This all stems from my reading of Walden by Henry David Thoreau and a series of uncomfortable, challenging sermons from the pastor at our new church. Thoreau picks away at the modern notion that we need to drive ourselves to illness to work harder to get more stuff we really don't need. The effect of this reading, coupled with the scriptural references mentioned at church (specifically Mark 10:17 - 27), has been much like a needle repeatedly pricking the heart.
I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters. - Walden, Thoreau
But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it. - Walden, Thoreau
No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Matthew 6:24
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Mark 10:25Another thought I read somewhere: We spend the first 40 years accumulating stuff and the next 40 years trying to get rid of it. What disturbs me is this: I really don't know how to get rid of it, all the unnecessary stuff that burdens me. Or what to get rid of, for that matter. I guess first I need to figure out what is "necessary" and go from there.
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