At 33, Ethan is already on the edge of burnout. Although he is popular, strong, and gifted, the warning signs are evident. He’s serving a rapidly growing church, teaching every week, leading worship, and trying to balance ministry and his family of four young children. The demands of life and ministry have Ethan scrambling. While attending a leadership retreat, Ethan explained his inability to fall asleep at night without watching recorded programs on his iPod. He’s addicted to noise and cannot quiet his soul.
To his credit, Ethan has started a journey toward simplicity. It’s going to be a long road and his addiction to noise and chaos will not be overcome easily. But like many other church leaders, he recognizes the health of his ministry and his soul are at stake.
We all long for simplicity, and it has become a very cool topic. Real Simple magazine, for example, will tell you how to organize your closets, unclutter your garage, and even how to leave your high-pressure job in the city and move to Montana to start a lavender farm, which then finds amazing success and eventually goes public, requiring another downsizing. The popular message is this: embracing simplicity will make your life more manageable and more enjoyable.
Among church leaders I have seen the subject of simplicity elicit two very different responses. Raise the idea and some folks’ shoulders drop and their facial features soften, like an exhausted athlete who finally sits on the bench to rest. Sometimes they even appear a bit too eager to slash the schedule, quit the committees, and exit the stress. Others react in the opposite way. They erect defenses. They defend their crazy schedules and their busy (read: important) lives. It appears that without the chaos their lives would have no meaning.
But simplicity, from a biblical perspective, is not about making our lives more manageable. Did Moses’ life become less complex after the burning bush? Did Esther’s decision to follow God make her life easier? Consider Joseph and Mary. Did submitting to God make their young lives more manageable? Hardly. And we shouldn’t forget the apostle Paul. Few would argue the persecution he endured was a manageable lifestyle. These examples, and many others, reveal that for God’s people the opposite of simplicity is not complexity. It’s duplicity.
If only there were two of me
What does it mean to be duplicitous? The root word gives us a clue. A duplicate is a representation or copy of an original. When the word is attributed to human behavior, it means the persona we present to others is a double, a fake. The “real” us exists somewhere, but we are presenting a duplicate in our own stead. While we recoil at the thought of deliberate duplicity (the hypocrisy of the Pharisees comes to mind), we have to face the subtle and destructive force of culturally acceptable duplicity everyday. This temptation usually revolves around the need for more—more time, more energy, more money, more accomplishments, even more of us.
Tom Cruise descends into a vault and exposes a web of laser alarms. But no alarms sound when I cross boundaries.
Remember the film Multiplicity? The main character tries to alleviate stress by cloning himself whenever it appears that “more of him” would help meet the demands of his career and family. Of course, the plan backfires humorously as his committee of selves can never agree on anything and mutinously vie for power.
This, not so humorously, is the trap Ethan found himself in. The expectations to lead an ever-growing church, deliver powerful sermons, and embody the qualities of a godly father and husband were exacting a toll. He felt like every area of his life was “screaming for more of him” and he couldn’t deliver. Keeping so many duplicate Ethans on task was taxing him mentally and physically. He suffered insomnia. And a more destructive toll on his soul was not far off.
How many of us, in our stressed-out moments, have uttered, “If only there were more of me to go around?” or “I just need a few more hours in the day!” In those moments we are tempted to live duplicitously. Learning to recognize the symptoms is vital if we are going to avoid living through a false self. Here are a few questions to uncover the presence of duplicity in my soul:
- Do I feel overwhelmed by options? Deciding between thirty pediatric fever medicines, or dozens of investment strategies, or which ministry opportunity I should accept is stressful. Having so many options can be relentless and exhausting, sucking mental energy right out of us. When overwhelmed by options, look for duplicity.
- Do I feel burdened by impossible demands? Too many deadlines, too many phone calls to return, too many homework assignments to check on, too much shopping to do, too many calories to work off on the treadmill. In truth, the list itself will never go away. But when I sense myself flailing around and drowning in the impossibility of it all, I begin to look for duplicity.
- Do I buy more than I can afford? Virtually everyone in ministry faces financial challenges, but sometimes we make it harder than it needs to be by adding debt to the equation. Over-spending and consumer debt are marked by a strong aroma of duplicity. We pretend that we have more money than our bank account actually contains. The core problem is not a financial one, but a desperate need for soul-level simplicity. When I want more than I can afford, I look for duplicity.
- Do I frequently desire to be more than I am? My calendar reveals this issue. When scheduling, I’m not always realistic about the limits of my time or energy. And as a result, my false self, who does not want to disappoint or wishes to appear more capable, says “yes” to too many things. My duplicate self has agreed to something my real self cannot sustain.
As hard as it has been for me to admit, this kind of duplicity is the root of many evils in my life. I detest the thought of being duplicitous, but the raw truth has often been exposed. I have often operated from a false self and my life became, in 12-step lingo, unmanageable at a level far deeper than the appearance of my closets.
When I feel the pull to be more confident, more together, more successful, more spiritual, more hard-working, or more organized than I really am, I am tempted by duplicity. And when I succumb to that temptation, everyone around me suffers. Moving away from duplicity means practicing a new spiritual discipline—the discipline of simplicity.
Sober-minded ministry
Chuck is a pastor who embodies the lesson of simplicity for me. During a season of duplicity, he made the decision to lead a small church plant. Eventually, when he could no longer manage the demands of the role, the truth began to come out. Chuck realized he had not been honest with himself, or others, about who God had made him to be. He described being consumed by feelings of exhaustion, joylessness, and entrapment.
But amid the darkness, Chuck found the courage to be honest.
He acknowledged the discrepancy between how God had gifted him and the ministry role his false self wanted. Among other things, the move toward simplicity in his life meant moving from the small church plant to join the staff of a larger church. Joy, confidence, and renewed enthusiasm for ministry radiated from his face as he told me his story. Even though his current ministry appears more complex, because it conforms to the real Chuck, he is able to function without the duplicity that had previously ensnared his soul.
Like Chuck, I have found that practicing simplicity means determining who I really am, identifying the boundaries of my true self, and then making decisions and presenting myself to others grounded in that truth.
This shift has implications for virtually every area of ministry. Consider evangelism. In the past my Christian friends knew the real me—the one that argued with my husband, worried about money, and sometimes sank into despair. My non-Christian friends, however, only saw a woman who needed nothing. If I were one of them, I would have hated me. I was relentlessly cheerful and eager to share my faith. But this duplicitous false self effectively put my light under a bushel.
Practicing simplicity in evangelism means telling the truth, saying what’s real. This commitment changed what it means for me to share my faith. Now, I stick to my real-time, here-and-now, in-the-moment experience of life with God. I am sharing my faith, not just a set of doctrinal statements (as important as they are).
Not everything that slows us down is sin, but if it slows us down from living the life we were designed to live, then it needs to be thrown off just the same.
Romans 12:3 challenges us to be sober-minded in our assessment of ourselves. When we wrongly pursue avenues of ministry God never had in mind when he designed us, or when we refuse to use the gifts we have been given, we hurt both our families and churches. We are not being honest about ourselves. Some jokingly refer to this as “gift envy,” but it is no laughing matter. We must be sober-minded, not delusional, when making ministry decisions, based on who we really are, not who we want to be. (Parker Palmer’s book Let Your Life Speak is a terrific resource in this area.)
A critical step toward simplicity involves defining and respecting the boundary lines that shape our lives.
In the first Mission Impossible movie, the character played by Tom Cruise descends into a vault and sprays dust into the air to expose a web of laser alarms. Once he identifies the boundaries, he is able to successfully navigate the passage. Henry Cloud and John Townsend’s landmark work, Boundaries, effectively sprayed the dust to expose the laser beams around my life. These boundaries should have defined the outer limits of my time, my energy, my relational capacity, my gifting.
But alarms never sounded when I crossed them.
Clean giving
In 2 Corinthians 9:7 Paul says we should give what we decide in our hearts to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, because God loves a cheerful giver. This verse is often applied to financial giving, but I believe it applies to any resource we give away—our time, or energy, or skills. I recognized that during a season of over-extension, most of my “gives” had been reluctant or under compulsion. I felt I had to help, had to serve, or had to solve the problem. But when we attempt to give what we do not have, we cross a boundary. We trespass into joylessness.
God loves a cheerful giver, but that does not mean we should give what we do not possess to gain his approval or anyone else’s. It does mean, when the balance on our account is in the black, and we write the check, or make the phone call, or lead the team, God gets a kick out of it. We need to minister “in the black” so we have something to give. Giving “in the red,” giving what we do not possess, means we are living in duplicity. We are not loving God or others authentically because we’re not being honest.
When an opportunity to give (time, money, service, etc.) arises, practicing simplicity means starting with self-examination. “Do I have it in my heart to give?” If that answer is “no,” then it is not a clean give. Something else, something duplicitous, is behind the motivation to say “yes.” Most often fear is the culprit—the fear of not appearing in control, the fear of not pleasing someone, or the fear of not being accepted. Sometimes our Christian guilt can interfere. For example, at times we know we should say “yes” (such as, do I have it in my heart to care for the poor today?), but our strong answer is “no.” In such cases I’ve determined to honestly face my “no” and then let God do a new thing in me rather than function in duplicity.
Some people ascribe to the “fake it till you make it” approach. But this is a dangerous path. It leads quickly to duplicity. I’d rather recognize the selfishness in my soul and bring that honestly to God. In my experience, God won’t leave my selfishness untouched for long, and when it changes, the transformation is real.
Start small
The journey toward simplicity should start slowly. Rather than reforming your entire ministry, addressing a less daunting aspect of your life might be best.
When I first began learning about simplicity, I decided to tackle a closet in our home we referred to as “the black hole.” The process, I thought, would be fairly straightforward. Empty the entire closet, face whatever was there, and ruthlessly, even prayerfully, discern if each item really belonged there. I began with a lot of energy, optimism, and ambition.
Here is just a sample of what I found: six years of family photographs, a half-finished cross-stitch project that hadn’t been touched since 1988 (cross-stitch is a type of needlework that nice Christian women did in the ’80s), Christmas gifts for family members I had purchased at a summer sale two years earlier, and four years worth of baby clothes waiting to be ironed. (Whoever invented baby clothes that require ironing must have been seriously deluded or heavily staffed.) The finest moment came when my seven-year-old son saw the ironing board andn asked, “Hey mom, what’s that?” He had never seen one before.
Whatever you think of my housekeeping skills, this was a closet full of duplicity. It was loaded with false versions of me. Some were not real for that season of life, some were never real. While I had to fight off that shaming voice as I discarded and donated, I also felt the swelling reality of freedom and the lightness of disposing of my false selves. There was a deep sense that maybe, just maybe, it was okay to be who I was, that living within the “boundaries” of who I am is exactly what following God should look like. To cling to anything else meant running my race heavily encumbered. Not everything that slows us down is sin, but if it slows us down from living the life we were designed to live, then it needs to be thrown off just the same.
My husband made the mistake of walking through my simplicity project and asked, “Mindy, I thought you were going to clean the closet.” It did look much better when the mess was hidden behind a closet door. We laughed and I reminded him, and myself, that this kind of work means things will get worse before they get better.
As Ethan described the frenzied nature of his life, I warned him about the difficulty ahead. If he was really willing to take a step toward simplicity, it meant his life would most likely get messier before it got cleaner. A garage, or drawer, or other black hole may be a starting place, but the real work of simplicity happens when we open the doors of our interior world and start pulling everything out and holding it up to God’s discernment and love.
A new way of living
This work may require enlisting the help of a spiritual director or close friend; somebody to encourage us to keep going. The goal is to honestly and courageously ask what is in our lives as a result of duplicity—living through a false self—and what is authentic? What stays, what goes, and what needs to be added?
In my own life, this hard work has required the help of a few close friends. For almost a year now, I have met weekly with my “simplicity group,” which includes a time of silent reflection before sharing. During the silence, we prayerfully ask ourselves, “Where have I seen duplicity creep into my life this week?”
In the New Testament, Paul urges us to imitate our leader’s “way of life,” and the earliest disciples were known as followers of “the way.” Today, in 12-step communities around the world, those who are serious about recovery attend “step groups” where there is a high level of accountability and methodical effort. The concept was first introduced to me by friends who attended these meetings as an AWOL group, meaning “A Way of Life.” I always liked that concept—people gathering to help one another find a new way of life.
Moving from duplicity to simplicity requires a new way of life—one marked by defining boundaries, being honest about how God has gifted and formed us, and keeping accounts of what we are truly capable of giving. As we travel down this path with trusted companions at our side, we should remember the lives of God’s people who have preceded us. Their stories show that simplicity may reduce the complexity of life, but not necessarily.
For some of us, when we review a jam-packed schedule, we recognize it reflects a false self. In this case complexity will be reduced as we face duplicity and work against it. But for others, as we consider who God has made us to be, we might discover life’s complexity actually increasing as we step out in obedience. But we can learn to rest even amid the complexity if our interior life is one of quietness, trust, and rest with God.
Mindy Caliguire is founder and president of Soul Care, a spiritual formation ministry, and the author of the Soul Care Resources series published by InterVarsity Press.
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