If you've read this blog for any time at all, really, you'll know that I talk about simplicity, long for simplicity, try and live simply to a certain extent.
I read this quote recently by Shane Claiborne and it made me think about the motivation behind my desire:
"When we talk of materialism and simplicity, we must always begin with the love for God and neighbor, otherwise we're operating out of little more than legalistic, guilt-ridden self-righteousness. Our simplicity is not an ascetic denunciation of material things to attain personal piety, for if we sell all that we have and give it to the poor, but have not love, it is meaningless (1 Cor. 13:3). And there are many progressive liberals who have taught me that we can live lives of disciplined simplicity and still be distant from the poor. We can eat organic, have a common pool of money, and still be enslaved to Mammon. Rather than being bound up by how much stuff we need to buy, we can get enslaved to how simply we must live.
Simplicity is meaningful only inasmuch as it is grounded in love, authentic relationships, and interdependence."
Sometimes I think I enjoy simplicity only for the sake of simplicity, for the sake of something more "peaceful" instead of looking at it through the eyes of scripture, beginning it with my love for God and neighbor.
On a final note, I enjoyed this today from Oswald Chambers:
"The Redemption of Christ is not an experience, it is the great act of God which He has performed through Christ, and I have to build my faith upon it. If I construct my faith on my experience, I produce that most unscriptural type, an isolated life, my eyes fixed on my own whiteness. Beware the piety that has no pre-supposition in the Atonement of the Lord."
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