Do Faith and Minimalism Belong Together?
Faith and Minimalism. Woah, that’s a big ‘ol topic.
Friends, we’re gonna go a bit deep today even though I worry that this article perhaps won’t do justice to the thoughts I have constantly swirling in my head about this topic. But, I’m going to do my best to share my heart with you.
Here’s my truth for you.
I don’t necessarily weave my faith into everything I share about minimalism and simplifying and decluttering our lives and our homes because I believe that regardless of your beliefs and faith this process will ultimately bring you a change that is unknowingly craved. It’s a peace that will come over you and your family that you didn’t know you were missing and it will solve that chronic unsettled and anxious feeling you’ve been carrying around, perhaps unwittingly, and lay a quiet in your heart that you desire.
My faith has played a crucial role in stepping into this new lifestyle and value system, and I believe that it would in yours too. We can undoubtedly have a mindset of minimalism or simplicity without a belief in God, and we can embrace a belief in God without living in that same minimal mindset and on their own they will both alter your view of the ‘normal’ world. But together, they are a powerhouse of a mindset shift and a deep resonating force that just might leave you forever changed.
Where it all started
A few years ago, when I had hit my breaking point it was a faith in the small voice that said: “enough of this” that led me to make this major life change. You see, I grew up in a family who always provided not only for my needs but for all my wants too. I can’t recall a moment in my childhood when I was left feeling saddened by not having something. As a kid, this is amazing but as an adult, it didn’t necessarily serve me well.
I assumed it was natural to always have what I needed and wanted and I often didn’t understand the difference. Unfortunately, this led me to buy for happiness and fulfillment. I didn’t really know any other way. At the time I didn’t have a true sense of purpose or belonging in my life and so poor decisions led me to spend money without thought and accumulate possessions without regard. I lived in a place of immediate gratification, always searching for the right thing to make me feel whole and complete. The problem was, I really had no idea what I was looking for.
Searching for faith.
I didn’t go searching for God until later in my twenties and by then I was settled into a well-paying career, was accumulating lots of pretty stuff and playing “keep up with the jones’s” without realizing it. But I wasn’t trying to keep up with other’s my age, I was trying to start building a life similar to people who were 10 and 20 years older than me. I was trying to live the life of my parents and other ‘successful’ couples around me. I paid no regard to the fact that they were 20 plus years older than me and that perhaps it wasn’t my time to live that way.
The house, the car, the furniture and clothing, I was spending money as fast as I was making it. I had never learned about saving and investing and what that meant for my lifestyle and my future and so success was measured in stuff. The more stuff, the more successful I was.
So why does this matter when we’re talking about minimalism and faith?
Because we live in a world that defines success with accumulation.
Bigger houses, nicer cars, fuller closets, toy rooms with each year’s latest and greatest gadgets. There are BILLIONS of dollars spent each year to convince you that your happiness and social status DEPEND on what you’ve purchased, accumulated and now store on shelves, in bins and stuffed into drawers.
Recently, I began a new book by Joshua Becker called The More of Less and in it, he talks about how marketers know us better than we know ourselves and they have expertly created a false sense of happiness in ownership. He warns that we need to understand this so that we can guard our hearts (and wallets and homes) against it. He says “Nobody gets to the end of their life wishing they had bought more stuff…because consumption never fully delivers on its promise of fulfillment or happiness”
And here, my sweet friend, is where faith and minimalism meet.
If we’ve accumulated a home full of stuff thinking that the next beautiful throw pillow will finally be the one to complete our couch and we’ll be happy once and for all, or that the next-generation iPhone is the missing piece, then we’re blindingly trying to fill a void that, for me, could only be filled by a relationship with God.
When we believe that material goods are simply that, materials, we can free ourselves of the emotional attachments to them.
We can break from the cycle of believing and behaving as if status and success is based on what we own and where we live and instead, we can begin to put our worth and our value in something bigger than this world.
No matter where we live, no matter how much or how little we own, we are all important. We all matter. We all have a story and a heart to share. We’ve been given gifts to share with others and when we use THAT to change a life, there is a value and feeling of success that comes from a higher power and bigger place then those surface things can ever do. There is simply no tangible item you can add to your collection that will give you that sense of purpose or joy.
Faith, Minimalism and Sentimental Items
When people ask me, “Kelly, how do I part with these sentimental items that came from my mom or my grandparents or my children?” I want to grab their hands and lean in to remind them that these are just items. They are not the memories that were left. It’s the feeling that they evoke that are the memories. It’s the song we recall, the voice we hear, the scents we can somehow smell that reminds us of those people we love so dearly. Yet so many of us have placed a value beyond measure on a tangible item, whether out of guilt or love, even though we may no longer desire to own this item or have the space to store it, it stays.
It’s as if we believe that if remove the item, we remove the person permanently. But we are encouraged to store our treasures in heaven, not here on earth and when I leave this earth I want for my family and friends to be filled with the memories of the times we had together, not feel burdened by the belongings I left them to deal with and fret over.
If I am so wrapped up in caring for those possessions now, I limit my ability to create those memories and relationships that I hope they will recall when I am no longer with them.
Here’s what I am NOT saying
Now, let’s stop here. I am NOT saying you should never own physical memories of those you love. But I am saying you should only own them if
- You have the space to keep them.
- You’re keeping them because you truly enjoy the item itself
- You are not holding on to it out of guilt.
I own a pen from my grandfather, a couple of rings from my grandmother and a metal chicken from her garden that sits proudly in my home. (I have a thing for metal chickens….because minimalism isn’t about getting rid of everything!) Those items make me smile. I have proper space for them, and I don’t keep them out of guilt. I cherish them.
My belief in an eternal life allows me to know that I don’t have to keep these items. I will get to be with these people again one day and until then I can remember them through stories with others, photographs and little things that jog my memory like how seeing black labs and smoking pipes make me think of my grandpa and how clotheslines and sunflowers make me think of my grandma.
Hurried
When we think of simplifying, minimalism and decluttering, we need to reset our hearts to align with our values. This is something I write about often. Without those values telling us the guardrails in which we operate as a person or a family, we can easily get distracted by the hurried world. A loud spoken place telling us that we are only important or good when we’ve made enough money or purchased that next thing. At the end of the day though, it’s exactly that hurried accumulation of ‘stuff’ that leaves us feeling weighed down and trudging through what we once thought was a promised life.
“ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”
I hate to break it to you, but it’s us that hold us back from this truth. We believe that we are fulfilling those plans by living to ‘our fullest potential’ and filling our lives and homes with beautiful and even useful things. But, truly we are holding ourselves back. We are tying ourselves down with added responsibility and work. Instead, we should be freeing our spaces and hearts and mental capacity to give, share and pursue the dreams that we have.
Living with less means a life that is filled with more time.
Tying together faith with a minimalist mindset creates more time to tap into your talents.
It makes more time to care for your health – physically, emotionally and spiritually.
More time to connect in relationship to your spouse, your children or that community of friends you crave so much.
Living with less gives you more financial freedom so that we can give of those resources when the time is right.
It leaves us space to live free to be the hands and feet of Jesus where we might otherwise be held back.
In the end, the only way to intentional simplicity is contentment.
The big take away here that I hope you’ll see is that our belongings are not really the problem. Our contentment is. We belong to a world that breeds discontentment and makes us feel invaluable without more of everything. But we are not meant to subscribe to the rules of the world. We do not live in a world that rewards contentment. We live in a world of more but “life does not exist in the abundance of things” [Luke 12:15].
Our life should exist in living. In all those things that having less allows us to have more of.
When you remove the excess from your life, you will open those white spaces to see what you truly cherish. You’ll step into contentment that you’ll carry with you moving forward. A place where you can appreciate beautiful things without feeling a need to own them. Space where you can own something without it owning you. A feeling of freedom, relaxation, and happiness.
In the world. But not of it.
