The Freedom of Simplicity: Finding Harmony in a Complex World by Richard Foster

Contemporary culture is plagued by the passion to possess. The unreasoned boast abounds that the good life is found in accumulation, that “more is better.” Indeed, we often accept this notion without question, with the result that the lust for affluence in contemporary society has become psychotic: it has completely lost touch with reality. Furthermore, the pace of the modern world accentuates our sense of being fractured and fragmented. We feel strained, hurried, breathless…

Christian simplicity frees us from this modern mania. It brings sanity to our compulsive extravagance, and peace to our frantic spirit…. It allows us to see material things for what they are – goods to enhance life, not to oppress life. People once again become more important than possessions. Simplicity enables us to live lives of integrity in the face of the terrible reality of our global village.

Christian simplicity is not just a faddish attempt to respond to the ecological holocaust that threatens to engulf us, nor is it born out of frustration with technocratic obesity. It is a call given to every Christian.  The witness to simplicity is profoundly rooted in the biblical tradition, and most perfectly exemplified in the life of Jesus Christ. In one form or another, all the devotional masters have stressed its essential nature. It is a natural and necessary outflow of the Good News of the Gospel having taken root in our lives.

While it is important to stress that Christian simplicity is more than a reaction to the modern crisis, it should also be underscored that simplicity is keenly relevant to the massive problems of our world. We are witnessing poverty and starvation on a scale unprecedented in human history. By the time we fall asleep tonight another ten thousand individuals will have died of starvation – over four hundred per hour. Many more millions live on the brink of extinction – malnourished, aimless, desperate...

Simplicity is both a grace and a discipline... What we do does not give us simplicity, but it does put us in the place where we can receive it.

KEY FACTS

1.  Wealth is distributed unevenly. North Carolina has a large and growing gap between the state’s wealthiest and poorest families. The richest 5 percent of North Carolina families earn 12 times more than the poorest fifth and 4.3 times more than the middle fifth. 

2. Approximately 2,000,000 North Carolinians have housing problems such as incomplete kitchens or paying over 30 percent of their household income on housing costs (rent/mortgage and utilities). In North Carolina, almost 9,000 households go without heat in the winter; and more than 13,000 homes still lack indoor plumbing.

3.  Research has demonstrated that a 1 percent increase in unemployment corresponds to an approximately 1 million person increase in the number of people without health insurance.   From 2007 to January 2009, the number of uninsured in North Carolina increased by approximately 22.5 percent to between 1.75  - 1.8 million or 21.2-21.7 percent of non-elderly North Carolinians.  

4.  Around 1.1 billion people globally do not have access to improved water supply sources whereas 2.4 billion people do not have access to any type of improved sanitation facility. About 2 million people die every year due to diarrheal diseases; most of them are children less than 5 years of age. 

5.  Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger: three-fourths of these deaths are children under 5. Over 31 million Americans must rely on emergency food sources or go hungry and 40% are children. We could provide basic nutrition and health care for all people in developing countries by spending $13 billion more each year-that's $4 billion less than what Americans and Europeans spend on pet food. 

SOURCES

1.  “State income gap widens, April 16, 2008,” http://www.philanthropyjournal.org/nc/ncnews/state-income-gap-widens.
2.  North Carolina Housing Coalition, “Housing Facts and Statistics in NC,” www.nchousing.org/research_publications/facts_stats/index_html
3.  North Carolina Institutes of Medicine, “Updating Uninsured Estimates for Current Economic Conditions: State Specific Estimates, March 2009,” http://www.nciom.org/data/FindingsBrief_UninsuredUnemployment_Mar2009.pdf; See also North Carolina Institutes of Medicine, “North Carolina’s Increase in the Uninsured: 2007-2009,” http://www.nciom.org/data/DS_2009-01_UninUnemp.pdf
4.  World Health Organization, “Water Supply, sanitation and hygiene development,” http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/hygiene/en/index.html
5.  JustGive, “Hunger & Poverty,” www.justgive.org/guide/subcategories.jsp?catId=14.