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September 2 - September 11, 2025
Because the problem isn’t stuff. It’s that (1) we put no limit on stuff due to our insatiable human desire for more. And (2) we think we need all sorts of things to be happy when, in actuality, we need very few.
a line from Psalm 39: “In vain they rush about, heaping up wealth without knowing whose it will finally be.”
One of the many reasons that happiness is dropping in the West even as the Dow is rising is because materialism has sped up our society to a frenetic, untenable pace.
The drive to possess is an engine for hurry.24
most of us simply have too much stuff to enjoy life at a healthy, unhurried pace.
In reality Jesus’ moral teachings aren’t arbitrary at all. They are laws, yes. But moral laws are no different from scientific laws like E = mc2 or gravity.26 They are statements about how the world actually works. And if you ignore them, not only do you rupture relationship with God, but you also go against the grain of the universe he created.
You cannot serve both God and money.28 Notice, again, not a command. He didn’t say, “You shouldn’t serve both God and money.” He said, “You can’t.”
“Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.”
What if more stuff often just equals more stress? More hours at the office, more debt, more years working in a job I don’t feel called to, more time wasted cleaning and maintaining and fixing and playing with and organizing and reorganizing and updating all that junk I don’t even need.
What if more stuff actually equals less of what matters most? Less time. Less financial freedom. Less generosity,
Less peace,
Less focus on what life is actually about. Less mental real estate for creativity. Less relationships. Less margin. Less praye...
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Instead: put your life into things that matter, like your relationship with God and life in his kingdom. Because where you put your resources is where you put your heart. It’s the steering wheel to your engine of desire.
When you looked out on the world, you were distracted by all that glitters and lost your focus on what really matters.
You simply can’t live the freedom way of Jesus and get sucked into the overconsumption that is normal in our society. The two are mutually exclusive. You have to pick.
Jesus connected money and stuff to worry.
It isn’t a bare home, an empty closet, a joyless life with no freedom to enjoy material things. The whole goal is exactly the opposite—more freedom.
Minimalism isn’t about living with nothing; it’s about living with less.
If you have so much stuff that you have to organize it, box it up, label it, and stack it in a way that cuts down on space, then the odds are you have too much stuff!
What if you had only what you needed, and there wasn’t anything to organize?
The intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of everything that distracts us from them.
“Simplicity is an inward reality that can be seen in an outward lifestyle”38 of “choosing to leverage time, money, talents and possessions toward what matters most.”
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand…. Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?40
Poor people don’t call it simple living; they just call it living. They don’t read books on minimalism; they pray for justice.
if you make $25,000 a year or more, you’re in the top 10 percent of the world’s wealth. And if you make $34,000 a year or more, you’re in the top 1 percent.45
Even at the cross the Roman soldiers cast lots for his garments, meaning they were worth something. John even wrote, “This [under]garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.”
To follow Jesus, especially in the Western world, is to live in that same tension between grateful, happy enjoyment of nice, beautiful things, and simplicity. And when in doubt, to err on the side of generous, simple living.
1. Before you buy something, ask yourself, What is the true cost of this item?
How much time will it cost me to own this? How often will I use it? Will it add value to my life and help me enjoy God and his world even more? Or just distract me from what really matters?
2. Before you buy, ask yourself, By buying this, am I oppressing the poor or harming the earth?
Think of something as common as polyester, which is now in a startling 50 percent of our clothes and is non-biodegradable. That cute athletic-wear outfit? It will always exist, in a landfill. FOREVER.
I had no clue that a huge chunk of the items in my home and life were made unjustly, if not with full-on human trafficking and child labor.
In the 1960s, 95 percent of our clothes were made in America, and Americans spent on average 10 percent of their annual budget on clothing and owned very few items. Today only 2 percent of our clothing is made in the US, and we spend only around 4 percent of our annual budgets on it—a decrease of 500 percent. How did our clothing get so cheap? Well, multinational corporations started making our clothes in places like Vietnam and Bangladesh, where government corruption is rife and officials do little or nothing to stop the victimization of workers. Things like minimum wage, health care, and
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It’s easy to post something on Instagram about how there are twenty-eight million slaves in the world today and we need to #endit. That’s great; I’m all for it, genuinely. But many of the clothes we’re wearing for our selfie (that we took on a device made in rural China) are causing it, not ending it.
3. Never impulse buy.
4. When you do buy, opt for fewer, better things.
“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
5. When you can, share.
6. Get into the habit of giving things away.
7. Live by a budget.
8. Learn to enjoy things without owning them.
9. Cultivate a deep appreciation for creation.
10. Cultivate a deep appreciation for the simple pleasures.
11. Recognize advertising for what it is—propaganda. Call out the lie.
“Refuse to be propagandized by the custodians of modern gadgetry.”
12. Lead a cheerful, happy revolt against the spirit of materialism.
the cost of discipleship is high, but the cost of non-discipleship is even higher.
Yes, it will cost you to follow Jesus and live his way of simplicity. But it will cost you far more not to. It will cost you money and time and a life of justice and the gift of a clean conscience and time for prayer and an unrushed soul and, above all, the “life that is truly life.”
I can do all things through [Christ] who strengthens me.61 I hear people tear that line out of context all the time. They use it for raising money at the church or getting that promotion or beating cancer or raising a family. All good things. But do you know what Paul was writing about in context? Contentment. The line right before that is as follows: I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in
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We live with what the historian Arthur Schlesinger called an “inextinguishable discontent.”63 It’s what the poet of Ecclesiastes described as “a chasing after the wind.”
