I’m sitting here this morning sipping on {homemade - no tea bags} ginger tea, contemplating the rental application for a new house that I’m planning on submitting later today. A few days ago, our landlords informed us that their employer was transferring them back to the area, and per a clause in our lease, they are terminating our lease on December 18.

The news threw us into a state of stress, complication {who wants to move the week before Christmas?}, thinking about our future, mulling over finances. It’s been an interesting week {and I say interesting with that inflection in my voice that means it’s not-really-a-positive-type-of-interesting.}

We love our house. It’s a cozy little townhouse, big enough for my violin studio in the basement and small enough that we’re not drowning in it. It has a jacuzzi in the master bath that is good for de-stressing and unwinding, and a nice kitchen that can handle all of my cooking adventures. And we have to say goodbye.

We started looking at houses online, and quickly discovered that houses like ours don’t exist. Or rather, the rent for our house is dramatically underpriced. Similar houses cost more, houses that cost the same are pretty trashy. Well, we thought, our salary has increased substantially since first started paying this rent...maybe we can afford a little more.

So we started at looking at slightly more expensive houses. Nicer houses. Newer houses. Bigger houses. Houses we could stay in for 3, 4, 5 or more years. Houses we could have a family in, houses we could open up to community. Houses where we could actually have guests who could stay in their own room. Houses that could be a springboard for relationship, for provocative conversation.

Houses that unleashed a whole host of dreams that we have about our future, our family, our desires for birth and parenting and friendship and generosity and hospitality and community.

And yet...

Voices in the back of my head started attacking me. This is excessive, they cried. Look at all this space! You’re just buying into the American Dream, the upwardly mobile lifestyle that you’ve said you’re not interested in.

I talked through it with Mike last night. I told him the only thing holding me back was a small bit of guilt, a feeling that maybe I was buying into the consumeristic culture around me - or at least the feeling that it would appear that way to some people.

As always, he helped bring things into perspective.

“Well, what IS consumerism?” He asked.

The way he asked it, I knew he wasn’t looking for the obvious, surface answer. As we continued talking, he pointed out that like anything else, consumerism and greed are not primarily about behavior. You can’t look at the house someone lives in or the car they drive as evidence that they are consumeristic or obsessed with more stuff. Consumerism, greed, obsession with money or stuff - it’s primarily a heart issue. A contentment issue.

Are you content with what you have?
Do you feel like a nicer house will make your life better?
Do you feel like you NEED it to be happy?
Do you want a nicer house simply for the status?
Do you want space just so you can fill it with more stuff?

As he asked me the questions, I realized that none of these things - these heart issues - are true of me. I am content with where I am; unfortunately outside forces mean I can’t stay. I don’t want more space so I can have more stuff; I want space so that I can have children, so that I can invite people into my home to stay awhile, to let down their burdens and feel the sense of home and rest and peace that maybe they don’t have anywhere else. I want a nice kitchen so that I can make good, healthy, life-nourishing food not just for my family but for others, so that I can invite them into a way of nourishment that is more than just physical.

I read this post about excess recently and it was a big reason for a lot of the thoughts I’ve been having. The questions she raises - what is excess? Is one person’s excess different than that of another person? - are questions that anyone serious about the way of Christ should think through.

However, I think it’s too easy to fall into the trap of pointing the finger at the person who might make more money than you do, who might live in a nicer house than you do or drive a nicer car than you do. That’s excessive, we say - that right there is consumerism.

But is it? Can you see consumerism from the outside? Can you see greed from the outside? Or is it something that is inside our hearts, telling us that our wants are needs? Telling us that buying a house should be our goal in life because, well, that’s the American Dream? Telling us that we’re better than that person over there because we have a nicer house...or because we don’t?

This is where it’s easier to deal with the outer “appearance” of consumerism than to look at the heart, I think. Isn’t it just as easy to be obsessed about money and stuff when you have very little? It’s easy to believe that “stewardship” and “frugality” and “godliness” dictate that you live simply but build up thousands of dollars in savings...savings that you hoard so carefully that you never want to open up your savings and use that money generously - even for a good cause, even if you could help out someone in need. I’ve been well-exposed to this side of “Christian stewardship”, which frankly isn’t any less obsessed with money and stuff than the person who charges indiscriminately to their credit cards and lives more expensively than they can afford.

Either way, what we do with our money and our stuff is too important to us. Whether it’s the person who lives simply and yet obsesses about their savings, net worth, and investment bottom line, or the person who lives extravagantly above and beyond what they can afford - money and the love of money dominate their lives.

It’s easy to get sucked in; I know this about myself. It’s easy to believe that “wants” are “needs”. But fighting consumerism doesn’t mean that you have to live in a shack or wear paper bags. It means that you have to deal with your heart, your lack of contentment, your lack of happiness and all the things you are looking to in order to fill the void.

Dealing with your heart is much harder, isn’t it, than just drawing a line and saying “anything nicer than this is consumerism”? Because as long as you’re below the line, you don’t have to deal with the greed in your own heart. You don’t have to deal with the fact that you bought _x_ not because you needed it or because of its functionality but because it made you feel cooler.

I read an article many years ago about music and pop culture, and a line from it has consistently resonated as I’ve approached many issues such as this over the years:

It is easier to be legalistic than it is to be wise.

It is easier to say that “being a follower of Christ looks like this” and then try to live up to the outer image, not realizing that being a follower of Christ means being in relationship with him and letting him deal with your heart.

That’s scary.

And when God is dealing with your heart, does it really matter what type of house you live in? Or does it matter that you realize it doesn’t really belong to you, that maybe you should hold “money” and “stuff” loosely because it could all be gone tomorrow - and if your contentment goes deeper than your stuff you’ll be okay, but if your stuff brings you contentment it’ll feel like your life is over?

This whole house-adventure-thing has opened up so many dreams that we have...dreams that revolve not around a house but a home - a family, a community, a life of relationships and hospitality. In the next few years, we hope to start a family. We will be able to pay off the last of our debt, and start saving - not in order to hoard money and not to put into another {upwardly mobile} house, but so that we can live generously, adventurously, freely.

That’s pretty cool. And it’s way better than more stuff.