Living free of clutter

I learned from Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet of TV fame, that “frugal” doesn’t mean cutting back or using only lower-cost ingredients. It means the wise use of resources and avoiding excesses. Don’t use a cup of butter when a half cup will do. But use butter if the recipe calls for it.

He conveyed the view that frugality is not living as cheaply as possible and hoarding the excess. It doesn’t mean skimping and saving, cutting back, to have something to leave the children. It doesn’t mean putting everything on our plate at a buffet line to get two meals for one price.

Frugality is not asceticism or self-denial for the sake of self-denial. In New Testament times, the Pharisees fasted but let others know it. It is not living simply to be commended for living more simply than most to be considered holier.

Frugality does not stem from the belief that riches are evil, money is dirty and dehumanizing, and poverty is the great good. The love of money is the root of all evil. This hunger for money can be as strong in a poor person as in a rich person.

Living frugally means releasing ourselves from our love affair with the clutter in our lives that keeps us from serving God wholeheartedly. Imagine yourself as a swimmer moving upstream, fully clothed and dragging along your household. People with clutter get caught in seaweed and other obstacles.

The frugal Christian is one whose outward lifestyle is built on the inner reality of being a child of the kingdom and who has heard Jesus say, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).

Let’s talk about clutter, all kinds, although it usually starts with things.

We program children early to believe that boredom and discomfort can be relieved by something external—a McDonald’s Happy Meal gadget, a new sticker book, a new toy. Adults have the same approach to life: Discomfort can be relieved by a new recreational toy or house gadget. Garage sales are a visible attempt to get rid of clutter.

We older adults cling to our clutter as if it means our salvation. We’re convinced a moving van will accompany the hearse to the cemetery. We buy souvenirs and take pictures when we travel to later store in overfilled closets for children to get rid after our death.

How necessary is noise clutter to you? What is the first thing you do in the morning? What is the first thing to be upgraded in your home? CD player, cell phone, stereo, car radio? What sustains you? Live a week without noise clutter to find out.

We are assaulted daily by the clutter of sound from TVs, radios, DVDs, cell phones and loud, throbbing beats from the car alongside us at the intersection. Joggers wear iPods. There has to be background noise of some kind when we wait by the phone, when shopping, painting the house or vacuuming. Living with our own thoughts uncluttered by noise seems impossible.

Then there is the clutter of meaningless activity that fills time but not life. Lonely? Go to the mall, buy a DVD or a new pair of shoes, knock the tires on a new car. Bored? Check out the frig, buy a magazine, surf the Net. Dissatisfied? Eat a snack. Buy a new lipstick color, take a trip.

None of these activities is wrong in itself, but the pursuit of them trains us to believe that to find fulfillment and meaning requires spending money or being a consumer.

Add to this the clutter of motives or the lack of a main principle to guide our decision-making. In church we accept any teaching if the presenter is lively, enthusiastic and amusing. We develop a “coffee break” theology, believing what everyone else believes, especially people with strong opinions. We live comfortably with a double-mindedness—against abortion but for war, for abortion but against capital punishment, against homosexuality but OK with divorce and remarriage.

Beware of clutter. When we let go of clutter, we open up space in our lives for something new to happen. Consider these few principles of the uncluttered life that make that new thing possible.

The law of the manna jar or, enough is enough. In the wilderness, the Israelites grumbled about food. Slavery in Egypt looked great compared with their current existence. Were they going to die here in the desert? They complained to Moses, “Why did you bring us here?” They wanted to return to the leeks and garlics of Egypt. God answered by feeding them daily manna and quail.

Years later, Nehemiah talked to God in Babylon about that time: “You did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and you gave them water for their thirst. For 40 years you sustained them in the desert; they lacked nothing.”

Nothing? C’mon. They were living a stripped-down life. Yes, they never had to decide what to make for dinner or which suit to wear to tabernacle worship. But they were wandering in the wilderness. We think of any wilderness experience as a place of deprivation, as tough times. For the Israelites the wilderness was a place of sufficiency, of enoughness and of economic equality because God provided. No one lacked enough food to eat. Enough was enough.

Years ago, during a difficult time when my husband was seriously ill and we were without income, friends brought us boxes of canned peaches and tomatoes, plentiful in Ontario at the time. We ate peaches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We ate tomatoes, drank tomato juice and stewed them with everything as if the tomato was the only food in the world. I was tired of our manna of peaches and tomatoes. Yet in that desperate time in our family life, there was enough because God’s presence was with us. Enough was enough.

The law of carefree living, freed from anxiety and burdens. Many burdens are related to clutter. We face possession overload. A student told me that the night before the big trip was to begin, her high school tour leader had each student wear the clothing they planned to wear the first day and walk about a mile carrying all their luggage. The next day each person’s luggage got remarkably lighter. Fancy shoes were exchanged for more comfortable ones.

Unfortunately we don’t get a trial run in life. To be overburdened by the clutter of things, noise and motives is to be spiritually endangered.

Our culture invites, encourages and scares us into a life burdened with things to make us seem safe and comfortable. While on a Mennonite Central Committee learning tour in Central America, we toured a wealthy section of a huge city with many poor people. Wealthy homes were surrounded by sturdy stone fences on top of which had been erected a metal fence topped by barbed wire. Few thieves bother with an old model car. The simpler life ensures peace of mind.

The law of covenant community. God told the Israelites to stay away from the Canaanites in the new land, to remain a separate people. Former missionary John Driver writes about Christians being “God’s contrast society.” We’re different. We have a different lifestyle because we have a different purpose in life. We are a people, the body of Christ, not just a group of individuals, each enjoying our private faith.

The uncluttered life has to do with how we fit people into our lives. I recall being a guest in a home where all chairs were placed so they faced a behemoth TV set. As guests we were obviously an obstacle to the host watching a football game and indifferently trying to keep conversation going.

In another home, the man of the house watched TV with a radio nestled in his lap to catch two games at the same time. At dinner he brought the radio to his end of the table while he caught the TV game out of the corner of his eye. I felt like an intruder.

Clutter diminishes the value of relationships. Clutter substitutes for people. Clutter encourages us to live apart from the covenant community and spend time and energy on our things. Clutter encourages us to lose sight of the dream of shalom, a harmonious caring community. A simpler life frees our schedules to invite people into our lives.

The law of justice for the dispossessed, the poor, stranger, widows and Levites. Quaker John Woolman saw the roots of slavery in the desire to have more of this world’s goods, so he set himself against ownership of one human being by another. That meant setting himself against those who supported slavery. The frugal Christian is concerned with putting justice for people above property.

How can we fight clutter? John V. Taylor in Enough Is Enough suggests Christians start a joyful resistance movement against everything that militates against the simple life. But to avoid being too serious about it and pushing a load of guilt on others. He recommends three slogans as part of our daily offensive ritual against clutter:

Every time you watch TV with the children and a commercial comes on, holler together: “You’ve got to be kidding.”

When you are tempted to buy something, tell yourself: “The price tag is too high, not just in terms of my budget but also the environment and what it will take to maintain it.”

When you are about to add to the clutter, remind yourself: “I can’t take it with me.”

The prophet Isaiah said it simply, “Why spend money for what is not bread?”

Yes, why?

Katie Funk Wiebe is a Mennonite author who lives in Hillsboro, Kan.