Freedom of Simplicity by Richard J. Foster

Author:Richard J. Foster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-01-05T16:00:00+00:00

7. OUTWARD SIMPLICITY: BEGINNING STEPS

There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

—G. K. Chesterton

Personal finance is the new forbidden subject of modern society. Once we were afraid to discuss sex in public, but no more. Now we flaunt our newfound freedom like an adolescent first learning to smoke. Then death was the subject no one dared discuss above a whisper. That day is gone too. Seminars on death and dying abound. We can buy tapes, films, and books on how to die gracefully. Gerontology is fast coming into prominence as a major science.

The great taboo today is personal finances. How we spend our money is our business, and nobody is going to tell us what to do with it. Vigorously we resist any public airing of so private a subject. When laws are passed to force public officials to give an open accounting of their stewardship, they still find ways to obscure the truth. Sermons on lifestyle or our obligation to the poor are viewed as a personal affront, a breach of private boundaries. We pull down the shades over our financial affairs; we balance our budgets and shuffle our credit cards behind closed doors.

Today there is a heretical teaching that is an absolute plague in American Christianity. It is the dogmatic and unexamined credo that whatever we gain is ours to do with as we please. If we earn $70,000, how we spend it is our private affair. Perhaps we will concede that it is legitimate for the Church to talk about tithing, but the other 90 percent is none of its business.

How utterly self-consumed and provincial! In no way can we twist the Scripture to justify such a belief. Our lifestyle is not our private affair. We dare not allow each person to do what is right in his or her own eyes. The Gospel demands more of us: it is obligatory upon us to help one another hammer out the shape of Christian simplicity in the midst of modern affluence. We need to love each other enough to sense our mutual responsibility and accountability. We are our brother’s and our sister’s keeper.

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