minimalism – Grayson Pope

It’s Wednesday, recycling day. The day in my neighborhood where red bins overstuffed with Amazon boxes line the curb. I should know — my bin looks the same. It seems none of us can resist two-day shipping.

I’ve read enough about minimalism, tidying up, and the Christian discipline of simplicity to know this should make me guilty. And it does. Sometimes. But I don’t want a white-walled home with no comfortable seating. I want piles of books laying around and old cross-stitches from my family on my walls and too many photos of my kids.

In a world where we hear conflicting messages that we are defined by our stuff (consumerism) and that our stuff doesn’t define us (minimalism), what does a healthy relationship with stuff look like? Why do we care so much about our stuff? Why does stuff matter? Should stuff matter?

I don’t know about you, but I need some help here — like a theology of stuff to help guide my thinking and decision-making. Fortunately, Albert Mohler laid out this very thing in a recent episode of The Briefing podcast. Below are my extrapolations on his thoughts and some rules to help you develop a healthy relationship with stuff.

The Value of Stuff

Christians understand that the most important reality is spiritual. Our battles are not against “against flesh and blood, but … against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). The Bible teaches that we should value the life of the spirit over the life of the flesh (John 6:63). Believers understand that everything we see in the material world is eventually going to disappear or be forgotten.

The Old and New Testaments explain why we value stuff. It’s because stuff carries with it meaning. We accumulate stuff because we might make that stuff, or someone gave us that stuff, or we know a need for that stuff. In short, we accumulate stuff because it means something to us.

Our things trigger memories. We remember exactly when that family heirloom came into our lives, who gave it to us, and why it matters. This is why we collect stuff that once belonged to our parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents. That kind of stuff is more than just stuff. It’s important to us because it represents human beings whom we love, cherish, and value.

Sometimes we value stuff not because it is meaningful but because it is useful. We create, design, invent, purchase, and sell stuff that makes life possible or that makes life easier. Think of something as simple as a shovel or as complex as an X-RAY machine. This kind of stuff makes possible things we value, and therefore the stuff itself becomes valuable.

Now, the Bible doesn’t allow the worship of stuff, no matter how meaningful or how useful. It doesn’t allow us to cling too tightly to our belongings. But the Bible does explain why we as human beings tend to surround ourselves with stuff and why that stuff matters to us.

Stuff in the Bible

Scripture gives grave warnings against materialism, against valuing stuff too much (Matthew 6:19-21; 1 Timothy 6:7-10; Hebrews 13:5; Luke 12:15, 33). But Scripture also validates stuff, including and owning, giving, and receiving stuff. Think of how the wise men honored Jesus at his birth. They brought stuff in the form of gifts.

When Jesus sent his disciples out on their first evangelistic mission, he told them to carry very little stuff. Stuff can weight you down. The stuff you own can end up owning you. Christians are not to be hindered by stuff.

While the Bible validates stuff in some ways, it warns us against allowing our stuff to have an outsize influence in our lives and desires. Stuff can tempt us to give in to materialism, consumerism, greed, and coveting. The Bible is clear that these are sins. It’s also clear that stealing someone’s stuff is a sin.

Early Christians demonstrated their love for one another by sharing their stuff. Their stuff became an avenue for blessing instead of sin because of how they used it and refused to hold on to it.

How to Have a Healthy Relationship with Stuff

I do not have a healthy relationship with stuff. I want things, buy too many things, covet things, chase things. I pray almost daily that God would make me not love the world or the things of the world (1 John 2:15).

As I’ve tried to rid myself of materialism, I’ve found Richard Foster’s 10 rules for simplicity to be helpful. Your mileage may vary, but if you want to crucify your desire for stuff, you have to have a plan. Without a plan, you’ll be discipled by the marketers who know how your brain and heart work far better than you do.

Here are Foster’s 10 rules for simplicity:

Buy things for their usefulness rather than their status.
Reject anything that is producing an addiction in you.
Develop a habit of giving things away.
Refuse to be propagandized by the custodians of modern gadgetry.
Learn to enjoy things without owning them.
Develop a deeper appreciation for the creation.
Look with a healthy skepticism at all “buy now, pay later” schemes.
Obey Jesus’ instructions about plain, honest speech (Matt. 5:37).
Reject anything that breeds the oppression of others.
Shun anything that distracts you from seeking first the kingdom of God.

If you want to read more about these rules, read the chapter on simplicty in Foster’s book The Celebration of the Disciplines or the shorter article on which the chapter was based. For a deep dive, read Foster’s book devoted to the subject called Freedom of Simplicity.

An army of people are urging us through their books and blogs to simplify our lives. The advice is the same, though it takes many forms: “Declutter your life.” “Throw away some clothes.” “Buy only what you need.” “Move into a smaller house.”

Minimalism is the heading under which most of this takes place. It’s been around forever of course, leading back to asceticism and the monastic movements (it should be noted that most minimalists would deny they’re after the same things as those movements).

But of late, minimalism found its home on the internet, starting with people like Merlin Mann, and more recently The Minimalists, a couple of guys that quit their jobs, got rid of lots of their stuff, and then moved to Montana. They’ve also brought joy to many of their readers’ lives, which shouldn’t be overlooked.

Now the movement has broken out into more mainstream culture, with things like the documentary Tiny, a film that follows people who’ve abandoned typical housing arrangements in favor of “tiny houses” that are only a few hundred square feet. Late last year came an interview with Christopher Nolan, the filmmaker behind the reboot of the Batman franchise, Inception, and Interstellar, in The New York Times citing his decision to wear the same thing every day to help simplify his life.

In just the last week, another story of a daily uniform came in the form of an interview with Matilda Kahl, an art director who’s been wearing the same outfit to work for three years now. Before Kahl and Nolan there was Steve Jobs, who famously wore the black turtle neck and jeans for his daily garb.

The interest in pairing back possessions and wearing a daily uniform is fascinating to me, and I’ve been reading about it for years now. Take a look at the page you’re reading on and you’ll see I have a taste for minimal things. I don’t like clutter. I don’t like unread text messages or too many numbers in those little red bubbles on my iPhone.

In the past I’ve found myself sending loads of stuff to Goodwill, deleting old files, and feeling better in the process. But as anyone who’s ever undertaken this stuff knows, that feeling doesn’t last for long. Eventually, we have to ask ourselves, “What are we simplifying for?”

What are we simplifying for?

According to what’s out there on minimalism (at least everything I’ve read), the answer is usually “So you can live a more meaningful life.”

That’s a great bite-size answer that makes us feel warm and cozy. But what defines a meaningful life?

When you push past the catch-phrase you find out that what’s being promoted is a more meaningful life defined by making yourself happy. A more meaningful life is defined by being freed up to do what you love, live where you want, and be who you want, without the definitions your stuff gives you.

To be fair, the best of minimalism talks about getting rid of material things to make room for more noble things, like friendships. But even with noble intentions, this is nothing more than shifting our source of identity and meaning from having lots of stuff to having little stuff.

Promoters of the minimal philosophy would almost certainly disagree, but at the same time they’re promoting it to such a degree that their identities are literally wrapped up in the concept of not having things (i.e. – The Minimalists).

My intention is not to denigrate some of the actions that are promoted by minimalists and those advocating a simpler lifestyle, because, like I said, I actually find much of that advice helpful in my own life. But the ideology behind those actions is not enough to help us live a meaningful life, no matter how many closets we clean.

The real (deeper) problem

The problem with having too many (or too few) possessions is that we’re trying to find meaning where there is none. At one extreme, we’re trying to define ourselves by our iPhones, cars, and homes, and at the other we’re trying to define ourselves by our own happiness. But neither is sufficient to ground us in a world of earthquakes, cancer, and hunger.

I’ll put it this way (and this isn’t original to me, I heard it elsewhere, but the source escapes me): Imagine yourself in the midst of the Nazis in World War 2. If your meaning in life could be taken away by being put in a concentration camp, then it’s not enough.

That’s just one example, but it could be phrased any number of ways. If your meaning in life can be taken away by a cancer diagnosis or the loss of a loved one, then it’s not enough.

If your meaning in life depends on your circumstances, know that your circumstances will change. At some point, you will find yourself in a different set of circumstances that shakes the foundations of where you’ve staked your meaning.

You can find meaning in your possessions, but one day they’ll be taken from you.

You can find meaning in your beauty, but one day you’ll lose it.

You can find meaning in your happiness, but one day you’ll be sad.

So the problem is less that we need to decide between how much or how little stuff we have, and more about where we find our meaning in life. There are a myriad of suggested solutions to that problem, but let me suggest the Christian worldview as a way of solving it.

A solution to the problem of meaning

The Christian worldview has much to say about possessions, and its solution to the problem of where to find meaning is sufficient to hold us up through life regardless of our circumstances.

At the root of the Christian worldview is the idea that God himself came to earth in the form of the man Jesus and that man died for the sins of humanity, but he was resurrected after three days, defeating death in the process.

Christians see that saving act of Jesus as being the foundation for meaning in life. This can be seen throughout the Bible, but most clearly in the beginning of the book of John, one of the four biographical accounts of the life of Jesus. The book opens with this:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

John, the author, wrote that in Greek, and when he chose the word that’s translated as “Word,” he used a term that was absolutely loaded in that day. That term was “logos.”

“Logos” didn’t simply mean “word”. The term was coined by a guy named Heraclitus long before John was writing, and he defined as being the divine reason or plan which coordinates a changing universe. Logos meant the reason for something, in this case the reason for life.

In Greek culture, the logos was where meaning and reason was derived from, and the whole universe was tied together by that logos. This is what philosophers and thinkers had been discussing up until the time John was writing.

Some of them decided that there was no meaning, no reason, no logos, in life. Others decided that their own pleasure, their own happiness was the logos (which we see today in any of the self-fulfillment philosophies).

It was into this setting that John redefined the term.

He said a couple really important things. First, he said the reason for life, the logos, was there in the beginning. Now, the Greeks of the day would have had no problem with that part, since it fit with their general understanding of the term. It’s the next part where John drops his bombshell.

He says, “the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.” He said the logos, the reason for life, was a person. And this logoswas with God. But not only was he with God, but he was God, meaning he was the same as God.

When you go on to read the rest of this chapter in John’s book, you find out that when he uses the term logos he’s referring to the man Jesus Christ.

John’s saying that there is a reason for life. That there is a way to find meaning in life. But it’s not a philosophical principle – it’s the person of Jesus Christ.

And if you don’t know that Person, you can’t find the deepest meaning in life. If you don’t know that Person, you can’t find something that’s capable of standing up to what life throws at you.

Not only does the Christian worldview have the ability to provide us meaning in life that can’t be taken away, but it results in a healthier relationship with possessions than either the American Dream or the minimalists offer.

A better way to relate to possessions and people

The Gospel, the central good news of the Christian faith about Jesus taking judgement in our place, fundamentally changes how you relate to possessions, thereby changing your relationship with the meaning associated with them.

This entire argument is more than we have time for right now, but the essence of it is that the Gospel frees you from assigning meaning to possessions by showing you that you find meaning in Christ. You find meaning in the treasures of the world to come that will never fade away, instead of the treasures of this world that won’t last.

And that changes everything.

I love how David Platt, a former pastor and the current President of the International Missions Board, put this:

Think about it. Faith in Christ reconciles us to God, right? It’s the essence of the gospel. We no longer live for earthly treasure. We love our eternal treasure. God is our treasure. That frees us from the constant pursuit of stuff in this world, which means faith in Christ now reconciles us to one another because we’re not living any more for selfish gain. We’re free of that. Free to live with selfless generosity.

Finding meaning in Christ changes how you relate to possessions and, as you just read, how you relate to people.

The Christian is freed to live a simple and generous life. Both of which I think we’re all after, aren’t we? We want to live a life that isn’t defined by things we know won’t last, and we want to positively impact the world around us. But we won’t find those things by looking to either our stuff or our own happiness.

So what are we simplifying for? What are you simplifying for? And is it really worth it? Is it something that will bring real, lasting meaning to your life?