This morning as I was reading "The Dangerous Duty of Delight" by John Piper, I was intrigued by an explanation of how Christians should view money and lifestyle choices. I figured it was worth sharing.
Life is war. The casualties are millions, and the stakes are eternal. What we need today is not a call to simplicity, but a call to war. We need to think in terms of a "wartime lifestyle" rather than a "simple lifestyle." I have used the phrase "necessities of life" because Paul said in 1 Timothy 6:8, "If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content." But this idea of simple necessity can be misleading. I mean it to refer to a style of life that is unencumbered with nonessentials--and the criterion for "essential" should not be primitive simplicity, but wartime effectiveness.
Missionary visionary Ralph Winter illustrates this idea of a wartime lifestyle:
The Queen Mary, lying in repose in the harbor at Long Beach, California, is a fascinating museum of the past. Used both as a luxury liner in peacetime and a troop transport during the Second World War, its present status as a museum the length of three football fields affords a stunning contrast between the lifestyles appropriate in peace and war. On one side of a partition you see the dining room reconstructed to depict the peacetime table setting that was appropriate to the wealthy patrons of high culture for whom a dazzling array of knives and forks and spoons held no mysteries. On the other side of the partition the evidences of wartime austerities are in sharp contrast. One metal tray with indentations replaces fifteen plates and saucers. Bunks, not just double but eight tiers high, explain why the peacetime complement of 3000 gave way to 15,000 people on board in wartime. How repugnant to the peacetime masters this transformation must have been! To do it took a national emergency, of course. The survival of a nation depended upon it. The essence of the Great Commission today is that the survival of many millions of people depends on its fulfillment.
Life is war. All talk of a Christian's right to live luxuriously "as a child of the King" in this atmosphere sounds hollow--especially since the King Himself stripped for battle.
I've visited the Queen Mary myself, so it is very easy to see the difference that wartime makes. But what would this look like in my own life now? What are the nonessentials that might be encumbering me and the Great Commission? I don't know if there is a straight-forward answer to that, especially since there are so many varying circumstances to consider. However, I absolutely think its worth thinking about. If I and all Christians in the U.S. decided to assess our lifestyles and make a few changes, what difference would it make in the world? How many more would hear the gospel? How many more would be fed and clothed?
