Last year the Public Broadcasting System aired a television documentary on the simplicity movement and those who pursue it. Entitled “Escape from Affluenza,” the program described how people throughout the United States and Europe are rejecting the “super-size” mentality of the new millennium. The simplicity movement seems to be catching on. For a variety of reasons, individuals, married couples, and families are making every attempt to live with less.
Let’s be honest, though. Most people in this world have no choice but to live this way. Like many young couples, my husband and I lived a simple lifestyle out of necessity during the early years of our marriage. A surgical resident salary left us few discretionary funds after paying rent, buying groceries, and tithing. We spent Sunday afternoons walking in the park rather than the mall.
But my husband’s eventual private practice brought us lifestyle choices for which we were unprepared. “Does God call all believers to a life of simplicity?” I asked, as we sought to manage the material blessings God put in our hands. Jesus’ answer surprised me.
The Gospel of Luke gives us one of the New Testament’s most intriguing characters in the parable of the dishonest steward (Luke 16:1–8). This clever fellow is about to be dismissed because his master has discovered his corruption. What does the steward do? He uses the time he has left to write off a portion of the tenants’ debts. These new friends, in gratitude, welcome the steward to stay with them after he is fired.
To the surprise of his listeners, Jesus commends the steward. Why? Because the servant knew how to use his position. The man was dishonest, but shrewd. Jesus notes that the “sons of this world” are shrewder in dealing with worldly assets than are “sons of light” as he calls his followers (16:8). Christ summarizes his parable by saying, “If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you the true riches?” (16:11).
How can we learn to direct our financial resources in a way that Jesus would approve? We must, of course, uphold our obligation to the poor and to the Church. My purpose is to explore the further opportunities material wealth gives us.
Providing for Family
My friend Karen met her husband, Mark, while serving as a medical missionary in Peru. Upon marrying and returning to the United States, they maintained a lifestyle far below the norm for their financial peer group. “Once you have lived among the poor,” she explained, “your perspective on material things changes.”
During Karen’s second pregnancy, Mark became the sole provider for the family. Karen saw the necessity of obtaining a life insurance policy on her husband, but Mark was resistant. “Life-insurance is a luxury,” he told her. “The poor can’t afford life-insurance.”
“Honey,” she reminded him, “we’re not poor!”
An eagerness to share our wealth with the needy should never place our own family at risk. Paul had strong words for a Christian who would not provide for his own: “If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim 5:8). A faithful steward will do everything in his power to prevent a family member from becoming a burden to others.
Problem Solving
“My son was worried about me driving alone,” explains Rita as she proudly displays her new cell phone to her elderly friends. “He even pays the bills for it.” That phone proved more valuable than its cost: Last spring Rita fell in her driveway and would have lay there for hours if it had not been for her son’s foresight in providing her a cell phone. Financial resources can help us live out Jesus’ command to love our neighbor.
In one of their many books for children, Stan and Jan Berenstain describe an incident many of us will find familiar (The In Crowd, Random House [1989]). Sister Bear returns from the playground in tears because she has been teased about her clothes. Mama Bear encourages her daughter not to take the criticism to heart. But that’s not the end of the story. The next time we see Mama Bear she has just returned from a quick trip to the store. In her shopping bag are some new and different clothes for Sister Bear.
Did Mama Bear sell out to the materialism of her daughter’s world? No, she merely understood life. With one hand she dispensed courage to her child and sent her out to face the world again. With the other, she reached into her pocketbook to find a practical solution.
Money may not buy happiness, but it can buy options. The Bible counsels us not to withhold a good deed when it is in our power to act (Prov. 3:27). Mama Bear saw her opportunity and seized it. We can use our own wealth to do the same.
Generating Gainful Employment
Money is round to keep it rolling, a wise man once told me. No doubt the unscrupulous manager in Jesus’ parable understood this principle. We may presume he employed accountants, builders, and other specialists. When the crops were ready, he must have hired day laborers to bring in the harvest.
Is it good stewardship to pay someone to do what you are capable of doing yourself? In some cases, yes. Deeply rooted in Jewish law were God’s provisions for the poor. In the book of Leviticus, Moses instructed the Israelites to provide paid work for their fellow countrymen, lest they become so impoverished they would sell themselves as slaves (Lev. 25:39–40). To provide a just wage for an honest job is a righteous use of wealth.
Encouraging God’s Kingdom
Jesus speaks frequently in the Gospels about the kingdom of heaven. He paints it as a world in which every person loves God and is in a right relationship with his neighbor. Can our material resources be used to build this kingdom?
One couple I know remodeled their home recently, adding a spacious guest suite to the back of their property. Like early church members who housed the apostles, they extend hospitality to whomever is in need. Visiting clergy and missionaries often find a welcome retreat under the roof of these gracious people.
Another family I know traded in their economical hatchback for an SUV. Those within the simplicity movement would consider their purchase scandalous. They use that vehicle every week to taxi half a dozen pre-teens to their parish youth outreach program. Money can provide opportunities to introduce people to Jesus.
At a medical convention, my husband and I dined with another couple at one of New Orleans’s nicest restaurants. The conversation that night took a spiritual turn and culminated six months later when they began attending church regularly. We subsequently learned their teenage daughter had been praying for them for two years. God used our conversation and friendship with these people to draw them to himself. You could say that night at the restaurant that he used our credit card too.
Investing
During the PBS documentary I spoke of at the beginning of this article, many of those pursuing their new, simple lifestyle expressed relief at the elimination of personal debt. Others began saving small amounts of money for the first time in their lives. But is spending less and saving more an end in itself? The escape from consumerism does not eliminate the challenge issued by Jesus to manage our funds shrewdly. For some, it merely invites new opportunities.
In His Steps, a novel by Charles M. Sheldon written over one hundred years ago that has enjoyed a renewed interest, narrates the revolution that occurs when over a hundred individuals take a pledge to do for one year only as Jesus would do. Many of Sheldon’s characters hold positions of wealth or influence in their community. A drama unfolds as doctors, college professors, and other professionals struggle to live obedient to that pledge.
Edward Norman, publisher of a newspaper called The News, embarks on a journalistic reform of his paper. He determines that Jesus would not print the sort of scandal and political partisanship to which his readers have become accustomed. His decision is costly. Within weeks Norman’s own assets are depleted and the newspaper is on the verge of bankruptcy.
A young heiress, Virginia Page, steps in to save the paper with a large investment of capital. “I have great confidence in Mr. Norman’s ability,” she testifies. “. . . I cannot believe that Christian intelligence in journalism will be inferior to un-Christian intelligence, even when it comes to making the paper pay financially.” (In His Steps is now in the public domain; the quoted passage comes from chapter 13.)
The pursuit of profit in handling our financial assets is neither immoral nor an occasion for thanks. “Master,” said the faithful servant, “you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more” (Matt. 25:20). If we, as stewards of what belongs to God, see some wise way to invest his money, we will prove ourselves honest and faithful servants. He has asked us to administer these funds for his glory.
Enjoying
The biblical understanding of stewardship teaches that everything we have, everything we receive, and everything we are belongs to God. Many people who have worked hard for their net worth resist this concept. They worry that if they start to live as stewards there will be nothing left to enjoy. They could not be more mistaken.
Ecclesiastes 5:18 says, “Behold, what I have seen to be good and to be fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun.” It doesn’t sound like God is a killjoy here. Read on: “Every man also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and find enjoyment in his toil—this is the gift of God” (5:19).
The paradox of following Christ is that “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt.10:39). I have observed another paradox: Those who most enjoy their prosperity are quite often the ones who have surrendered it for the sake of the Kingdom.
How did the principle of stewardship shape our own decisions? In 1997 my husband and I stepped away from the simple life. We purchased a large, fifty-year-old home on an acre and a half of natural beauty. In the transaction we acquired a big swimming pool and cabana. A flagstone-paved campfire circle sits under a canopy of large oak trees.
These years have not been without challenges. I have entered the marketplace of service contracts and trades people. I’ve learned that spending money to maintain this place is part of the responsibility of ownership. We are but stewards of the Master’s estate.
Yet God has allowed us to share these resources with our community, rich and poor alike. He has charged us with a ministry of hospitality. We host retreats and welcome friends and strangers. Scores of children will hold memories of relay races in the pool and camping by the creek. Some will remember that God was present during those moments. Others will know only that they felt loved.
Christians are right to reject the idol of materialism, an idol that has no power to give but only to consume. But we must take care to pursue spiritual treasure and not substitute another idol in its place.
Simplicity as an end in itself—like consumption as an end in itself—is an idol that will demand more and more. When it fails to produce its promised results, we’ll conclude that it is our fault: We haven’t tried hard enough to live simply.
Simplicity is a constantly moving target. The only way to measure our success will be to compare ourselves to others, a practice Jesus condemned. “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” Jesus instructed his disciples (Matt. 5:48). Our only standard by which we are to measure ourselves is God himself.
Today discussions of stewardship too frequently become entangled in percentages, focusing only on what we give and what we keep. We would do well to remember it’s all or nothing with Jesus. While he instructed one young man to sell everything he owned, he seemed at ease with the affluence of others. Martha of Bethany had a home large enough to hold a banquet for Jesus and his disciples (Luke 10:38–40). Mary Magdalene supported Jesus out of her own funds (Luke 8:1–3).
For those who have been given the privilege of managing even moderate sums of wealth, a simple lifestyle may be counterproductive to the purposes of God. Jesus chastised repeatedly the servants who hid their money in a cloth or buried it in the ground. Commentators regularly apply these teachings to the use of our spiritual gifts and abilities. Should they not instruct us also about the use of our finances?
If we care about what matters to God, we will want to have something to show for the resources he has entrusted to us. Your choices will be different from mine. Each of us will have to wrestle as individuals with our decisions.
A Volkswagon bus idles noisily ahead of me. “Live simply so others may simply live” reads the sticker on its bumper. A well meaning platitude, but you won’t find it in the Bible. Jesus never did say to live simply—he said to live shrewdly.