Simple living: avoid efficiency

The industrial mindset is obsessed with efficiency, which takes a good thing and reduces it to its outcome, and then starts looking for ways to create abundance, to maximize the outcome—more widgets, or better widgets, or cheaper widgets. Too often we fall into an industrial mindset in our social activities.

• Someone find a preacher’s sermons helpful, and soon enough larger santuaries are built and tape ministries are begun so that more people can benefit from his preaching.
• Someone is thankful for a friend’s help when the new baby comes, and soon enough there are coordinators and sign-up sheets and stockpiled frozen casseroles being dropped off around town so that more people can benefit from hospitality.
• Some families enjoy sharing a meal, and soon enough there are monthly potluck dinners with salads assigned A-J and main courses K-R and desserts S-Z, and hundreds of people fellowshipping by waving to acquaintances as they make their way to their usual circle of friends.
• Some men get together to discuss the state of their church and find it profitable, and soon enough there is a regular men’s meeting with someone in charge of coming up with discussion topics, and a regular meeting for the women so that they can have an evening away from home with their friends, too.
• We teach our children about God and they benefit from it, and soon enough they are being taught about God by an expert on the topic, together with many other children so that the expert’s time is used to maximal effect.

Each one of these starts out as a good thing. For some of them, it may be possible to increase its scale and still keep it a good thing. But we make a mistake if we think that the increased scale itself is a good thing. More is not always better; sometimes enough is enough.

And Jesus said to them, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.”

We need to be sure we are taking God’s good gifts and enjoying them to the fullest as he has given them. His gifts are to be enjoyed now, not stockpiled for future enjoyment.

Then Jesus spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, “What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ So he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.”‘ But God said to him, “Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

This parable is not just about greed, but about the distraction that comes from the pursuit of abundance. Planning for the retirement that never came had distracted the rich man from enjoying the fruits of his labors as they were borne.

Fortunately, it’s not all that hard to identify the good thing which has been obscured by the search for efficiency, and to get back to that good thing, provided you’re willing to just say no to the social pressure to help others strive for abundance:

• Enjoy your preacher’s sermons for what they are, be glad for people when they visit to hear him, encourage those who want tapes to spend their time learning from their own preacher.
• Sign up infrequently, when you know the help will be needed and appreciated, and when you will be able to give the help the attention it deserves (e.g. cooking a hot, fresh, even extravagant meal, rather than thawing and heating a casserole from the stack you keep in your freezer for these increasingly frequent opportunities).
• Go to potlucks if and when you think you would enjoy them, while continuing to give and to accept invitations to share a meal at home.
• Get together with the folks you want to be with when there is a reason for you to be together, rather than showing up for the regularly scheduled meeting to see if anything happens.
• Learn enough to teach your children properly, and then teach them properly.