a heart that won’t stop worrying?

But a desire for simplicity doesn’t just tie into an inner desire for peace – it also connects with a larger desire for a world at peace, for a world that is just.

When we give ourselves time to think about these things, we are generally filled with a deep longing and desire for justice – we want justice in economics, in international trade, justice in law, I believe that we will see over these next four weeks that our simple choices can and do have profound a deep implications for global peace and justice. that the choices we make on a daily basis on the kinds of bills we will take on, the purchases we make, the things we make for ourselves are good not only for our own souls, but also for the soul of the earth, for the souls of our community

Simplicity as an outcome of our faith

Living simply is an interesting one of the Christian virtues – interesting because so far as I can tell it doesn’t get a lot of play in either the Old or the New Testament.

Simplicity isn’t a virtue that stands on its own in the way that so many of our other Christian virtues do – we know that to be a follower of Christ, to be centred on Christ is to focus on being a loving, kind, gentle, forgiving person – pretty much every book of the new testament emphasises this. I’m reasonably sure that no book of the new testament emphasises simplicity.

In fact, I did a word search for the word ‘simple’ in the bible, and found that the word comes up 20 times in the old testament, and never once in the new. Furthermore, these references to ‘simple’ were stuff like Proverbs 8:5 “O simple ones, learn prudence; acquire intelligence, you who lack it.”Proverbs 9:4-6 “”You that are simple, turn in here! To those without sense she says, ^{6 Lay aside immaturity, and live,} and walk in the way of insight.”That’s not really what we mean these next several weeks when we talk about ‘living simply’

And yet having said that, simplicity is a very natural outcome of a follower of Christ – if we are christ-centred, if we are loving, kind and gentle, if we are concerned for others, if we desire justice in the way that the old and the new testament do, then a sense of simplicity will flow out of that.

After all, how can we say that we are concerned for God’s good earth and live as though our living has no consequence?

How can we say that we love others and live without an awareness of the impact of our decisions in a global economy?

Simplicity is deeply rooted in biblical revelation. In it, God reveals to us what he is like and how people we should live. The two ideas are inseparable. The more clearly we understand the nature of God, the more clearly we understand how we are to live.

Simplicity flows out of this awareness.

Legalism

Before wrapping this up I want to finish with a final thought – or perhaps a bit more of a worry. Many of the books that I came across take a very pragmatic approach to living simply. I have a strong appreciation for that and certainly value that, but I hesitate a lot in passing on what I’ll call ‘practical advice’ about living simply because I don’t want to become legalistic.

How after all do we define simple living pragmatically? Is it having only one car family living simply? On the one hand that is not going to work in a home where more several adults have to be at different places at the same time. On the other extreme, most of the world population gets by on no car at all, and this not because they chose to live simply. So do we make a rule here on how many cars a household can or should have?

Do we make a rule on what the income threshold is for simple living? And do we then index that to inflation?

I heard a great story recently on why many Amish and conservative mennonite groups do not have telephones – apparently, so goes the story, they were concerned that it would interfere with face to face conversations.

I shared this with someone just the other day, and after thinking about that for a second, they responded with the observation that in the winter months there probably were not going to be a lot of face-to-face conversations in Perth farm country, and that a telephone might actually increase personal interactions.

I have a deep admiration for the Amish communities because in all their deliberations is an awareness that all things, including telephones and radios and cars, are spiritual, and have a spiritual impact on our lives. That lies at the core of choosing to live simply.

But how do we go about doing this without getting legalistic?

Personally it seems to me that the way we go about it is as the New Testament teaches us – we focus on Christian character and virtue: on love, gratitude, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, justice – and simplicity will flow out of that.

An Amish family – the essence of simplicity

I came across a story a few weeks ago in which a family observed an Amish family experience a sudden hardship. I don’t remember what the particular difficulty was, but it came at a very busy time in the farming season. Even so, the entire community managed to respond to the need of this family, helping out not only with the specific need, but with the larger task of getting the farm work done.

Observing all this stirred something in the family that was watching all this go on, and one of the boys asked his mother, how was it possible that the Amish community could respond in such a way.

She thought about it for a bit, and then said that it seemed to her that the Amish leave room in their lives so that when a need arises they are able to respond to it.

That seems to me to lie at the very heart of living simply – if simplicity is only a thing about us, something that is deeply personal, about our own state of being, than what is it for really? And why should we preach on such a concept of simplicity? After all, if simplicity gives one person peace, then God bless them; and if wealth and abundance and having lots of stuff gives another person peace, then God bless them. If our spirituality is first and foremost about ourselves, and for our own personal peace of mind, then let each one do as think best in their own eyes, and why bother to preach at all.

But we preach and teach for the good of all, and the heart of simplicity is concerned with faithfulness to God, and doing good to all – all God’s people, and all God’s creation.

For that to happen, we must learn to leave room in our lives – room so that we can connect with God, room in our lives to connect fully with people, room in our lives so that we can serve others when serving needs to be done.