The Challenge of Simplicity — Clifford Schrock — Ep. 004

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. And I'm here again with Cliff Shock, your administrator of Sharon Mennonite Bible Institute. And you spend a lot of time teaching a lot of classes. And one that always intrigued me is the simple life, the one where you talk a lot about, you know, non-resistance and simplicity. Can you give us—I know you spend six weeks on this, so there's no way we can cover it in one episode. But can you give us a brief definition of what is the simple life and what's the biblical foundation for that?

So simple life is often defined as canning, making your own clothes, having campfires, and that sort of simple life. And maybe that's part of it. But that's really not what simple life is all about. Simple life is about singleness. There's a verse in Second Corinthians 11, verse 3, that talks about—uses the word simplicity.

It says, "But I fear lest by any means, as a serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." So the word simplicity is drawn from the Greek word haplothes, which means singleness or sincerity, the opposite of hypocrisy.

So simplicity, a singleness of focus. And so when I teach that class, that's really what I focus on, is singleness. We have a single focus. Oz Ginnis talked about the concept of an audience of one. And so that's the concept of simplicity is this living before an audience of one, living with a single focus, a single eye that Jesus talks about in Matthew chapter 5. So you asked about the biblical basis. It's that single eye, that single focus, loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourself.

It doesn't get a lot simpler than that. On this, hang all the law and the prophets. So in a sense, then we almost complicate it by adding a lot of things that we do that are the simple lifestyle. Do you see that as kind of the case? Like in our circles as Mennonites, we kind of—we like that, you know, to have a simple life, but maybe we are looking at it all wrong. It can. We can complicate the simple life with a whole lot of do this, do that. Now, we'll probably talk about that here in a minute.

The simple life does need to be put into the fabric of our lives. It's not just an idea or a theological concept. How does the Christian apply that, that concept of simplicity, single focus, sincerity? What does that look like practically? Well, maybe we need to back up first and talk just a little bit more about what it is. So in that singleness, it's about discipleship.

Discipleship is about following the Master, learning to talk like, think like, be like, live like the Master. So that's the simplicity part of it, wanting to be like Christ. Scriptures talk a lot about taking on the mind of Christ. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.

So from a theological perspective or a philosophical perspective, the simple life is a worldview. It's a worldview of discipleship, becoming like Christ, taking on the mind of Christ. So what does that look like then in practical life? Like Dean Taylor says, it's like, well, what if Jesus meant every word he says?

Now, do we do that perfectly? Certainly not. But that's the goal, to take the words of Jesus, the writings of Paul and the apostles, and to take it seriously and to put it into the shoe leather of our lives. So the simple life should affect the way we dress, the way we eat, the lifestyle that we live, what we spend our money on, how we save, how we spend, how we give, our support for missions, and all those other aspects of life.

So you ask the question, how does it look? Well, it affects every part of our lives. This concept is so much bigger than a lot of people think of it as, if that makes sense. I don't know. It can be really easy to fall into that trap of, I do, you know, step one, two, three, four, and therefore I live a good Mennonite simple life when it's so much deeper than that. It's a heart issue of our understanding of how—yeah, I don't know. Just like, yeah, I like what you're—that makes a lot of sense. Right. I think sometimes we reduce the Christian life to checking boxes.

Yeah. And we simplify it that way. And that's simple life. I can check off these boxes and therefore I'm living the simple life. But the simple life, like you said, is much bigger than that. It's about a whole way of thinking about life with a single goal, a single focus. And that is to do the will of the Father.

Jesus had conflicting desires. We see that very clearly in the garden. He had conflicting desires, I think, throughout life. But he had a single goal. He had a single determinative will, and that was to do the will of the Father. And that's how I would define simple life.

The simple life can look pretty complex. And we just did an interview with Elijah, and he was talking a lot about this kind of thing, what you're saying, focused more on from the mission aspect, like when we want to go do missions, down at the very core, what is it really? And it's about, at the core, just loving people and following after Jesus 100%. And out of that comes our ability to evangelize. And that's just one aspect of many things. And that makes a lot of sense with what you're saying. Yeah. And really, that what you're saying about what Elijah said, you know, comes down to just loving people. That's exactly what I was saying about the simple life.

Yeah. It's about love the Lord thy God, love thy neighbor as thyself, single focus. And to do whatever God calls you to do. If he calls you to Tibet, then the simple life is to follow his call to Tibet.

If he calls you to live in Lancaster County, then the simple life is to follow him and live in Lancaster County. That's pretty liberating when you think about it. Instead of all these hoops and, like you were saying, boxes to check. Well, it can be liberating, but actually much more difficult.

Yeah, that's true. It's much easier to check off five or six boxes and say, "Now, I've got it." It's much more difficult to follow the heart of God. Takes a lot more intentional living too, I guess. Right. Yeah. The next step is, I mean, you know, a lot of people aren't at that place that you're describing of the real what Paul is talking about in that verse of the true simple life. But I'm guessing a lot of the audience is like, "Oh, that makes sense. I want that." What's some practical steps they can start taking towards what you're describing? It's not easy because Jesus said, "If any man would follow me, let him take up his cross."

And the cross is an instrument of death. So a lot of us live with conflicting desires. We want kind of our own way, but we know we should follow the Master and kind of do it his way. And so we have this conflict of desires that we live with. And I don't know that we'll ever totally overcome that. But the simple life, as I understand it and see it in Scripture, is to follow Christ.

And he may call people to different things in that simple life. Some he may call to a vow of poverty. And one of our students had taken a vow of poverty, sold everything he had, and lived with the homeless people for a period of time in ministry. And, you know, he may call some people to that.

He may call other people to other things, maybe even into business and farming and other aspects of normal life. But regardless of where we're called and whatever we're called into, it has to be undergirded by a yieldedness. The early Anabaptists had a German word for it. I think it was something like gelassenheit, that yieldedness. And I think that's something that we lack in our culture. Even though we live the simple life, we lack that brokenness, that yieldedness to do what God calls us to do and to follow wherever he calls us to. And so to enter into the simple life is to take up our cross, to deny ourselves, to become broken, yielded, and to follow him and to seek to become like him and to live out his vision, the vision that he gives us in the Scripture for what the kingdom citizen should look like and how we should live.

And it should become very practical, including the things that we often think of when we think of simple life, our dress, the way we drive, the cars we drive, the houses we live in, all that sort of thing.

It should be expressed and it should affect those practical parts of our lives. Now, there's probably listeners that want to hear me say, you know, here's the list. Yeah. You know, don't spend more than X amount of dollars for a car. It should be this color. And you should live in this kind of house and wear these kinds of clothes and create a list. But I already said at the beginning, you know, it's not about a list. It's about what does God call us to and a commitment to doing what he calls us to. And the list is so much more concrete. You can just look at it and just be like, "I'm doing the list, so I'm okay."

What you're talking about is so much harder to wrap our minds around in a way. Yeah. And the Jews had their list. In Matthew chapter 6, it was about alms and prayer and fasting. Those were three key trademarks of Jewish piety.

And Jesus spoke to them very directly. They were doing their list. They were putting in their alms. They were praying. They were doing their fasting. But very obviously, they missed something. And that's why I say it's not about doing this list of things. It's about a heart that then becomes a part of the fabric of our lives.

There may be other listeners that won't like that approach because it's too subjective. Yeah. You know, it's not concrete enough. And it's like, well, then it's every man for himself. No, it's not every man for himself. It's every man for Christ.

And we follow Christ. It doesn't sound like it would be very easy, but at the same time, that's pretty simple too, what you're describing. In a way, at the concept level, but now going out and living it, that sounds like a lifelong pursuit, you know? Exactly. Yeah. You're not just like overnight going to just, "Okay, now I'm 100% following Christ and, you know, I've got the simple life." And that's where the simple life is connected with the salvation journey and our theological understanding of the salvation process or the salvation theology.

Because that commitment to Christ is that new birth experience. That's the point in time justification. We are complete in him at that point. But then it's also a lifetime of transformation. True. Yeah. Where we are daily transformed as we behold his glory.

We are daily transformed into the image of his son. And so this simple life, on one hand, is very simple. We commit ourselves to him and we follow the Master. Simple. Love the Lord thy God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, thy neighbor as thyself. Simple.

But very, very difficult and very, very life-encompassing life transforming. And like you said, a whole life journey. Yeah. Very simple, very difficult at the same time. Seems like a lot of Christ teachings come down to that. You know, love your enemies. I mean, okay, just love everybody. That's simple. Very difficult. And it seems like it's very much the same thing. Yeah.

Whoa. We got our homework cut out for us. Like I've said, sometimes the teachings of Christ are simple enough for a child to understand. Yeah. And yet complex enough to baffle the theologians. It's very true. And I think it's somewhat the same with the simple life. Wow. Well, thank you for doing another episode with us. And got a lot to think about. Thank you, everyone, for watching. And be sure to come back. We've got a lot more videos, new videos every week. Some more with Cliff as well.

Yeah. And yeah, if you have another episode you'd like to see us do, just leave a comment and we'll do our best to make it happen. And I guess we'll see you guys in the next one.