purging vs sacrifice

There’s a thin layer of dust on everything in my bathroom.  Jorn has been a busy man.  He’s removed everything down to the studs in our garage (there’s a joke here, but I’ll let it go) and laundry room.  My closet is gone.  The only things left standing are the water pipes and electrical wires.  Oh, and a freezer that dates back to the Kennedy administration.

If you had seen our garage before the event, you know that this is no small feat.  In order to make room for the demolition (and promised transformation) I had to clear the garage of years of accumulation.  I’m talking about the junk/gear that I’ve collected over the years.  Hockey stuff, baseball equipment, 3 sets of golf clubs, the speakers from my old stereo…it’s all gone.  You wouldn’t believe the stuff that I held on to, you know, just in case I needed it again.  So much of that stuff wasn’t even usable.  A tent with busted out zippers, 4 external frame backpacks (circa 1990), my baseball bats from high school.  Why did I ever hold on to those things?

I went through all my clothes 3 times yesterday, thinning the herd, removing the perfectly good clothes that I haven’t worn in years.  Why hang on to those things?  It’s kind of embarrassing to see all the clothes that I’m getting rid of, all the while knowing that I have an equally large pile of clothes that I’m keeping.  The truth is that I’ll never miss those shirts, and haven’t worn most of those items in years.  But I held on to them, just in case.

A few years ago I heard Francis Chan speaking about the number of tshirts that he had.  He had just returned from a mission trip.  The church/community leader that he was working with was so excited to get a shipment of shirts for his village.  He was thrilled that now every person in the community would have 2 shirts.  Chan was ashamed to think that he had dozens of shirts piled up in his house.  That conversation was the impetus to Chan making some revolutionary changes in his life, downsizing, choosing to live in a smaller house, living on less.

David Platt (Radical) wrote a whole chapter challenging his readers to ask the question, “How much is enough?”  As I worked through that chapter and compared it to my recent purge, I was struck by the contrast–I was eliminating things that I didn’t need.  But if the mark of a follower of Jesus is living on less in order to be more generous to others, am I still missing the mark?

There is a big difference between getting rid of things that are unwanted/unneeded and the sacrificial generosity that puts the needs of others ahead of my own selfish desires.  Platt writes:

The point is also not that we need to feel guilty whenever we purchase anything that is not an absolute necessity…(but) that our perspective on our possessions radically changes when we open our eyes to the needs of the world around us.  (p 127)

I’m wrestling with my own selfish self even now…