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Why Our Spiritual Lives are Important
Anabaptist Faith and Simple Living
Contemplation and Meditation
Faith or Logic – a Puzzle for Modern People
Changing our Behavior
Resources and Links

Why Our Spiritual Lives are Important

It is out of the depths of our faith that our motivation, drive, and energy come for living a simpler, richer, and more demanding way of life. Without practicing our faith regularly, it becomes more difficult to sustain it, and in fact we lose the primary reason for embarking on this way of living in the first place.

Anabaptist Faith and Simple Living

Simple living, as it is defined in this website, has its origins in the simplicity of several centuries of Anabaptist faith and life. The Anabaptists (meaning“re-baptizers”) include the Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, and Church of the Brethren. Most people know these denominations from their rustic ways of life, which traditionally have not used modern technologies. Although many conservative Anabaptist groups still live as “plain people,” using horses and buggies, etc., many have also become quite acculturated and use many of the bells and whistles of modern life while still striving to live simply in comparison to mainstream culture.

However the rustic nature of conservative Anabaptist communities is deceptive. The point is not to preserve a picturesque old-fashioned lifestyle or to be closer to nature, or even to live green. Rather it is about being humble, not being driven by our egos or consumer culture, and instead caring for and loving our families, communities, and other people above all else. God directs us not to worry about or pursue the accumulation of money and stuff, because pursuing it distracts us from our real reason for existence – caring for others and for what God has given us. This is the historic spiritual heart of simple living.

If the real driver of simplicity is faith, then it has to be nourished so that our daily lives have direction, energy and commitment. This is true for all of us regardless of our denominational background. It is tremendously helpful to regularly remove ourselves from the frenetic, frantic commercial world in order to deepen our relationship with God, to know who we are, to know whose we are, and where we are going.

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Contemplation and Meditation

Twenty-first Century Christians have unfortunately lost many of the daily spiritual practices of previous centuries. In some ways this has led us into a spiritual desert, making it harder for us to have spiritual lives deep enough to make fundamental changes in how we live. This is important because, as followers of Jesus, we are supposed to become “new People” (“new man” in Paul’s parlance). For many of us, that means something akin to a personality change. Without deep spiritual practices supporting us, a change of that magnitude is quite difficult and temporary at best.

(For an excellent discussion of the reasons we need to recover these old practices and how to do it, read Brian McLaren’s recent book Finding Our Way Again, Thomas Nelson, 2008.)

Two ancient practices which anyone taking up simple living should invest some time in, are meditation and contemplation.

Most of us are used to traditional prayer in which we talk directly to God, offering praise, confessions, and various kinds of petitions. Such traditional prayer is good for many things, but it can become weighted-down with words, reasoning, and logic which sometimes prevents a more basic emotional, spiritual connection with God. Contemplation is a way of allowing our emotions, or our soul to be in direct contact with God or the Holy Spirit without the need for intervening words or intellectualization.

Contemplation focuses a deep awareness on a particular person, thing, scriptural passage, problem, or issue, while trying to penetrateand understand it directly with our consciousness rather than our intellects. Mantras are sometimes used and it is also done without words - but always without thinking.  It is usually done with pure attention on the subject as though seeing or feeling it for the first time. This, of course, is very hard for westerners to do! But with a little effort and practice it can be done.

The results can be transforming. The goal of contemplation is to develop insight and peace through bare awareness to what is being contemplated. The important thing is not what happens during a session, but how our everyday lives are changed.  It can "...open awareness of our hearts toward our experiences and people with whom we share life…” as Bill Callahan says in his book Noisy Contemplation (Quixote Center, 2008).

Bill’s notion of “noisy contemplation” is to contemplate people, situations, and problems out in the midst of noisy, everyday business rather than in a quiet meditation room, which is what he suspects Jesus himself did during his hectic life.

There are many forms of meditation, including ancient Christian, Buddhist and Hindu practices. Many people have heard of, or practiced Zen, Vipassana, or Transcendental Meditation as well as Yoga and Tai Chi.

Some Christians believe that there is no room for Eastern-style meditation in the church, while a large number of other Christians have become part of a movement to reclaim ancient Christian meditation and contemplation practices along with Buddhist and Hindu techniques.

These forms all have in common an intense focus on a single point – a wall, a candle, a graphic design, or the meditator’s own breath - and through this, finding direct perception of phenomena as opposed to consciously thinking about them. The goal is to achieve insight (seeing the world as it truly is) and to find peace by cutting through the distracting verbiage and intellectualizations we all habitually carry in our heads which distorts reality.

The author practices Vipassana (Vee pas´an ah), an insight or mindfulness meditation. It enables people to alter their consciousness so they are able to observe themselves, others, and the world around them without analysis or criticism so they can see things without making judgments. It is non-egotistic alertness and appreciation. It’s goal is to enable us to be aware of the significance of every-thing in God’s world with equanimity, and to treat the world and God’s people with compassion. This is a major attitudinal shift from ego-based living to a more peaceful, respectful, understanding and acceptance of the world. When practiced in combination with Christian prayer it can make our prayers and our spiritual lives as a whole come alive.

Although Christ taught us to be loving and compassionate towards everyone and not to pile up money and stuff for ourselves (the foundation of simple living), it is often very difficult for us to simply “change!” and behave as he taught. And unfortunately, He didn’t provide us with specific skills or practices that might help us attain that rare kind of compassion instead of being controlled by our egos.

Contemplation and meditation provide a means of making these daunting changes so that we can more fully follow Christ’s example, and more authentically practice Christian simple living.

Christian simple living is compassion in action, every minute of the day.

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A Note on Faith and Logic:
a Puzzle for Modern People

There are many secular organizations and movements that advocate for simple living, sustainable living, green living, social justice, and other related causes that are also addressed in a Christian simple life. Of course the primary difference between those and a Christian approach is that we do it out of faithfulness to God and not merely because it seems to be good logic.

As modern Western people, our approach to life is pragmatic and logical. We identify problems, analyze them, and try out solutions until the problems are solved. We also tend to use this approach in our faith-lives as well, using the logic and rationality we learned in elementary school.

Our brains are exquisitely wired to use conventional, linear logic  (A + B = C) or reductionistic logic (all things being understood by breaking them down into their constituent parts), so we rely on them for most of our problem solving and planning. That was true for Neanderthal man who had to figure out how to successfully hunt animals and not get killed, as well as NASA engineers designing rocket trajectories. However even particle physicists found that conventional logic can sometimes lead us astray when we use it on very complex tasks, so we need to learn when to use it, and when to rely on a way that sees more deeply into the nature of things.

Human social interactions are among the most complex issues in the world. Ever since the Enlightenment, human history has been filled with huge failures in the application of simple logic to major problems (let’s count the wars) because the problems were far too complex to yield to conventional logic alone.

The Christian Faith is non-linear and non-reductionistic, although over the centuries there have been many attempts to force it into conventional logic frameworks. All of these efforts at systematic theology have been quite incomplete because in their linearity they can’t describe the full breadth and depth of the faith, and the unknowable God on which it rests.

Our faith sees the world and its problems in ‘wholes’: large concepts and issues spread over entire systems, long periods of history, and across cultures and nations. It paints pictures of this deep reality that the non-linear part of our minds can grasp. In fact the word ‘holy’ comes from the root word for ‘whole’. It is about seeing universal concepts and truths rather than trying to understand each issue in isolation from all the others. It embodies wisdom, history, experience, principles, values, and ways of knowing that linear logic cannot encompass. Even this paragraph is an attempt to explain in a linear, reductionistic way, a phenomenon that can’t really be explained, but rather, must be experienced ‘holistically’.

So how do we make these two seemingly different ways of thinking (faith and logic) work together in our lives? After all, conventional logic works very well for us at some levels, like knowing when to cross the street, which vegetables to buy, which car will be the most efficient for us, and when we should see a doctor. At the same time, many issues we face demand much broader and deeper ways of thinking, and the more complex the problem, the more we need the long, broad view of faith.

Our faith contains wisdom so profound that only God understands, and that only his son was able to translate usefully for us.

So the chicken and egg question is: Which comes first for us, and which is the real driver in our lives: our faith or conventional logic? We might like to say “our faith” since the Church expects that answer. But as a practical matter in the 21st Century, it’s usually the other way around. We are logical people first, who secondarily apply our faith principles to our logic when the logic seems to fail us.

Does conventional logic with a simple overlay of Christian values get us where we need to go?

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Changing our Behavior

Following Christ, which is the goal of Christian simple living, is about behavior change – one of the hardest and most complex things we’ll ever face. It’s about changing life-long, ingrained habits and mind-sets, and getting control of our egos. For nearly 100 years psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and other behavioral scientists have been using research based on the logic of science to help us change our dysfunctional behaviors, but at best, with mixed results. Most will tell you how difficult this business is.

Recent research tells us, for example, that within a year of a major cardiac event, 80% of patients have stopped all or part of their prescribed medications, diet or exercise programs. Even In the face of death, 80% of people are not able to change their behavior regardless of the "inescapable" logic!

Linear logic alone fails us, and it is in the thousands of complicated, confusing, or stressful situations we will face in our lives, where our spiritual life will have a much greater impact on us, and our communities as well. Changing our lives and sustaining the change for a lifetime (Christian simple living is not a temporary, trendy ‘lifestyle’ change) will happen if it is rooted and nurtured by a deep, regular practice of our faith, rather than by only thinking-through the logical benefits of making a change. A lot of people have died from 2nd heart attacks after only thinking through the logical benefits of exercise!

There are many ways of enriching our faith practices. Sometimes the richest come from using an entirely new practice or going about familiar practices in a new way. Below are links to Websites that provide resources on a variety of practices that you might find helpful.

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Resources and Links

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kid's educational resource Transformation Puppet and Story Works logo

Puppetry for Christian living and simplicity

New community Project Logo

Please visit our collaborating organization, The New Community Project website: 
www.newcommunityproject.org