A Difficult Simplicity
by Jerry Reisig
As the terms “organic” and “natural,” have become increasingly watered down and Buddhist meditation has become a corporate means to increase worker productivity, simplicity—the deepening of spiritual connection while letting go of external constraints—has become a real estate slogan for guilt free living: the move from a 4,000 sq. ft. house to a more manageable 2,500 sq. ft. gated condo. In spite of the appropriation of this term by the very forces against which it stands, there are probably few times in our own history when spiritual Simplicity is so needed. At a time of global warming, the constant threat of military conflict, and increasing violence in our country and throughout the world, it is time to once again look at Simplicity to see if it might provide us with a greater insight into ourselves and our history.
Seventeenth Century Calvinist Puritans hinted that everything that was superfluous, including “elegant colorful clothes, sumptuous houses, [and] refined tastes” was an external sign of “lust; greed; [and] pride,” and amounted to a “spiritual felony,” an affront to the Godliness according to the Commandments. The superfluous things not only obscure the “pure” and Godly, but sap energy and focus away from living a life according to God’s commandments.
Simplicity is not goal-directed behavior, but is rather spiritually centered behavior that is the fruit of the Spirit, an encounter with what Quakers refer to as “the Light, the Truth, the Christ within.” According to Fox, generally regarded as the founder of Quakerism, all humans have “that of God within,” which can be best understood as the hunger and thirst after God. Therefore, anything that is not from God but seeks to resolve this hunger and thirst is to be avoided or eliminated. Otherwise the superfluous world threatens to dim the inner Light.
As Simplicity is always an expression of individual spiritual experience, it cannot be reduced to a set of societal rules. Rufus Jones claims that there is neither a “fixed standard” nor a “calculus” of Simplicity, that Simplicity “for one person often seems very complex and extravagant for another.” Instead Simplicity represents a wide range of choices in behavior that allow an individual to live with “utter honesty of heart and life… before God and in relation with our fellowmen.” This utter honesty of heart is one of the essential components of a simple life and trust is its currency, requiring transparency of heart in all civil exchanges, fulfilling promises both to God and to others. The difficulty in keeping one’s word points to the desire to please all people by saying yes to all things, while making it impossible to complete any of those things on time.
Simplicity is both affirmation and negation: while affirming the primary relationship with God and community, it rejects the waste of resources, the authority of wealth, and the power of violence that results from the envy for what others have. In this sense, simplicity is always social, for the way one organizes one’s life directly or indirectly affects the lives of others. According to Fox social fashions force people to “alter their fashions… follow them, and run into them” so that they are no longer able to discern the world. They “cannot judge the world, but the world will rather judge you.” Fashion need not be limited to clothing, but may include all inducements to pleasure or success that mask the true hunger and thirst within. These fashions are false sirens that sweetly call us to spend more than we can afford, work longer than we are able, and drink more than we can hold in order to give us the strength to spend and work even more. In our acceptance of the inducements of the world over leadings from God, we give up the ability and right to criticize the world that we have embraced.
Simplicity is always both personal and social/communal in nature and affects the world as the world attempts to affect it. James Nayler, an important early Quaker leader, speaks of the denial of “pleasures, profits, ease and liberty” in order to “hold forth a chaste conversation in the power and life of gentleness, meekness, faithfulness & truth” in order to “convince your enemies whom you pray for.” We not only pray for our enemies, but we also present ourselves in a way that is an inducement to them as well. The results of Simplicity are not only lives of personal piety and a direct relationship with God, but also communal lives that are “patterns, examples in all countries, places, islands, nations… carriage and life [that] may preach among all sorts of people, and to them.” The Quaker notion of “answering that of God within” refers to the way in which our lives in simple conversation with God can provide answers that of God in others, the hole in the heart that the world can never truly fill.
Simplicity shows itself in all areas of life: speech, dress, and demeanor. It is the fruit of choices based not on the wealth and power of the world, but on the power of the Spirit that can grow and flourish in all of us. For Thomas Head, Simplicity is a dance of the “way we provide for food, clothing, and shelter; the way we distribute income, collect taxes, control money, and spend public funds; the way we structure the use of time; the way we express our feelings and beliefs,” all of which “condition our spirits and reflect our state of being.” This dance mirrors the inner self with the outer self, as the outer self informs the world of the truth that has been found within. According to Richard Foster, “Simplicity is an inward reality that results in an outward lifestyle.” Both the inward and outward realities are essential and we “deceive ourselves” if we believe that we can live outwardly simple without becoming inwardly simple as well.
Simplicity is not a battle between living inwardly or outwardly, for it always involves both inner and outer conditions, a “singleness of purpose, sincerity and honesty within” and without. The inner self and the outer self merge into a complete and consistent person, which is witnessed by an insistence on honesty and transparency in all parts of one’s life and a determination to “walk the talk.” This witness to Simplicity is an “utter honesty of heart and life…sincerity of soul before God and in relation with our fellowmen,” a struggle to be both what we profess to God and how we act with others.
Foster suggests that the opposite of simplicity is not complexity, but duplicity. To be duplicitous is to be two-faced, and it implies multiple loyalties. “Simplicity is freedom. Duplicity is bondage. Simplicity brings joy and balance. Duplicity brings anxiety and fear and a basis of anxiety and fear.” This understanding of duplicity as a result of divided loyalties is reminiscent of Jesus’s admonition that if “a house is divided against itself…it cannot stand” (Matthew 12:25). It is difficult to be honest with yourself and others when your loyalties are divided between that of God within and that of the world without. Duplicity results in the inability to “speak truth to power” as one’s loyalties are divided between the leadings of the Spirit and the threats and promises of those in power. These dual loyalties are not limited to individuals of authority, but include all practices and possessions that inhibit the harmony between our words and deeds. In order to live a life that is free, we must know what to give up and what to keep hold of, what nurtures spiritual growth and what hinders it, what brings a community together and what tears it apart.
When the disciples were originally called by Jesus in Mark 1:16-20, they were told to let go in order to follow him. They could not be loyal both to their social location and to Jesus. The first pair of disciples let go of their nets, their employment and social standing as fishermen, as well as their social sense of self. In addition to these social ties, the second set of disciples also lets go of their father and their location as members and inheritors within a kinship group. This unencumbered following is later emphasized in Mark 6:8 when Jesus sends the Disciples out in pairs with “no bread, no bag, no money in their belts” in order that they not become dependent on the things that they have but instead place their trust in God.
The simplicity of voluntary poverty is an important choice for the disciples to make, but the Gospel of Mark shows us that this may be the easiest choice in achieving Simplicity. Although the journey begins with a singleness of purpose, the difficulties in living a life of Simplicity begin to present themselves as the disciples struggle with the meaning of social status as followers of the Messiah and their lack of understanding of the fundamental concept of the Messiah that Jesus represents. Much more difficult than giving up a second cloak is the task of letting go of ideas, desires and expectations that they have been unconsciously received from the world their entire lives. The disciples have very different understandings of the benefits of letting go. They question what they will receive in return (Mark 10:29), seek to limit access to Jesus (Mark 2:14), chide others who have different ideas (Mark 9:38), and ask to be seated in places of honor at either side of Jesus’s throne (Mark 10:37). Their understanding of Jesus’s journey is limited by received ideas that the nature of his Messiahship is that of a conquering religious figure who will re-unite Israel. Peter is unable to reconcile his grand worldly vision of the Messiah on the throne of Israel with Jesus’s vision of a Messiah crucified on a Roman cross (Mark 8:23). Even at the end of the Gospel of Mark, followers of Jesus have not yet developed a simple understanding of his mission and are told to go back to where they began.
Simplicity is never complete, but it is always in the process of becoming. Like the disciples, our understanding of the world has been given to us and we hold onto it. Racism, classism, and homophobia are calls from the world that confuse the relationship between ourselves, God and others. We are bombarded continuously with the need to consume, bigger, newer, better. We run after the promises of the world, but they can only hold the hunger and thirst of our souls at bay for a short while, after which time we will need to consume more, seek greater praise and position, more wealth and security. Like the young man whom Jesus loved in Mark 21, we want to change to become nearer to God, but we are rich and have so many things, so many commitments, so many projects, so much invested and only a limited amount of time. We are duplicitous, not because we are bad people, but because we have so many gods that we must appease. Like the disciples following Jesus, we need to go back to the beginning, back to the point where the call was pure and we knew only that we needed to trust and obey. For in the end, simplicity is only another word for trust, a trust in the God of sufficiency and a trust in the present and possible community. Only with simple trust can we “strip away the old cumbersome baggage” to “become free to contain and convey a sense of miracle.” To paraphrase my therapist, we must continually ask, “What do I have to give up in order to have want I really want?”
- William Howard Adams, On Luxury: A Cautionary Tale (Washington D.C.: Potomac Books, 2012,) 131.
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Rufus M. Jones, Rethinking Quaker Principles (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Publications, 1940), 15. -
George Fox. “George Fox’s Epistles, no. 250,” in Vol 7-8 of Works. https://esr.earlham.edu/qbi/gfe/e250-259.htm#e250. -
James Nayler, “The Lamb’s War,” in Vol 4 of The Works of James Nayler (Farmington, ME: Quaker Heritage Press), 110. -
George Fox, Journal of George Fox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), 21. -
Thomas F. Head, “Everyday Eschatology: The Witness of Quaker Simplicity,” in Dean Freiday, ed., The Day of the Lord: Eschatology in Quaker Perspective, 11-21 (Newberg, OR: Friends World Committee, 1981), 14. -
Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2018), 79. -
Richard B. Gregg, The Value of Voluntary Simplicity (Wallingford. PA: Pendle Hill Publications, 1936), 4. -
Rufus Jones, 15. -
Richard Foster, 79. -
Thomas Head, 14.
