10
10. CORPORATE SIMPLICITY: THE WORLD
I look upon all the world as my parish.
—John Wesley
On our crowded planet there are no longer any internal affairs!
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
As the people of God can be characterized by the virtue of Christian simplicity, so the world can know the value of simplicity of life…if only the world would desire it to be so.
Alas, the common pursuit of the world seems to be only “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16). The world has little interest in Christian simplicity, or any other type of simplicity. The world, it seems, is in a mad dash for duplicity, perplexity, ambiguity. It flees responsibility and seeks unbridled pleasure. The attention of the world is like that of a housefly, with hundreds of lenses focused on hundreds of objects, never settled, never resting, and ever living for the moment. “Let none of us fail to share in our revelry; everywhere let us leave signs of enjoyment, because this is our portion, and this our lot” (Wisd. of Sol. 2:9).
Perhaps we should be done with the world altogether. Perhaps we should label this world what it appears to be: a “den of thieves,” a “regime of evildoers,” the “whore of Babylon.” Perhaps we should claim irreconcilable differences and withdraw from the world’s affairs. Perhaps we should build the walls higher, make the moat wider, and let the world “go to hell in a handbasket.” Perhaps. Perhaps.
As if anticipating our tempting speculations over disengagement, Jesus challenges his followers, “You are the light of the world…. [L]et your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt 5:14, 16). Far from endorsing withdrawal, Jesus gives us our marching orders. We are to be bearers of light, of hope, of goodness. We are the feet and the hands of Jesus, offering hope and healing to this world. While it is true that we are not to be “of” the world, we most certainly are “in” the world: fully engaged citizens, working for the good of those with whom we journey through life. Indeed, we are working and praying and longing for the restoration of the whole of God’s good creation.
So does being a Christian make us responsible for the whole world? Yes! In collaboration with God, we are. We are light and salt and leaven for our world.
How, then, can we best bring this life? There are many means, to be sure, but Christian simplicity is a substantial way in which we can engage in the physical/social/institutional/corporate renewal of the world. It is a strategy for large-scale change which we can engage in each day, each hour, each moment. By culturing lives of simplicity, we multiply our opportunities to make an impact for good on the world around us.
Understanding the Principalities and Powers
Any discussion of Christian simplicity and how it relates to the world in the time and place and society in which we find ourselves needs to begin by addressing the “principalities and powers.” As Paul writes, “We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). Never one to be content with merely personal piety and its attendant tendency to flee from the problems of the world, Paul helps us see that we are part of a cosmic struggle between good and evil, life and death, love and hate. Paul shows us the need to be equipped for a struggle encompassing all of our time, all of our thought, all of our talent. We are God’s co-workers—humbly, boldly collaborating with God for the good of all the earth.
At the outset we need to recognize that Paul’s “principalities and powers,” in contradistinction to popular fiction, are not simply disembodied spirits hovering over rooms and towns and cities and nations, looking for opportunities to inflict harm. (More on what they are in a moment.) In addition, when Paul says that our struggle is not against “flesh and blood,” he does not mean that the flesh and blood are unimportant. On the contrary, they are exceedingly important. Paul’s point is that behind them and influencing them and animating them are much deeper realities.
The principalities and powers in Paul’s teaching involve the unique interactive combination of several realities: human personalities, self-conscious spiritual powers, institutional structures and policies, and the overall cultural atmosphere or spirit of an age.
“Human personality” we understand all too well. A brutal dictator—an Idi Amin, for example—can destroy and maim and wreak havoc upon countless lives. Or a virtuous leader—an Abraham Lincoln, for example—can guide a people through tragedy with courage and wisdom. But human personality is far from the whole story.
When I speak of “self-conscious spiritual powers,” I mean realities that are beyond what we can see and measure, that have a genuine effect upon the human scene, and that are not merely impersonal “forces” but self-conscious spiritual beings. Further, these spiritual powers or “authorities” (exousia) can be either good as in Romans 12, or evil as in Ephesians 6.
“Institutional structures and policies” flow out of the dynamic interplay of human personalities and self-conscious spiritual powers. We can end up with unjust policies and corrupt institutions. Self-conscious evil—Satan and his minions—can and does incarnate itself into human structures. Institutions can become nothing more than organized sin. The reverse is also true, however. Institutions and structures can be the means of bringing great good and blessing into the lives of human beings. And behind just policies and equitable laws stand profound spiritual realities—God and his angels—and human personalities of sterling character.
Still, there is more. There is the spirit of the age, the cultural atmosphere we breathe. Is it a culture that is life-giving or death-giving? Is it an environment that is freeing or binding? Is it a milieu that values unconditional love or fear and hostility? Is it a climate of hope or of despair? Is it an environs that is open or closed, affirming or condemning, generous or limiting? This cultural atmosphere—the sum of answers to all these questions—is profoundly affected by the interactive impact of human personalities and self-conscious spiritual powers and institutional structures and policies.
This dynamic interplay of all four of these realities—human personality, self-conscious spiritual powers, institutional structures and policies, and the overall spirit of an age—is what Paul is referring to when he speaks of “principalities and powers.” And you and I are called into this cosmic struggle. In Ephesians 6 Paul urges us to wage the peaceable war of the Lamb against all evil principalities and powers. We war against all demonic structures and unjust powers in a manner consistent with the strong weapons of Ephesians 6—truth and righteousness and peace and faith and prayer. We attack evil on every level—personal, social, structural, institutional.
Like any war, this war against principalities and powers is waged on all fronts at once. The perimeter of our concern encompasses 360 degrees. When we approach absentee landlords of ghetto apartments, we speak with authority to the “principality” of greed which animates them. When we confront political policymakers or corporate executives, we do so with an inward strength born out of prayer and fasting, simplicity and submission.
Please, I do not mean that we should go around quoting Bible verses at people, or even saying anything religious in the conventional sense. I recall well a meeting five of us had with a senior White House official over the terribly difficult issues relating to war and peace. The five of us gathered before the meeting, prayerfully seeking the mind of Christ and sensing “the Presence in the midst.” In the meeting itself we used no “religious” language, but the experience seemed to have genuine “weight,” and the official listened, I thought, with unusual attention. And I do believe that truth was spoken to power. Now, did our little meeting change governmental policy? I do not know, but I am convinced that far more was accomplished than if we had come barging in with our own little plans and demands couched in pious platitudes.
Real Estate and the Powers
Now, it is easy today for us to see what I am talking about when the issue is, say, the anti-Semitism of the Third Reich or the racism of the Jim Crow laws. But seldom are our options so clear-cut. (If the truth be told, the issues even then were not all that clear-cut for those trapped in the cultural fog of the day.) Let me set before us a seemingly benign example of what I am talking about: the buying and selling of real estate. Please understand, I raise this matter not to assign blame here. I personally own a house and land and am just as implicated as the next person. What I want to underscore is how insidious the principalities and powers can be.
One of the most destructive systems in our day is that of establishing value for land and for the buildings that sit upon it. This system socioeconomically alienates vast people-groups. We make maps, we mark them up, and we divvy out the land to the highest bidder, as if it were no more than a piece of artwork at an auction. Treating land as a commodity pays virtually no heed to the biblical revelation that “the earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world, and those who dwell therein” (Ps. 24:1). Land, in more ways than one, belongs to God alone. Yet we treat the land as if we made it. We buy it. We sell it. And as a result, the value of land, and that of the structures that we build upon it, is determined by the market.
While the free-market economic system is neither good nor bad in and of itself, the implementation of free-market principles and each transaction engendered in the market has either a helpful or a detrimental impact on those taking part. This is especially true with regard to real estate. As could be predicted, in a free-market economic system the most desirable land will be the most expensive. Examples come easily to mind: the ski chateau in the mountains or the weekend getaway at the beach. Less immediately apparent but just as insidious are residential and commercial properties in the “better” sections of town or the “more popular” parts of the country or those places “where the jobs are.” Those with abundant money to spend can live where they like and often end up as neighbors, while those with lesser means live in less affluent neighborhoods. The aggregate of these individual decisions segregates the poor from the rich.
Enter the principalities and powers. While individuals and families of means have many good reasons for living in areas of affluence, the overall impact this has on the poor is demonic. In a system where the affluent self-segregate from the poor and where funding for schools, public infrastructure, and other governmental services is determined by a local-area tax base, those who find themselves poor receive inferior services and have fewer employment, social, and recreational opportunities than the wealthy. Further, because they cannot afford to live among the affluent, the poor are left with few if any relationships connected with the economic mainstream. The poor are segregated and marginalized because they cannot afford to live in neighborhoods connected with the larger economy. Rather than there being unity between those with economic means and those without, we have division. Rather than good for all, we have good for some. Rather than effective function for all, we have dysfunction for the poor.
Christian simplicity, on the other hand, disinvests the principalities and powers of the dysfunctional and demonic and reinvests them with the functional and the holy. As we strive for simplicity we take energy away from the direction the world is heading and refocus it on a new, life-giving vision for living together. Simplicity engenders new values which bring about new decisions which bring about a new society.
Two Important Considerations
If the principalities and powers are not merely cosmic forces beyond our control but are, instead, a consequence of the dynamic interplay between human and spiritual and social and institutional realities, then we have the opportunity to partner with God in reforming the world systems in which we live. We are God’s co-workers, together laboring for a functional world for all of God’s creation.
This then leads to our first consideration in Christian simplicity in the world: Can we establish as a baseline and goal the provision of adequate food, clothing, and shelter for every human being on the planet, whether through charitable relief or economic development? As Christians, there is no stronger rationale for this than Jesus’s teaching on the final judgment in Matthew 25. The righteous are told by the “Son of man” that “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” Surprised, the righteous ask how this could be. Jesus replies, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (25:35–40).
Many today have been given a one-sided Gospel, a message offering Good News for salvation in the life to come without addressing human needs here and now. No, we need to proclaim a Good News that embraces both sides of the grave. Along with proclaiming John 3:16 we need to share the life-giving words of Mary in her Magnificat:
[God’s] mercy is on those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm,
he has scattered the proud
in the imagination of their hearts,
he has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent empty away. (Luke 1:50–53)
The Magnificat has been set to lovely music across the centuries, but the beauty of its delivery should never obscure its context and central message, delivered to an unmarried, pregnant teenager in a subordinated culture on the margins of world politics. As was suggested in Chapter 3, this is a text of liberation from destructive social conditions, a rejection of any system which ensures that some will remain rich and many will remain poor. Jesus lived and died for spiritual and social liberation, and he wants the same for us today. As his followers, may we be consumed with the same purpose, and may it be manifest in helping others meet their most basic needs, physical and spiritual.
There is, however, a second consideration which we must face. It flows from the first and is a sobering thought. If Christians would fully embrace the goal of adequate provision of food, clothing, and shelter for all as an unquestioned expression of the Gospel, in time the standard of living for the world’s two billion poor would significantly increase. While an encouraging prospect, this shift would put an enormous strain on the earth’s natural resources. Imagine the land and water and lumber and materials required to more adequately feed two billion hungry bellies, clothe two billion poorly clad bodies, house two billion exposed heads. Imagine if all of the world lived the affluent lifestyle enjoyed by the 600 million or so residents of Japan, North America, and Western Europe. The earth, in short, could not sustain such a standard.
We now have a sense of the catch-22 of aiding the increase of global standards of living. Increased availability and consumption of food, clothing, and shelter leads to a higher average standard of living, which in turn leads to an ever-increasing use of earth’s natural resources. With every increase in the global standard of living, so increases the possibility of doing irreparable damage to the natural systems on which all life depends. While this should not deter us from helping increase the livelihood of the world’s two billion desperately poor, we need to work on this challenge advisedly, keeping in mind a necessary balance between economic development and ecological maintenance.
Two Expedient Solutions
When we understand something of the desperate plight of the world’s poor, the desire for expedient solutions presses in upon us. Let me mention two such solutions, along with their deficiencies.
The first solution lies in implementing a new economic structure. The hope is that a change in the existing system will lead to system-wide change for the individuals involved. Capitalism, communism, and every economic system in between have been promoted in this light, and none has brought about the fullness of life promised. This consistent failure suggests that our corporate deficiency (that is, our inability to bring about the kind of world we would like to live in) is rooted in the way we manage our personal affairs rather than in the overarching economic system.
This is not to say that there is no virtue in the values of the various economic systems that have been proposed and tried. Indeed, both capitalism and communism, the polar ends of the economic spectrum, contain a measure of scriptural justification.
Think of capitalism in light of several New Testament passages: “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1). “If anyone will not work, let him not eat” (2 Thess. 3:10). “It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops” (2 Tim. 2:6). In these passages, Paul sounds almost like a disciple of Adam Smith, the English moral philosopher many consider the father of free-market economics. In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Smith writes, “Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in view.”1 Freedom, self-initiative, and ownership are encouraged by the capitalist system. And these things are admired in Scripture.
Likewise, there is scriptural justification for a communist point of view toward economic matters. Take, for example, the concept of the year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25. Far from free-market economics, the Jubilee year, in which ownership of land reverts to its historical family of ownership, is redistributive economics pure and simple. In Acts we hear that the early Christian community “were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common” (Acts 2:32). We learn that “there was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need” (Acts 4:34–35). “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” goes a saying attributed to Karl Marx, cofounder of the modern communist system. Sharing, like-mindedness, and common ownership are found in communism and the biblical revelation.
As vitriolic debates in the mass media make abundantly clear, people most certainly do have opinions on economic matters. While our own speech may paint us in the best possible light, we really do long for a system that brings temporal salvation at little to no cost to us as individuals. We love to lazily watch our apples fall to the ground where the worms are, thinking the system will turn them into applesauce.
The truth of the matter is that we cannot rely on an economic system for helping us in our struggle with the principalities and powers, because such systems simply do not engage the realm we need to engage. Economics, loosely defined, is the study of how to get maximum benefit out of a finite amount of material resources, be these in the form of land, labor, or capital. Whatever virtues are found in capitalism, communism, or any other economic system do not change the fact that these are at base materialistic systems. And, to the extent that we allow a particular system to determine our view of the world, we are materialists. But, as we know, the principalities and powers are “in the heavenly places.” They are metaphysical realities that give order to the material world. Their substance animates, for evil or good, whatever system is implemented. To transform the powers we need to step back from a materialistic paradigm and step toward a way of being together which is measured by divine compassion rather than material consumption.
The second expedient solution, while motivated more by compassion and less by consumption, remains firmly locked within the structure of the prevailing system. Like a diagnostician, this approach assesses the state of affairs and goes about designing strategies. Is the problem hunger? Then we will get food to the starving. Is the problem housing? We will build homes. Are people naked? We will find clothing. This approach views the world as a series of problems to solve.
Now, it is important to look at the world and be motivated to solve its problems. In fact, the survival of many people on the margins depends on that approach. Governments, nongovernmental organizations, businesses, churches, individuals—the participation of all are needed for assisting those in immediate need.
However, for the long haul this is a solution doomed to failure. To view the world as a series of problem-solving exercises leaves us with the mistaken impression that we can fix everything. We feel that all we need to do is tighten this system here or refine that process there and we will usher in God’s shalom. If only it were so.
Unfortunately, we cannot solve all of the world’s problems without the cooperation of all the world. Suppose we did manage to solve the challenges of systemic hunger by distributing food. How long would bellies remain full? Who could ensure the generosity of individuals and nations for the next famine? Say we were able to build a home for each family. Who would maintain those homes? Who would build more as the population expanded? What about clothing? And health care? And environmental concerns? While absolutely essential for the good of those living within the world’s systems, all diagnostic gains will be short-lived unless and until the time comes when every person has the inward disposition and outward discipline to seek the well-being of all.
The long-term solution is to conquer and transform the principalities and powers, within and without, so that they, and we, become beings who live a kind and compassionate lifestyle toward the whole of creation. I cannot flesh out that lifestyle within the context of this text, but I can suggest some first steps in that direction. It is to those steps that we now turn.
Two Sustainable Directions
There are many and varied ways to express the life of Christian simplicity, and we must give each person perfect freedom to explore and apply what best suits the individual. Having said that, there are some general directions of application that may be helpful in our quest for the freedom of simplicity in relation to the world. Let’s look at two.
The first involves thinking on a large scale about the consumptive way we meet human needs now and about how we might more sustainably meet them in the future. Thinking through the direction and application of sustainable development for all the world’s nations will become a global necessity in the twenty-first century and beyond. Over the past two hundred–plus years Western Europe and North America have developed to the extent that nearly every person’s needs for food, clothing, and shelter are met on a daily basis. While this is, by and large, the fruit of free-market economics and democratic institutions, it is genuinely questionable whether or not the “Western way of life” is sustainable, even in the West.
Though the lifestyle of the West takes many forms, it has a common thread: relying on relatively inexpensive, mostly nonrenewable resources. Without these the lights would go out and the curtain would close on the “Western” way of life.
While we could consider many expressions of this unsustainable reliance, let’s reflect on one example: the energy economy in the United States. In 2002, 81 percent of the energy used in the U.S. was generated by nonrenewable fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, and coal.2 Heating our homes, powering our vehicles, running our businesses—all these contribute to the quality of life, and all are reliant upon energy. And yet the power used to keep us employed, productive, on the move, and warm or cool is produced in the main via sources that will one day be depleted.
While some say this will occur in fifty years and others say one hundred–plus years, there will come a day when fossil fuels are either no longer available for fueling the energy economy or so expensive to extract that the average person will not be able to afford the power generated. And this reliance and eventual inaccessibility of fossil fuels applies to every imaginable aspect of living: work, recreation, school, travel, even church. If the United States ran out of fossil fuels tomorrow, how would its citizens live, even survive? It is only a matter of time before this hypothetical dilemma becomes a reality.
I do all this reflecting on the West’s reliance on fossil fuels to make one simple point: we are not living a sustainable way of life. The truth of the matter is that much of the life we enjoy is based on nonrenewable consumption. And there is only so much to consume, both for those in the West and for the aspiring masses in the developing world. Unless we stop, reflect, rethink, and radically reinvent the ways by which we go about daily life, the hammer is going to fall on our style of living, whether during our lifetime or that of our children or their children. And short-lived will be the benefits of any improvements we have helped bring about in developing countries. If nothing changes, the third or fourth generation, here and abroad, will have to bear the sins and selfishness of their forebears.
A second sustainable direction we can consider is taking the time and making the effort to vigorously review our own individual way of living and creatively implementing changes that will keep in mind our need for shifting toward a more sustainable way of life for all.
We can recycle. We can reuse. We can decide to not buy in the first place.
We can bike. We can walk. We can choose to stay at home and get to know our neighbors.
We can write. We can sing. We can decide to entertain ourselves and our friends.
Taking the values we find in Christian simplicity and implementing them in our own lives is the primary way we can encourage these values in the world in which we find ourselves: our homes, our neighborhoods, our cities, our nations. We can advocate for socially responsible business. We can encourage the passage of environmental regulations. We can help our local congregations embody the virtues of Christian simplicity. And more. The most foundational and long-lasting impact we can have on the world comes by reflecting on and implementing the ways of Christian simplicity in our own lives.
We are now prepared to consider carefully the three arenas in which we find ourselves continually—personal, communal, and societal—and to dream about the impact each can have on embodying God’s call to simplicity.
Personal Initiative
Impacting the world by means of Christian simplicity begins with the individual. The person is the smallest unit of human society, and the point of our beginning.
Now, we need look no further than Scripture to gain authority for this point of departure. The Bible is saturated with reflections on the lives of individuals, their choices, and the consequences of those choices. Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah. Isaac and Rebekah. Jacob and Esau. Leah, Rachael, Zilpah, and Bilhah. Joseph and his brothers. All made critical decisions that had far-reaching consequences. They were part of families and clans, and they were accountable to one another and God for their own personal deeds. Individual actions, big and small, the decidedly significant and the seemingly insignificant, resulted in the founding of an entire people, the covenant people of Israel.
Viewing the Bible through the lens of individual responsibility helps us ask the right questions for life in the world. If God gave the first family a stewardship ethic (as recounted in Genesis 1), how do I embody this ethic in my own life? If Jesus’s ministry of presence to Zacchaeus could so change his perception of possessions (Luke 19:1–10), is there a ministry of presence Jesus needs to have with me as well? And how will I respond? If Paul’s plea that the fledgling church in Corinth pursue the “ministry of reconciliation” is a plea to me too, how am I embodying reconciliation? (2 Cor. 5:18–20). These, and more, are the foundational questions we ask as we hold the Bible in one hand and the work of manifesting Christian simplicity in the world in the other.
Nearly all of Freedom of Simplicity has been focused on encouraging the motivation and practice of simplicity for individual persons. What more can I say here? What remains to be done is to place the practice of simplicity squarely in the realm of world transformation. How can the warp and woof of our daily living encourage the formation of an abundant life for our families, our neighbors, and indeed the whole of God’s creation?
The possibility for this collective work of individuals transforming the world is rooted in the nature of how we exercise influence on creation around us. Dallas Willard, in The Divine Conspiracy, makes clear that each of us has a “kingdom” or “queendom,” its boundaries determined by the range of our effective will, where what we want done is done. This range of our effective will, this gift of queendom or kingdom, is a reflection on a human level of God’s kingdom, the range of God’s effective will, where what God wants done is done.
We are accustomed to thinking in terms of God’s kingdom. As we read of the divine Word calling forth the created order into existence, as we witness the maintenance of the natural cycles of nature (“He gives rain upon the earth and sends waters upon the fields” [Job 5:10]), we experience the fruit of the furtherance of God’s kingdom, where what God wants done is done.
Likewise, God has endowed each of us with a “realm” where our will is done, for good or ill. This is the mental and physical space where what we do and say has a significant bearing on the outcome of events. If our queendom functions well and is characterized by virtue, those it affects will be encouraged toward right function and true virtue. If our kingdom is dysfunctional and characterized by vice, those it touches will be encouraged toward dysfunction and vice. The larger our queendom, the greater the impact on others over which it has influence. The smaller our kingdom, the less significant the impact. Whether great or small, all through life our queendoms or kingdoms are interacting continually with God’s kingdom.
Though we may wish for the peace and security of a safe harbor where vital decisions do not need to be made, God will not infringe upon the range of our effective will, our kingdoms or queendoms; and thus we must make decisions. Because God has freely chosen to endow us with free will, God’s kingdom will generally not override the decisions we make through our own reign, regardless of the consequences. It is entirely up to us whether we are collaborators with God, working for the good, or competitors against God, establishing ourselves as rulers of our little universes. This is why, if the virtues of Christian simplicity are to take hold in the world around us, the foundational work will be done by each of us, in collaboration with God.
Now, we must never be misled into thinking that the goal in all this is to extend our little kingdoms and queendoms so that we might lord it over others. No. The goal is not to “expand our borders.” The goal is to align our own little queendoms and kingdoms with the great kingdom, the range of God’s effective will, so that we can say continually, “Not my will, but thine be done.” Whether the range of our effective will is small or large, what we must do is tune our will with the harmony of God.
If this is the case—if we each have a space over which we have ultimate say, if this is the nature of how God has ordered our lives—then the role of Christian simplicity for encouraging the life of the world comes clearly into view. We see that the decisions we make—what we eat, what we drink, what we wear, where we live, who we spend time with (in other words, all the things we do within our kingdoms and queendoms)—have an impact not only on our own lives but on the lives and livelihood of those around us. Indeed, in a more and more interconnected world, our actions have an impact on the whole of God’s creation. Our kingdoms will either be rooted in the values we discover in God’s kingdom—equity, justice, compassion, patience, love, and more—or they will not. Our queendoms will either intentionally reflect a way of living that encourages and perpetuates the life of the world around us, or they will not. The range of our effective will either collaborates with God’s reign, or it does not.
By creating space for reflection, evaluation, planning, and personal lifestyle change, the practice of Christian simplicity teaches us to recognize and reject the value systems of the world and replace them with the value system of God’s kingdom. Additionally, simplicity creates for us space, time, energy, and resources so that we might reorder our lives to intentionally pursue God’s kingdom in all of our daily living. A thousand decisions a day, ten thousand decisions a week, millions of decisions in a lifetime—the summation of the impact of our earthly kingdoms on ourselves and our world. As we reflect and respond, God shows us each moment’s pregnant potential for encouraging the good in our own queendoms, meshing with the good being nurtured through God’s kingdom. As we pursue Christian simplicity ourselves, our lifestyle changes, the priorities and practices exercised in the reign of our effective will begin more closely to resemble those of God’s kingdom, and then the effects ripple out far beyond our comprehension.
So where do we begin? What are the first steps toward encouraging a life that works in harmony with God’s purposes in the world? How do we start reforming the range of our effective will? There are so many directions we could go. Awareness for action can be raised through reading, listening, and watching. Travel can be used for service to the poor or trips of “reverse mission,” where our role is learning from those on the margins of society. Friendships can include more people different from ourselves, whether students from other nations or the ethnically different family down the street. Budgets can reflect a decrease in the standard of living to which we are accustomed. Diets can shift from animal-based products to more fruits, vegetables, and less resource-intensive options.
Whatever individual steps we take, the goal is that our priorities will increasingly shift from meeting our own needs to addressing the needs of others. We hope this will be so both in the short term (addressing the immediate requirements of the poor, for example) and in the long term (working for systemic changes). We hope that our lives contribute to a fairer distribution of the world’s resources and a culture that is inclusive and encouraging of all.
Perhaps no work is more foundational to the individual embodying Christian simplicity in the world than our becoming more comfortable in our own skin. The less comfortable we are with ourselves, the more we will look to things around us for comfort. The more assured we are with ourselves, the less assurance we will need from things outside us.
This learning to be more at rest with ourselves, and the relation of that self-assurance to encouraging simplicity in the world, cannot be overstated. We in the West are guinea pigs in one huge economic experiment in consumption. We are told time and again that if we will only buy this product or have that experience, all will be well. Underlying these incessant messages is one primary activity: consuming. And consume we must if we are to be the right kind of person. “I shop, therefore I am,” so goes the storyline. This is one of the principalities and powers we need to challenge.
Christian simplicity would have us move in a radically different direction. We are to focus on the one rather than the many, the clear rather than the distorted, the simple rather than the complex. We are to reorient ourselves to a new reality, one encountered as we learn to be more and more comfortable with ourselves and less and less comfortable with consumerism.
And as we become more at peace internally, a world revolution will follow. As Blaise Pascal writes, “The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.”3 An overstatement? I think not. It is the actions of human beings that create the majority of trouble for humanity and the rest of creation. To what can we ascribe the loss of human life through war and famine? Human actions. To what the gap between the rich and the poor? Human actions. To what the loss of environmental biodiversity? Human actions. No doubt less would get “done” under Pascal’s guidance, but that is precisely his point: we do far too much, which only reveals our deep discomfort with ourselves and our present situation. “Smaller is better.” “Acquire less and do less.” “Those who die with the least toys win.” Are these advertising slogans of the kingdom?
Another direction for individual action in embodying Christian simplicity for changing the world is learning to better appreciate what we already have and what we will come to have. From the middle of a devouring, consumptive, Nazi German culture, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes,
We need all along the line to recover the lost sense of quality and a social order based on quality. Quality is the greatest enemy of any kind of mass leveling. Socially it means the renunciation of all place hunting, a break with the cult of the “star,” an open eye both upwards and downwards, especially in the choice of one’s more intimate friends, and pleasure in private life as well as courage to enter public life. Culturally it means a return from the newspaper and the radio to the book, from feverish activity to unhurried leisure, from dispersion to concentration, from sensationalism to reflection, from virtuosity to art, from snobbery to modesty, from extravagance to moderation. Quantities are competitive, qualities are complementary.4
Fewer books, more reading. Shorter trips, more vacation. Smaller houses, more home. These simple statements are counterintuitive to the training we have received for living in a world which values goods over people and land over relationships.
In the spirit of quality over quantity, let us consider replacing the culture of consumption with a culture of appreciation. The culture of consumption fosters discontent with the present. The culture of appreciation is at home in today. The culture of consumption wants more and more. The culture of appreciation is content with what we have. The culture of consumption looks outside for meaning. The culture of appreciation gains meaning from internal resources. The culture of consumption is always restless. The culture of appreciation is at peace. “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength,” Isaiah writes to his time—and to our own (30:15). The culture of appreciation helps us to understand that less really is more, and with that understanding we help to gain enough for all.
A final personal disposition for embodying Christian simplicity is increasing our proclivity toward risk-taking, that God’s reign might be known. Our culture is risk-averse. We are afraid of being embarrassed, and so we take medications that decrease anxiety. We are afraid of losing our possessions, so we lock our doors and purchase insurance. We are afraid of traffic accidents, so we buy the biggest automobiles possible. And while there may well be legitimate needs for medication, insurance, and big cars, we simply cannot insulate ourselves from the unexpected turns of human life.
Being risk-averse is problematic for a meaningful life in the world for any person, but especially so for Christians. Encouraging God’s reign in the world requires taking risks. We collaborate with the One who says, “[D]o not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall wear…. But seek first [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” (Matt. 6:25, 33). Jesus knows that if protecting ourselves is our primary strategy for getting what we want out of life, we will get what we want out of our life and not what God wants for all of our lives. But we have been given the divine invitation to bring God’s life to the world, and this means risky behavior.
In our world of home entertainment centers, gated communities, and personal privilege, perhaps our first risk is found in getting to know our neighbors. Who are our neighbors? What do they care about? What are their life histories? Can we sacrifice family time, work time, church time, recreational time to spend an evening getting to know the people who live on our street? Will we be imposing? Will we be prying? Will they say no if we invite them over? What if we do not like our neighbors? What if they become a nuisance? So many questions. But in our culture of rampant individualism, getting to know our neighbors is a good first risk to take for encouraging God’s life in the world.
But the actions of individuals can reach only so far. We must also embody Christian simplicity in the collaborative ventures we call communities. To this we now turn.
Communal Reformation
While the individual is the building block of human society, seldom is there a person who intentionally attempts to go through life sola persona—that is, as a single individual. Rather, we band together, creating structures for achieving goals to which we aspire, be these raising children, making a living, worshipping God, protecting possessions, or any number of other activities. Whenever two or more people come together and establish a shared understanding of relationship, a community is born.
The whole is the sum of its parts. Each community—from the marriage of two high school sweethearts to the United Nations—creates a communal culture reflecting the concerns and values of its individual members. Institutions, for the most part, encourage people to be and to act on who they are, since individuals are attracted to places of affirmation rather than of challenge. If people are good, the institution encourages them to be better. If people are bad, the institution leads them to be worse. The nature of any community is based on the nature of the individuals that comprise it.
The actions of communities exert a force for either good or evil in the world. Even the building blocks that hold communities together, the shared understandings that establish and maintain marriages and businesses and churches and governments, can be either life-giving or death-giving. When they are the latter, they result in what is sometimes called “institutional evil.” Take, for instance, race relations and the vast majority of institutions in the United States before the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, and a great many such institutions to the present day. Discrimination based on race has been the unwritten (and often written) rule for nearly every commonly accepted type of people-grouping in the United States. Antimiscegenation laws, which prohibited the marriage of people of different races, were on the books in state and local governments in some places until 1967. Formal policies against discrimination were legislated in 1964, but we do not need to work hard to hear stories of a hotel room denied here, a taxi cab speeding by there, or a mortgage application being denied for a house in the “wrong neighborhood.” Recently a number of church denominations have formally repented of their racism, but, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, Sunday morning worship continues to be the “most segregated hour of the week.” Governmental programs are legally bound not to take race into account, yet racial profiling has become standard practice for local, state, and national governments since September 2001. Both the structure of institutions and their actions exert an influence that is either life-giving or death-giving, and many institutions in our day are not ordered toward encouraging God’s life in the world.
If the foundational nature of the communities of people with which we interact on a daily basis is flawed, if these communities, by and large, pursue an end contrary to what God has in mind, how do we collaborate with God for reformation? How does an institution change from being an environment ambivalent (or even antagonistic) toward encouraging God’s kind of life to one that is life-giving? What are the new priorities of a reformed community ushering in a new creation? And what role does Christian simplicity play in that task?
Institutions need to be reformed if the values of Christian simplicity are to take hold in the lives of individuals and in the world around us. If we are personally called to a life of simplicity and what this can bring—reconciliation between individuals, a more equitable distribution of resources for living, and so on—then we are also called to bring this reality to our institutions: church, business, government, family.
Communities of people do not change easily or quickly. Encouraging change often undercuts the foundational ideas and values on which communities were established, the ideas and values that attracted individuals to join together and form an institution in the first place. If an institution is able to envision needed change and reform, participating individuals will need to adapt to the new reality. As change occurs, some will leave because they continue to rest on the old foundation, and others will leave because they are gaining a new set of ideas and values inconsistent with the reforming institution. Some communities will overcome this challenge. Others, frankly, will break apart.
If we who are Christians want to influence the reformation of institutions with which we interact on a daily basis, we should consider ordering our own house first. The Church, in its local and universal expressions, is the one institution that should, by its very nature, embrace the fullness of God’s hope for the world. In Scripture we are given a vision for life that is whole and full and affirming of all creation: “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:3–4).
The people of God throughout the ages have seen this vision too. St. Augustine declares, “There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise. This is what shall be in the end without end. For what other end do we propose to ourselves than to attain to the kingdom of which there is no end?”5 If the Church were to move toward more fully embodying the beauty and wonder and power of the vision we find in the Bible and Christian history, we would serve as a model of institutional reformation for the world.
Sadly, we do not. Sadly, the Church does little more than ape the attitudes and priorities of other institutions we admire for their worldly success. Sadly, our agenda is set by a lust for attendance, buildings, and cash rather than a passion for encouraging God’s life in the world. Sadly, we are more attuned to self-preservation than world reformation.
The body of Christ has resources for change, but does it have the will? The Church has been given an all-inclusive vision for life in the world, but will it risk irrelevancy to bring it to pass? How can we move in this direction?
Christian simplicity needs to be embraced by the Church as institution in order to provide a life-giving institutional paradigm to the world. Applying in a communal setting the ideals of doing, spending, and using less, seeking quality, and taking risks is a start. Revisiting the way a church does its daily business—budgetary priorities, staffing policies, building use, and more—is a next step. Rethinking the role of the congregation in the neighborhood, the region, and the world, and putting in place multiyear plans for embodying this new understanding, is a long-term strategy. Embracing simplicity communally will bring change.
What I have in mind is nothing short of institutional renovation. Throughout this much-needed process, congregations will revisit every value, every structure, every program, every outcome. Values will change; priorities will change; activities will change; results will change. What we do with time, money, volunteers, and every available resource will be different. We will step back, review, re-think, and re-form who we are, what we do, and why we do it. We can re-envision our life together in light of Christian simplicity and then respond in meaningful ways. In so doing, we will show the watching world how communal reformation actually comes about.
As we make these kinds of changes in our local congregations, we can also do our best to encourage the other institutions of which we are a part to embody the life God has in mind for the world. This includes businesses we own. Nongovernmental organizations where we work. Civic clubs we oversee. Schools where we teach. Governmental agencies where we serve. Each is an opportunity for embodying God’s kind of life in the world, to influence the outcome of events for the good, the true, the beautiful.
There are a number of examples of communal reformation we could look at. For example, we could consider churches seeking greater parity in resources with other Christians, in their own towns and around the world. We could look at families banding together to live in intentional community, for mutual support and to share resources. We could review governmental programs bringing the marginalized into the mainstream, that they might be fully engaged members of society. We could hold up nongovernmental organizations giving aspiring entrepreneurs a hand up rather than a handout, teaching them to fish for a lifetime.
While we could spend time on many different examples, let’s look at one in the realm of business. I would like to introduce you to a business that replaced the “profit motive” with the “prophet motive.”
First, a little economic background. Without question, the profit motive is the organizing principle of Western society, for both individuals and organizations. For individuals, we use terms like “earning potential,” “market readiness,” and “hourly productivity” in assigning personal value. Without acceptable “scores” on these, a person will likely become marginalized from economic life, barred from the societal mainstream.
For organizations, both for-profit and nonprofit, worth is based on the ability to end the year in the black, and hopefully with a sizable financial surplus. A “successful” business grows year after year, squeezes and destroys its competitors, takes advantage of every efficiency, and makes the most money possible. It does all it can, by any means it can, using everything it can, to get the most profits it can. While a business acting out of the profit motive makes for good shareholder results, it often does little to involve or encourage those not involved in the company’s management and ownership.
The “prophet motive” rests on an entirely different foundation. It attempts to do business and at the same time embody the message of the biblical prophets. Think of Amos, who said, “Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate” (5:15). Or Micah: “He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (6:8). Or Jesus above all: “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24). In addition to seeking solid quarterly financials, annual reports, and initial public offerings, a business heeding the prophet motive works toward establishing God’s love, compassion, and justice in the world.
E. F. Schumacher, in his book Small Is Beautiful, considers a company embodying the prophet motive. Founded in 1921 in Great Britain, Scott Bader Co. Ltd. is a producer of resins, gelcoats, and polymers that have construction, containment, decorative, marine, and transportation applications. In 1951, after three decades in business, with 161 employees and profits of over £72,000 (approximately $130,000) on annual revenues of £625,000 (approximately $1.1 million), Ernest Bader, the owner and founder, implemented “‘revolutionary changes’ in his firm, ‘based on a philosophy which attempts to fit industry to human needs.’”
The revolution was brought about in two steps. First, Mr. Bader vested his ownership of the firm with a newly formed Scott Bader Commonwealth, a legal entity that ensured an amount of ownership and control for every employee. Second, he established a constitution that self-limited the activities of the business in six significant ways: (1) the firm would not grow larger than 350 employees—ventures moving the firm beyond this size would become independent subsidiaries; (2) a one-to-seven ratio between the wages of the lowest- and highest-paid employees would not be exceeded; (3) no one could be fired for anything but gross misconduct; (4) owner-employees would appoint, fire, and compensate the board of directors; (5) 60 percent of annual profits would be kept with the organization for reinvestment and payment of taxes, and 40 percent would be withdrawn, with half of this latter amount going to bonuses and half going to charity; and (6) no products would be knowingly sold for war-related purposes.
Though initially expected to fail because of seemingly anticompetitive values, over the next twenty years Scott Bader Co. Ltd. grew to 379 employees with £300,000 in annual profits on £5 million in revenues. It also established several subsidiaries. Now with 650 employees and holdings in seven countries on four continents (including one wholly owned subsidiary in United Arab Emirates), 2002 profits were £1,435,000 on revenues of £95,556,000.
From the success of Scott Bader Co. Ltd., Schumacher draws five general principles. First, when ownership is transferred from the hands of a few to those of many, the very concept of ownership ceases to exist and is replaced by “specific rights and responsibilities in the administration of assets.” There is no less a sense of individual ownership, yet the need to have concrete title for specific assets has been eliminated. Second, in transferring the ownership of property from individual to group, the initiator creates a new situation where human community is possible, because people in relationship have a greater sense of vestedness in a common task. Third, while shared ownership creates a new situation for those inside the firm, to encourage a greater good for the society of which it is a part a business needs to embody an economic, technical, social, and political outlook much different from that usually employed by business—that is, the old standard of maximizing profits and unlimited growth. Fourth, how an organization fulfills its broader social goals is the greatest challenge, one fraught with difficulties and requiring a learning process. Fifth, the allocation of a specific percentage of withdrawn profits for charitable purposes creates a social consciousness both for company operations and for participating individuals.6
The Scott Bader Co. Ltd. models how an organization can replace the profit motive with the prophet motive. And it is an example of communal reformation in the spirit of Christian simplicity. The possibility for the formation of communities and institutions along these lines is limited only by our creativity and commitment. While the reformation and development of each institution will be different—church, business, family, governmental agency—all can look to simplicity as a guide.
It is now time to consider what our society might look like as more and more institutions reform along these lines.
Societal Change
We must begin our thinking here by facing a hard fact: while we have significant say over the condition of our own selves, and some input on the direction of the communities of which we are a part, the vast majority of us have little or no control over what occurs in the society in which we live. The condition of our culture—local and global—is brought about by the collective actions of billions of individuals, hundreds of millions of households, and millions of institutions. It is a collective marvel, a giant, interconnected, worldwide ecological/economic/social web at which we wonder and over which we have little influence.
Even so, we can have an impact. We do what we are able. We consider and transform our own lives. We encourage the lives of those around us. We live as responsibly as possible. We do our best to send forth into the world a lifestyle that, if embraced by increasing numbers of people, would produce a transformed world. Robert Kennedy, while speaking to a group of students at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, nearly thirty years before the fall of apartheid, well expressed this posture: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”7
You and I produce no more than a “tiny ripple” to be sure…but a ripple nonetheless. One pragmatic action we can take is to encourage a change in the ways we assess success, moving toward measures that will truly reflect life-giving activity and will affirm our life together. In the realm of economics the Gross National Product (GNP) is used by professional and lay economists alike as a gauge of the health of nations. If the GNP is decreasing, an economy is heading toward or is in recession. If the GNP is increasing, an economy is on the right track—and if increasing at a brisk pace, it is a good season for investors and incumbent politicians. Fortunes and elections are won and lost on the weakness or strength of the GNP.
Now, while the GNP serves as a fair measure of the overall output of an economy, it is not a good assessor of the overall quality of life for people. Industrial production is included in the GNP, as is the money paid for the cleanup of producer pollution. Sales of automobiles are counted in the GNP, and so is the repair of the cars involved in accidents. The purchase of magazines and movies is part of the GNP, as is the sale of pornographic and exploitative materials. All the desirables an economy produces are counted in the GNP, as are all of the undesirables and their effects. “Most [economists] recognize both that the market activity that GNP measures has social costs that it ignores, and that it counts positively market activity devoted to countering these same social costs,” write Herman Daly and John Cobb.8
Why not urge those in power to begin measuring clearly and accurately the good and the bad in our economic system? Why not measure a GNP based on the desirables minus the undesirables? Why not? This would provide a far more accurate gauge of the real health of a nation.
While we cannot make the world around us steer in the direction of God’s kingdom, we can change, we can contribute, we can care. We can do what we are able in order to live into the values of Christian simplicity and, as a result, make some small impact on the principalities and powers of our day. We can live lives of goodness and meaning and purpose. That is enough. God will care for the rest. This is the hope of Christian simplicity in relationship to the world.
Finis
And this hope will not disappoint us. It is a hope anchored in the eternal verities of the Lord God, the Almighty. It is a hope beautifully captured in the word of Yahweh through the prophet Isaiah:
For behold, I create new heavens
and a new earth;
and the former things shall not be remembered
or come into mind.
But be glad and rejoice for ever
in that which I create;
for behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing,
and her people a joy….
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
and dust shall be the serpent’s food.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain,
says the LORD. (65:17–25)