Everywhere I look, I see people talking about wanting a simpler life. They want to get out of the rat race, out of the city, or just plain slow down.
It’s a natural response to the harried pace of modern life. We live in what is perhaps the busiest time in human history. Sure, we may not be as physically active as our ancestors, but because of the internet our minds are overloaded by information and choices in a way that was never possible before. So it’s not surprising that a lot of folks are looking around thinking, “Is it just me? Does anyone else feel like they are drowning? I want out!”
About five years ago, feeling that strong pull to simplify, my wife and I began making moves to create a more sustainable pace of life for our family. And what started with moving closer to work and downsizing to a single car eventually led to a mid-thirties career change and a cross-country move, all in pursuit of a slower, simpler life.
I wrestled with these changes a lot.
- Is simplifying the best way to honor God with my life?
- Is this just a trend, an expression of laziness, a mid-life crisis, or some escapist daydream?
- Or is there really something to this pull to slow down that so many of us seem to be feeling?
If you’re a Christian who is thinking of slowing down and you’re wrestling with some of these same questions, I want to share some thoughts on simple living and some strategies for pursuing it.
A Worthy Pursuit
One hang up Christians can have about simplifying their lives, is they conflate simplicity with laziness. The Scriptures condemn laziness as foolish, selfish, and not God-honoring (Ecclesiastes 10:18; Proverbs 6:9, 12:24, 13:4, 19:15, 16; 20:12, 13; 26:12–15; etc). But idleness and busyness are not binary options. Rejecting the hurried life does not by necessity mean embracing indolence. It doesn’t have to be a choice between pedal-to-the-metal burnout and sitting around on the couch all day.
I like how one Reddit user put in a recent post in r/simpleliving describing how he sold his business and bought a farm:
Turns out, slow living doesn’t mean not working. It means working without the frenzy. My days now start with sunlight, not Slack, not the ping of another “urgent” request. And the wildest part? The work is better. Without the clutter, I think clearly. Without the burnout, I solve problems with patience instead of panic.
I’ve found it more helpful to think about it using a different spectrum. Instead of asking, “how busy must I be to be faithful?” we can view it as a question of depth vs. shallowness. I suspect that most of us suffer not from too much but from too many. I can do dozens of things poorly, or I can do a small handful of things extremely well. What drives us mad is that sense that we can’t keep up with all of the various demands, or that we can’t give adequate attention to the things that really matter. We crave depth, but modern life has us jumping from puddle to puddle.
More fundamentally, simplicity is a question of stewardship: How can I best manage my time, talents, and treasure? For some, that may be a fast-paced life—God has designed some of us to thrive at that speed. But many believers were made to do their best work in a lower gear. For those people, simplicity is almost a necessity for stewardship.
Here’s the bottom line: While selfish motives can taint our desire for simplicity, simple does not equal lazy. That desire for simplicity may be the Lord nudging you toward the life He wants for you, where your faithfulness can best blossom and where He has housed those good works He planned in advance for you to walk in (Ephesians 2:10).
How to Simplify
In theory, simplicity is the easiest thing in the world—just do less! But it’s frustratingly elusive. You would think our lives would naturally gravitate toward simplicity. But for most of us, the opposite seems to be true. Like a peace-seeking missile, busyness always seems to find us.
You’ve got to fight for a simpler life. Let me offer a few strategies that might help.
1. Know What You Want
Busyness is a byproduct of a lack of clarity. When we aren’t clear on our values, we borrow them from those around us.
When we adopt the world’s priorities, we can find ourselves being pulled in three different directions at once, chasing three different dreams at the same time, none of them our own. Until, one day, we wake up to realize we’ve been chasing the idols of status, money, comfort, and people pleasing. What a tragedy it would be to waste a life chasing things you didn’t even care about, not because it was the right thing to do but simply because that’s what everyone else said was important!
If you want a simpler life, you have to know what you want out of life. Specifically, you have to know how you want to invest your life for God’s glory.
I’m going to assume as a baseline that you want to pursue holiness, closeness with Christ, and spiritual maturity. If not, you should. And if you need additional motivation, it’s worth noting that the Scriptures always present clarity of direction as downstream from closeness with God. Delighting in the Lord, trusting in Him entirely, and acknowledging Him in all things are necessary pre-requisites to straight paths (Psalm 37:4; Proverbs; see also Proverbs 16:3 and Romans 12:2).
When I say “know what you want,” I’m talking about the specifics of your life. Your individual call to steward the unique life God has entrusted to you. We’re talking stewardship.
This will look different for every Christian, but God-glorifying pursuits have one thing in common: They all seek faithfulness. And faithfulness doesn’t have to be epic. It can be the simple faithfulness of quietly raising your children, working your job “as unto the Lord,” or building a business that truly serves people.
Whatever God has put on your heart, my point is that you need to get clear about it. You’ve got to develop conviction about what exactly you would like to pursue in this life. We get so busy because we believe the lie that we can have it all. But simplicity demands trade-offs. Only clear priorities allow you to say no to the good for the sake of the great. So get clear on what you want.
2. Question Your Current Path
I knew I wanted a simpler life for a long time, but my trajectory had no chance of connecting with those aspirations. If I had stayed on my career path, I would have been comfortable and done meaningful work (I had a great job, working for an incredible ministry). But I started to see that my path would never allow me to pursue the depth I really craved.
For years, I kind of shrugged off that nagging feeling, thinking maybe someday things would magically fall into place. Or I would justify not making a change because I could honor God where I was. And I do believe you can honor God wherever He places you. But that does not relieve us from the duty to how best to steward what He’s given us. I’d claim not making the changes I knew I needed to was contentment, but in truth, it was fear masquerading as piety.
When I finally got serious, sat down, and wrote my aspirations for the next 5 years, I was faced with the cold, hard truth. Unless I made some radical changes, I would likely never have the life I said I wanted. I wouldn’t have the time with my kids or to think, write, and build things that would really serve people with the unique giftings God had given me.
I knew what I wanted, and I was convinced it was a better way to steward what the Lord had entrusted to me. Now, I just needed to make a choice. It was time to stop dreaming and start deciding.
3. Make the Necessary Sacrifices
For us, it meant the near-term sacrifices of financial security, stability, and comfort. Leaving a great job and striking out on my own was scary. We put everything on the line. For me personally, in the past couple of years, simplicity has meant going further still; leaving social media, getting rid of my smartphone, and holding the line against the pull toward busyness. But I suspect the biggest obstacle that holds us back from simplifying is the reputational cost.
To an outsider, your moves to simplify may seem arbitrary or even foolish. When you sacrifice things the world holds dear—money, status, opportunity—you leave people scratching their heads. You open yourself up to whispers behind your back, and that’s painful.
But the truth is, you are constantly making a sacrifice. It’s just that we usually sacrifice the better for the worse. Relationships, church community, our walk with the Lord, the joys of meaningful work, the pleasures of creation, or just a good meal—these are the good things! The best things in life really are free. And yet these are the very things we sacrifice to the gods of busyness and Mammon! We crave more and we end up with nothing.
Simplicity is not a virtue in itself. It is simplicity in pursuit of something greater that matters. And I suspect that what we crave isn’t less, it’s more. More time, more depth, more meaning. We want to fill our days with work that makes a difference, relationships that matter, and homes that are a haven from the busy world.
The great irony is that the simple life is the easiest thing to get! It’s a matter of subtraction, not addition. But more often than not, it’s covetousness that keeps us from contentment (Luke 12:15).
The path to simplicity is paved with sacrifice, but in my experience, it’s been well worth the price.
