Simple Gospel LifeLIFE GIVING SPRING
Anyone interested in the Simple Gospel Life is invited:
• to make contact with others of similar interest by registering at LifeGivingSpring and becoming a Member of the Forum for scrutinizing modernism in search of Orthodox Christian community and alternatives to modern living.
• to read and contemplate, prior to group discussion, information at LifeGivingSpring web pages, the most important references for which are listed and linked under the following –
REFERENCE TOPICS :
1. Orthodox Christianity: Church As Spiritual Hospital
2. False Model of Theology & False Model of Life
3. The Modern “West” & New “Hellenism”
4.
Modern Socio-Economic “System”
5. Costly, Imperialistic, Military Basis of Modern “System”
6. Psychological Warfare of Consumerism
7. Effect of Modern “Efficiency” on Family & Children
8. Modern Treatment of Earth’s Peoples & Lands
9. Financial “Capital” Revolution
10. Current Trend of Modernism
11. Toward An Orthodox Christian Simple Gospel Life
Toward a Simple Gospel Life
in modern times . . .
Secular western modern living is eccentric, the only “culture” in history to pursue “atheisim”, “efficiency”, “nuclear” family, and greed in the form of intentional manipulation of human passions for monetary gain.
Modern living is a false model of life that leads to excessive, addictive ills of human society, such as abortion, sexual ‘revolution’, and pollution, which makes the heart of Christian social concern primarily this western modern false model of life, not its symptoms (abortion, sexual ‘revolution’, pollution, etc.).
The diseased, false model of life can only be “cured” through life centered in the true model of life, the Church as Spiritual Hospital, not by lobbying for “change” or for legislation of moralism of western "christian" false type of theology in the secular socio-economic political forum, because the western “christian” false type of theology is what has paved the way for the secular western modern false model of life itself.
We are living at the most complex of times in human history and cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the effects of the western modern false model of life on ourselves, and on most all of Earth's peoples, lands, plants, animals, soils, water, air, – on All Creation! – the very means of God-given human life support for our Spiritual Journey amidst this temporal realm, East of Eden in the Valley of the “Shadow” of Death.
Neither dare we resort to simplistic platitudes to deceitfully appease our conscience over the ungodly nature of such false model of life in order to maintain the status quo, our comfortable “flesh pot” “standard” of modern living to which we have grown accustomed, so we can “go along to get along” and not have to face up to true repentance – change!
Goals of the SIMPLE GOSPEL LIFE are :
• to draw closer to the fount of Living Water in order to drink and be quenched of thirst (desires), for deepening of experience of Orthodox Christianity and healing of the passions;
• to be enabled for dispassion, for having the Body of Christ be the one thing needful, first and foremost in importance in daily life;
• to discourage influence of the unwholesome broad highway of the false model of modern living;
• to encourage a Simple Gospel Life, co-suffering love of sacramental living, lifestyle supportive of the Church's narrow Path of Salvation, similar to historical Orthodox Christian community; and
• to be “salt for society”, a truly Christian witness by illustrating how we corporally “love one another” rather than individually seek our own.
REFERENCE TOPICS:
1. ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY: CHURCH AS SPIRITUAL HOSPITAL
The Church as Spiritual Hospital
The Fathers do not categorize people as moral or immoral or good and bad on the basis of moral laws. This division is superficial.... It is not only good will, good resolve, moral practice, and devotion to...Tradition which make...[a Christian], but also purification, illumination, and deification. These stages of healing are the purpose of the mystical life of the Church, as the liturgical texts bear witness....
The patristic tradition is neither a social philosophy nor an ethical system, nor is it religious dogmatism: it is a therapeutic treatment.
Fr. John Romanides Romaioi Romioi Pateras tis Ekkisias, Vol. I p. 22f
A Different Christianity [1] [2] Robin Amis
Christians once believed in changing themselves more than in changing other people.
Juridical Vengeance or Co-suffering Love Met. Anthony Khrapovitsky
For A Culture of Co-Suffering Love
Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
The Sacramental Life Bishop Alexander Mileant
Sacramental Living
The Sacred in Life and Art Philip Sherrard
Aidan Hart Sacred Icons | Articles
Deification as the Purpose of Man’s Life
The Ascetic Ideal and the New Testament Fr. George Florovsky
Cure of Neurobiological Sickness of Religion Fr. John Romanides
The Illness and Cure of the Soul Met. Heirotheos
Orthodox Psychotherapy Met. Heirotheos
Youth of the Apocalypse
Death to the World
Foundation of Christian Morals
Justice As Asceticism
On Social Justice St Basil the Great
On Living Simply The Golden Voice of St. John Chrysostrom
Some people see the houses in which they live as their kingdom; and although in their minds they know that death will one day force them to leave, in their hearts they feel they will stay forever. They take pride in the size of their houses and the fine materials with which they are built. They take pleasure in decorating their houses with bright colors, and in obtaining the best and most solid furniture to fill the rooms. They imagine that they can find peace and security by owning a house whose walls and roof will last for many generations. We, by contrast, know that we are only temporary guests on earth. We recognize that the houses in which we live serve only as hostels on the road to eternal life. We do not seek peace or security from the material walls around us or the roof above our head. Rather, we want to surround ourselves with a wall of divine grace; and we look upward to heaven as our roof. And the furniture of our lives should be good works, performed in a spirit of love.
Spiritual Maturity in Christ Met. Jonah Paffhausen
2. FALSE TYPE OF THEOLOGY & FALSE MODEL OF LIFE
Consequences of...[Modern Living]
Picture of the Modern World Met. Heirotheos of Nafpaktos
The River of Fire Alexandre Kalomiros
You see, the devil managed to make men believe that God does not really love us, that He really only loves Himself, and that He accepts us only if we behave as He wants us to behave; that He hates us if we do not behave as He ordered us to behave, and is offended by our insubordination to such a degree that we must pay for it by eternal tortures, created by Him for that purpose.
Who can love a torturer? Even those who try hard to save themselves from the wrath of God cannot really love Him. They love only themselves, trying to escape God's vengeance and to achieve eternal bliss by managing to please this fearsome and extremely dangerous Creator.
Do you perceive the devil's slander of our all loving, all kind, and absolutely good God? That is why in Greek the devil was given the name DIABOLOS, “the slanderer”....
But what was the instrument of the devil's slandering of God? What means did he use in order to convince humanity, in order to pervert human thought? He used “theology”. He first introduced a slight alteration in theology which, once it was accepted, he managed to increase more and more to the degree that Christianity became completely unrecognizable. This is what we call “Western theology”.
Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism
Western Atonement (legalistic ‘satisfaction’ view) Anselm
Orthodox Atonement (classic ‘ransom’ view)
Augustinianism (western “christianity”, Papist or Protestant)
Humorous Errors of Augustine Fr. John Romanides
Augustine & the Lord of Glory Fr. John Romanides
Franks, Romans, Feudalism and Doctrine Fr. John Romanides
Original Sin According to St. Paul Fr. John Romanides
Utilitarian Goals of Modern Society Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
Need for Church in Lives of Young People Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
Social and Moral Problems of Youth Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
It is difficult to say whether Communism or Consumerism has had the more negative impact upon the aspirations of the natural youthful idealism. Consumerism is, however, the system with the greatest world-wide impact, and its effect on young people needs to be explored.
Approaching the Educated Person Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
A Concept Of God That Does Not Promote Violence Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
Perspective on the “End Times” Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
The early Church Fathers...always told us that the plagues mentioned in the Book of Revelation do not come to pass because of God’s judgement, but because of the greed and avarice of mankind.
3. THE MODERN “WEST” & NEW “HELLENISM”
Hellenism and Frankism
Charlemagne’s Lie
Justice with Michael Sandel
Orthodoxy vs. Modernity: Defending a Common Heritage
Institute for Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies - Ancient Philosophy
The Hellenic-Christian Philosophical Tradition
Orthodoxy and Philosophy
Christian Philosophy in the Patristic and Byzantine Tradition
The Philosophy of the Church Fathers
The Political Philosophy of the Orthodox Church
The scientific revolution and the Eastern Orthodox Church
A Civilization without Heart
Greek is the higher life of man
Greek Orthodoxy - From Apostolic Times to the Present Day
Byzantium : The ‘alternative’ history of Europe
The Europe of Apostasy and the Europe of Christ
Most of this Europe of Christ is only now re-emerging from beneath the ruins of Western-imposed Communism and still dwells amid the spiritual darkness of the Europe of Apostasy. The rest of the Europe of Christ is still hidden beneath the illusions of modern life in all the Western lands, which also dwell amid the spiritual darkness of the Europe of Apostasy.
The Europe of Apostasy is often the Europe of ‘development’. It is often technologically refined, but it is always spiritually primitive. It is advanced - in its fall.
The Europe of Christ is often the Europe of ‘underdevelopment’. It is often technologically primitive, but it is always spiritually refined. It is backward - in its fall.
The Seven Days of Western History
Europe: Whither Goest Thou?
Orthodox Europe
Christian Europe: An Orthodox Perspective
Orthodox England
Cure of the Passions and Origins of the English Novel [1] [2]
Biblical Typology in Victorian Literature
Orthodox Christianity and American Culture
Nihilism: The Root of Revolution in the Modern Age
Christ and Culture Constantine Scouteris, University of Athens
The accumulations [of civilization] are often obstacles, not allowing the human person to reach the [goal] of the Gospel.... (1 Cor 3: 19-20)
4. MODERN SOCIO-ECONOMIC “SYSTEM”
Aristocracy
Some of the [early] American aristocrats may have been doing what they thought best for the commoner, but these were rare individuals.
There has since arisen an equally ludicrous concept that the aristocracies of old no longer have any real power. In reality, aristocracies exist today which are in fact the powers that be – even when for various and sundry diplomatic and deceptive reasons they may choose to not be addressed as lords, ladies, knights, earls, and esquires. They may be positively demure in exhibiting themselves on the street or calling attention to themselves in any way....
The fact that the upcoming American Aristocracy may be less obvious in their corporate digs is not necessarily cause for celebration. A covert conspiracy is often worse than an overt action -- although increasingly, there is no apparent attempt to conceal anything.
Industrial Revolution
Industrialism: Rooted in Greed
Some Christians have been erroneously taught that the modern world was built on Christian principles... Not only was the factory created by greed — because it depends for its survival upon mass consumption, it must foster in every way possible the sin of covetousness in the masses.
Flee To The Land
I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition
[T]his book is about something far more generally important and essential than the economic and social well-being of any one region. It is about man, what he is, what he should be, what he must be. Written in a time when not only the South but the nation seemed given over to a frantic struggle for material possessions, it held up to examination some of the most widely-accepted assumptions of our time.
Man, it said, far from being a godlike genius of unlimited potentialities, is a fallible, finite creature, who functioned best in a society that took account of his limitations. In his zeal for the benefits of modern scientific civilization, he was placing so high a value on material gain that he ignored his own spiritual welfare and his moral obligations to society. Properly controlled, the benefits of science and industry might bolster his human dignity. As it was, he was turning the contrivances of the new industrialism into the objective itself. In place of beauty and truth he had erected a new ideal, Progress. Where properly controlled the benefits of science and industry might bolster his human dignity, he was turning the contrivances of the new industrialism into the objective itself. Caught up in a race to exploit the natural world through applied science, man was becoming an automaton, his entire effort directed toward highly specialized and narrow activities designed to secure immediate material profit.
Man was losing contact with the natural world, with aesthetic and religious reality; his machines were brutalizing and coarsening him, his quest for gain blinding him to all that made life worth living. The tenuous and frail spiritual insights of western civilization, achieved so arduously over the course of many centuries, were being sacrificed. The result, if unchecked, could only be dehumanization and chaos.
This headlong race for mastery over nature, called Progress by some and Industrialism by others, stifled the aesthetic impulse, rendered impotent the religious impulse, and converted man's days into a frantic and frenzied drive for the often tawdry conveniences of modernism.
Who Is The Rich Man That Shall Be Saved? Clement of Alexandria
On Wealth and Poverty St John Chrysostrom
Beyond Wealth: Orthodoxy, Capitalism, and the Gospel of Wealth
The Filthy Rich
In the United States, the top 300,000 earners pocketed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million in 2005.
CEOs vs. Slaves
Nickel and Dimed Barbarah Ehrenreich
Bait and Switch Barbarah Ehrenreich
Age of Riches
Mr. Gross vigorously dismisses the notion that the wealthy are helping society more effectively and efficiently than government.
Corporatism
Corporatism or Commonweal Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
The Corporation [1] [2]
Multinational Corporation
Who Killed the Electric Car?
5. COSTLY, IMPERIALISTIC MILITARY BASIS OF MODERN “SYSTEM”
Militarism
America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq [1] [2]
America's Empire of Bases
US Military Spending vs. The World 2008
US military budget vs. other US priorities
Anthony C. Sutton
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution Anthony Sutton
Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler Anthony Sutton
The Best Enemy Money Can Buy Anthony Sutton
War is a Racket
Corporations & conflict
War on Want
The People In Between
At What Cost...?
Franklin ‘Chuck’ Spinney
Defense Death Spiral Chuck Spinney
Military industrial complex [1] [2] Dwight Eisenhour
Cost of War
National Priorities Project
Body of War [1] [2]
Pray the Devil back to Hell
Addicted to War
6. PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE OF CONSUMERISM
Measuring the Impact of Media Violence
Junk Food for the Soul Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
The Torches of Freedom Campaign
Public Relations Firms
The Persuaders
Affluenza
Center for Media And Democracy
Mammon
Materialism
Consumerism
Billboard Liberation Front
Adbusters Journal of the Mental Environment
The New Culture War
The Fake Heaven of Claritin
The Marketing of Evil
The Marketing of Evil reveals how much of what Americans once almost universally abhorred has been packaged, perfumed, gift-wrapped and sold as though it had great value. Highly skilled marketers, playing on deeply felt national values of fairness, generosity and tolerance, have persuaded us to embrace as enlightened and noble that which generations since America’s Founding regarded as grossly self-destructive – in a word, evil.
7. EFFECT OF MODERN “EFFICIENCY” ON FAMILY & CHILDREN
Machines and Family
By destroying the village and the productive homestead, the Industrial Revolution has wreaked a calamity upon mankind of incalculable dimensions. Though enriched in the number and variety of possessions, we have been impoverished in terms of human values like community, family life, self-expression and fulfilling work...
Instead, if machines had been developed and refined for the improvement of the homestead, the quality of our lives would have been made better — not worse... It is not too late for an “industrial counter-revolution”.
The Efficiency Invasion
Efficiency will ultimately be seen as a god that has failed. It has not failed to make some men very rich, but it has certainly failed to give most human beings a better life. Instead, the quest for efficiency has imparted a stress and “driven-ness” to the work of most people that compares to the pressure imposed on slaves in other places and times....
This wholly new system of economic and social organization was to become the ultimate machine for the concentration of wealth. As such, it must be seen to be anti-Christian to the core, for the Scripture says, "Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth” (1 Corinthians 10:24).
Yet the apostles of efficiency have not been content to limit its application to the factory. They have made efficiency a philosophy of life and are now busily engaged in applying the factory system to the regulation of every activity of civilized man...
As we shall see, we are now in the process of fulfilling in every activity of life [the founder of the efficiency movement, Frederick Winslow] Taylor’s prophetic words: “In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first”...
Soon the industrialists were insisting that it [the factory system] be applied to the nation’s economy and every other sphere. The result was to be a super-system or mass economy with the state as its care-taker.
Traditional vs Technological Society
When a human society moves from traditional to technological society, a basic principle changes in the organization of the social structure. The organization shifts from a social pattern in which relationship is the most fundamental consideration to a social pattern in which functional accomplishment is the most fundamental consideration... The fundamental unit of society ceases to be the family and becomes instead the individual... Efficiency considerations replace status and honor considerations. Tradition as a source of authority yields to utilitarian rationalism as a source of authority.
The Family in Technological Society
A...related consequence of the changes in the family within technological society is a weakened relationship between parents and children... Deference, respect and gratitude alike have been diluted by the intrusion into the family structure of the alien ideology of individual rights and liberties... The father's authority in the family becomes questioned, and the relationships between parents and children as a whole become brittle and unsteady...
The position of the family within technological society is precarious. It performs essential functions for the wider society, but in so doing it must operate according to a principle of social structure diametrically opposed to this society. Consequently, the family undergoes serious tensions, and its future in technological society is in question...
[T]he young in technological society are confined to a world of their own populated by other human beings who lack the age and training to be able to function competently. For years they are unable to contribute substantially to the welfare of others, and remain apart from the “real life” of society. They also grow into a world of uncertain values, and they are segregated from an experience of how more mature members of society confront the most important situations in life. The young consequently experience an “identity crisis” and seem increasingly prone to dissatisfaction with themselves and with others...
The transition from traditional society to technological society has radically altered human social structure. Since the world of the writers of the Scriptures was a traditional world, while ours is a technological world, it is not surprising that many Christians find it difficult to understand the scriptural teaching on social structure.
The Family G.K. Chesterton
On Marriage and Family Life St. John Chrysostrom
Orthodox Christian Conference on the Family Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
The Family as Bearer of Tradition
Facts About Marketing To Children
Born to Buy
Young People Talk About the Pressure to Have it All
Child materialism linked to self-esteem
American Education History Tour
Men like... the brilliant efficiency expert Frederick W. Taylor, who inspired the entire “social efficiency” movement of the early twentieth century, along with providing the new Soviet Union its operating philosophy and doing the same job for Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany; men who dreamed bigger dreams than any had dreamed since Napoleon or Charlemagne, these were the makers of modern schooling.
The Land of Frankenstein
The Demon of Overproduction
Managerial Utopia
The Element Sir Ken Robinson
Sex, Natural Law and Orthodoxy
Sexuality & Modernity
Sexual “Revolution”
Libido Dominandi
Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but, what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.
Monsters From the Id
Horror is both a sign that we don’t know what is bothering us and a sign that we don’t want to know what is bothering us. Horror stories, so popular in modern literature and film, originated in the sexual decadence unleashed by the French Revolution. When supressed, the moral order reasserts itself in the form of an avenging monster [not immoral urges and “neuroses” as claimed by Freud].
Buffy and the Monsters Out There
When she was 16, Mary came under the influence of the poet Percy Shelley. Shelly embodied the new philosophy of sexual liberation. In fact, he had left his wife precisely because she refused to go along with his demands for sexual experimentation. He found a willing partner in Mary. Mary and the still-married Shelley ran off together. (They eventually married after Shelley’s first wife killed herself.) It was during their time together that Mary learned, through painful personal experience, the human costs associated with the new ethos of liberation. She learned that nothing or no one would stand between Shelley and his desire for sexual gratification. She was passed to Shelley’s friends like a plaything. She became a part of a ménage a trois that included her own sister. And, if personal humiliation and degradation weren’t bad enough, Mary watched as Shelley’s quest for liberation led two women, including her own half-sister, to take their own lives. This left her feeling both remorseful and repulsed.
8. MODERN TREATMENT OF EARTH'S PEOPLES & LANDS
Land Loss, Poverty and Hunger
The Agrarian Standard Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
The Plight of the Workers of the Land
The Meatrix [1] [2] [3]
FOOD, inc.
Colonialism
Expansionism
Imperialism
The Meeting of the Contemporary West with the Church
Requerimiento of 1510
American Exceptionalism
Manifest Destiny
Long Chain of Abuses
The Trail of Broken Treaties
Amazon Crude
Amazon Watch
First Peoples
9. FINANCIAL “CAPITAL” REVOLUTION
The Dialectic of Russian History
Agrarian Justice Thomas Paine
Capitalism
The Capitalist Ideal The ‘Morality’ of Self-interest
Capitalist “manifesto”, written by Russian-born intellectual non-Christian as knee-jerk, flip side to totalitarian pseudo-“communism” experienced in her youth, is utilized as basis of many arguments in current events.
Markets and Morals
Capitalism: A Love Story
Interest, Usury, Capitalism Met. Heirotheos
Deification of money, hedonism and easy living are the things that prevail in the age we are living in.
The utilization and exploitation of money came to be developed within Protestant circles, within a morality that presumed money to be God’s blessing and the rich as those blessed by God.
Capitalism's ideology Met. Heirotheos
We Christians, especially the clergy and monks, must display in practice that which we believe in and preach, otherwise we will be dishonest and hypocrites. We must fend off the temptation to be possessed by a particular, “Christian capitalist” ideology.
Capitalism as the offspring of Western Metaphysics Met. Heirotheos
Orthodoxy bears no relation to Protestant ethics or to the spirit of Capitalism. It has an entire life that is a transcending of all created realities; of deterioration and even of death itself.
Bougeois Life and the Orthodox Mind
In modern times, both “power ideologies” liberalism and conservatism, serve the Baalim, in that the “conservatives” attempt to bracket economic justice into the mystification of the “free market” (itself almost a divine force, a sort of Baal in its own right), while the “liberals” seek the destruction of family bonds for the “liberation of the individual,” with abortion and child neglect as its “acceptable sacrifice”. As always, the church, then remains alone, isolated in a heterodox and alien land....
The Orthodox Vision of Sobornopravnist
Obshchina
The Russian Peasant Commune
The Russian Village Commune
The Peasant Commune in Russia
Common Questions about Biblical Agrarianism
Creation Ethics and Agrarian Social Order [1] [2] [3]
God was not ashamed to "get his hands dirty", and plant the first garden Himself! How arrogant must that man be, then, who turns up his nose at the planting and tending of fields, gardens and orchards; as if it were beneath his dignity.
10. CURRENT TREND OF MODERNISM
How to Discern the Signs of the Times Met. Joseph
The modern culture, in its addiction to false images and entertainment, has become “disengaged” from the original design for human life. As a result, our young person will becoming “less-connected” with other people and with their natural world. He is becoming, in the terminology of the Holy Fathers, increasingly “insensitive” to the beauties and truth of God's Creation.
Nature-Deficit Disorder
Last Child in the Woods
Globalism
Globalization
Globalisation Shakes the World
Consumerism, Globalization, and American Emptiness
Options Are Overrated
The Story of Stuff
HOME
A Culture of Death and Destruction
11. TOWARD AN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN SIMPLE GOSPEL LIFE
On Living Simply St John Chrysostrom
Bringing the Gospel to Life
Someone has suggested that the best translation [of the Bible] is the one we make in our own lives.... Men can read us much more quickly and easily than they can read a book. If we let our lives become living examples of what the fully dedicated Christian life ought to be, if we ever witness to what we believe to be the highest values of life, we will voluntarily and cooperatively achieve that which laws and force can never accomplish.
The Place of Material Creation in the Created Order
Ecological Asceticism: A Cultural Revolution Met. John Zizioulas
The Earth Is the Lord's Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
Center for a New American Dream
The Center for a New American Dream envisions a society that values more of what matters – not just “more”.
10 Little and Big Things You Can Do
Cradle to Cradle Design Waste=Food
Sustainable Living [1] [2]
Sustainable Agriculture
Permaculture
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
Cultivating Life
Homeschooling
Fair Trade
Homesteading [1] [2]
Cohousing [1] [2]
Intentional Community [1] [2]
Practical Tools to Grow an Intentional Community
Creating a Life Together Diana Leafe Christian
Finding Community Diana Leafe Christian
Not Your Father’s Commune
The Jesus Manifesto
This website exists to subvert the Empire (wherever it is found). But more importantly, it exists to call people to embrace the Kingdom of God.
Greed, America, and the Rich Young Ruler
Gospel Poverty
Gospel Poverty Explained
Living Simply...As Christ Intended
Simple Living in a Complex World B.R. Johnson
Why Don’t More Faith Communities Emphasize Simple Living?
Voluntary Simplicity (Simple Living) [1] [2] [3] [4]
In Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster argues that “the majority of Christians have never seriously wrestled with the problem of simplicity, conveniently ignoring Jesus' many words on the subject. The reason is simple: this [ascetic] Discipline directly challenges our vested interests in an affluent lifestyle.”
Once we have begun to cultivate the inner reality of simplicity, what might our outer reality look like? Foster offers 10 principles:
1 Buy things for their usefulness rather than their status.
2 Reject anything that is producing an addiction in you.
3 Develop a habit of giving things away.
4 Refuse to be propagandized by the custodians of modern gadgetry.
5 Learn to enjoy things without owning them.
6 Develop a deeper appreciation for the creation.
7 Look with a healthy skepticism at all "buy now, pay later" schemes.
8 Obey Jesus' instructions about plain, honest speech.
9 Reject anything that breeds the oppression of others.
10 Shun anything that distracts you from seeking first the kingdom of God.
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