LIE: More is better

Lie: More is better.

Truth: Less is better.

The maxim – less is more – is now a commonplace, but still seems counterintuitive. Most however, would agree that the accumulation of more and more stuff has a point of diminishing returns. Witness the hoarders or even the cluttered homes and closets of the average suburbanite.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Consider these statistics cited by professional organizer Regina Lark: The average U.S. household has 300,000 things, from paper clips to ironing boards.[1]

The volume of artificial things has exploded in the last one hundred years: coasters, bookmarks, disposable cups, plates, sporks, watches, dental floss, plastic bags, dog treats, mechanical pencils, light switches, welcome mats, pillows, fans, magazines, lamps and on it goes.

But that’s just the physical things. The last one hundred years has also seen the proliferation of virtual things: TV images, web pages, radio transmissions, podcasts,  GPS directions, email and SMS messages, smart phone notifications, video games, application data, and on and on.

Let’s wade through this clutter to find the high ground: here are three reasons that less really is more:

1  Having less reminds us that we need God (see also the lie: I don’t need God).

The Lord duly warned the Israelites, even before they entered the Promised Land not to forget him:

When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you. Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today, lest—when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage . . . then you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.’ “And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.  — Deuteronomy 8:10–14, 17–18 [emphasis added]

The dynamic here is quite simple: the better provisioned for our comfort we are, the more likely we will presume to trust ourselves and consequently ‘forget the Lord.’ The reverse is also true: the less provisioned we are, the more likely we will ‘remember’ the Lord’s power and provision and put our trust in him. Of course, we have to realize that God does not require us to become poor and takes no pleasure in keeping us poor, destitute, or enslaved. He simply warns us that, in man’s present sinful state, we are prone to forget him in times of abundance.

The phrase ‘forget the Lord your God’ is particularly apt, especially for us Christians in the west who have so much compared to our brothers and sisters in the Third World. But we too easily dismiss this warning. If we’re honest, most of us will admit that this phrase – forget the Lord – quite accurately describes our condition in the midst of our stuff. As Christians, many times we go about our day and – though we don’t intend or want to –literally forget the Lord and end up relying on ourselves and our systems, doing our own will and not God’s

2  Having and speaking less focuses us on what is truly important.

The best training environment is one that strips it down to its essentials. For example, in the military, recruits must give up practically every civilian comfort – heads shaved, free time denied, phone calls and visits curtailed. They cannot leave the base and their words are strictly constrained – all to discipline them to focus on their new primary role.

But the phrase less is more is true, not just of things, but also of words; meaning gets lost in the abundance of words. Verbosity confuses. Too often we use words to manipulate and control others. Words become our tools to pry and prod and push when words should simply express our truth and God’s truth. We partner with him in expressing the truth in love, letting him by the Spirit of Truth, do the convincing and shaping.

The Spirit also constrained Jesus before his ministry began:

Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry. — Luke 4:1–2

How the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, we don’t know, but it’s clear that Jesus must have felt the intense need for a focused and solitary time with God to prepare for his public ministry. We would do well to recognize the triggers for these times and seasons in our own lives and learn to listen to the Spirit. We would also do well to learn from the Master to unplug and retreat, and to fast and pray.

So just because we can use some thing or some message doesn’t mean that we should or are allowed. Just because we can eat a Pop Tart, wear Brooks Brothers shirts, drive a Mercedes, dominate a conversation or interrupt continually to get our opinion across, doesn’t mean that we should. The accumulation of these things dissipates us and we too easily lose sight of what’s truly important – our mission in life.

3  Having less frees us to love people better and more.

It’s very simple: things versus people. The more things we have, the more time, attention and energy is required to spend on them: dust and clean them, keep track of them, organize, store, maintain, and fix them. And consequently, we have less time to focus on the people in our lives – their needs and desires and dreams.

But we’re not talking about the pursuit of minimalism. That in itself is not the answer. Minimalism is good but not as an end in itself. Simply having or trying to arrange our lives to be content with less may lead to a kind of self-righteous pride. Our minimalism must not be so much a goal as a result of our pursuit of God and his calling on our lives. And depending on our calling and culture, this minimalism will look different. Some will rightly possess significantly more than others. For example, compare the lifestyles of a single missionary in Uganda to the mother of four in suburban Tampa, Florida.

The distraction of things, including online or virtual things, robs us of our ability to feel empathy – that ability to sincerely feel the pain of others. And empathy is critical because it forms the foundation of love.

Nicholas Carr in his book The Shallows, What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, cites recent studies on how our brains are ‘rewiring’ due to our exposure to the plethora of distractions of online media:

Psychologists have long studied how people experience fear and react to physical threats, but it’s only recently that they’ve begun researching the sources of our nobler instincts [empathy and compassion]. What they’re finding is that . . . the higher emotions emerge from neural processes that “are inherently slow.” . . . The experiment, say the scholars, indicates that the more distracted we become, the less able we are to experience the subtlest, most distinctively human forms of empathy, compassion, and other emotions. “For some kinds of thoughts, especially moral decision-making about other people’s social and psychological situations, we need to allow for adequate time and reflection,” cautions Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a member of the research team. “If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people’s psychological states.” It would be rash to jump to the conclusion that the Internet is undermining our moral sense. It would not be rash to suggest that, as the Net reroutes our vital paths and diminishes our capacity for contemplation, it is altering the depth of our emotions as well as our thoughts.[2]

So it may be that the proliferation of virtual things, even over physical things, actually causes more impairment, at least in our ability to feel and show real compassion. In other words, it seems the more we use the Internet, the less we can love others.

Here’s how Jesus put it:

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. — Matthew 6:24

Mammon is materialism. It’s the god that dictates (falsely promises) a life characterized by the importance and accumulation of things – both physical and virtual. It is opposed to God and insidiously works against God and who he is.

The greatest commandment of the Lord and his highest value is to love, both himself and people. And what frees us to love must be of utmost importance.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/21/health/la-he-keeping-stuff-20140322

[2] Carr, Nicholas, The Shallows, W. W. Norton, New York, 2010, pp 220–221.

See also the introduction to this category: Lies attacking ‘the good life.’