And He said, “Who told you that you were naked?”
Genesis 3:11a
I aspire to keep a tidy home and, while I don’t aspire to minimalism in its purest sense, I do love the thought of being a minimalist. I have been in homes of people who are minimalists and there is definitely something freeing about not being encumbered by lots of “stuff.” I love seeing the surfaces uncluttered by paraphernalia. The openness is restful. I say this, but in my heart I still like having my stuff. I like knowing that I have a few extras of things on hand and not just what I absolutely need. I had plenty of toilet paper on hand at the outbreak of COVID19!
Somewhere along the line though, I took this to a little bit of an extreme. While acknowledging that I would never be a total minimalist I still started to act like I was. Let me explain—I would go through rooms decluttering and purging items, but not quite as ruthlessly as if I was all-in on the minimalism idea. I started feeling guilty that I had more things than a minimalist—even though being a minimalist wasn’t my goal!
This came to light when I was going through some of my grandmother’s jewelry. She didn’t need or want much jewelry so she gave a lot of pieces to me. I’m not talking pure gold and silver jewelry but costume jewelry—hardly worth anything monetarily, but a lot of the pieces could be considered vintage and are becoming current; they could be cute paired with the right outfit! That is the keyword—could. I might not wear them. I don’t wear much jewelry, but then again, I might. And they were grandma’s. . . I don’t want to be hampered by stuff and she was never sentimental. She would not want me to keep it if I didn’t really want it. I felt like I should get rid of some of the pieces, but I was afraid I might regret it.
There was a lot of energy going into the decision of whether to keep or get rid of some of the items that take up no more room than a Ziploc baggie. Finally it dawned on me—I didn’t have to get rid of it. It was okay to keep a few pieces that didn’t bring me joy if it made me feel lighter over the decision of keeping them than I did about getting rid of them just to be freed of “stuff.” It was almost like I heard someone whisper in my ear, “Who told you that you had to be a minimalist?” I realize this is a rather silly example, and a first world problem at best but it led to an important realization for me.
Where have we heard those words before, “Who told you?” In the third chapter Genesis in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve are hiding their nakedness and trying to hide from God, God asks them why they are hiding. They reply that it is because they are naked. God then asks who it was that told them they were naked. It was Satan who had lured them to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and it was through eating of the fruit that they discovered they were naked. Whose voice did they listen to?
Whose voice have you listened to saying you needed to be thinner, smarter, faster—or you needed to do this or that—fill in the blank! Many things in life are neutral and having stuff is neutral—neither good nor bad as long as we do not place undo worth in the things themselves. Taking care of our bodies is important and certain things we do need to do but we must be careful to discern whose voice we listen to. Yes we should always be reaching, stretching and learning and we should be praying and doing the things that God’s Word commands us to do. If we are doing what God wants us to do, does the other stuff really matter? In the grand scheme of things very little from this earth will matter and none of our stuff can we take with us when we leave this earth. It is not what we hear from this world that is important—it is what we learn from God’s Word that is most important. It is what God says that matters. We are to look to Him, lean on Him and trust Him.
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