by Lynn Miller

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review by Colin Saxton

This is a particularly bad time to review this book by Lynn Miller. My wife and I have been talking (again) about the ongoing need to simplify our lives. At the same time, I have been part of a conversation between a grant-making organization and a relief worker in India where the need for tsunami assistance is so overwhelming. Throughout this conversation, one truth persistently nags at me: I have so much in comparison to most of the world's population. Then to top it all off, I just finished reviewing our expenditures for last year in preparation for filling out my tax report. Once again I'm unsettled to see just how much money it takes to support our present lifestyle.

Clearly, this is not the time to read a book that raises issues around my spiritual life and economic choices! Talk about an easy target for conviction! Ugh! I was content to think about changing my ways! Now I may actually have to do something!

Not Your Typical Approach

In his brief book, Lynn Miller, Mennonite Mutual Aid's stewardship theologian, approaches the subject of economic stewardship from a unique perspective—around our sense of contentment. As Miller notes,

Plenty of books out there proclaim other good reasons to want to be a good steward of your life, reasons like profit, obedience, even worship. Most of those are good reasons indeed. But none of them have the power to make it happen. None that is, except contentment. (p. 6)

While one might want to quibble with this absolute statement, the author is hinting at something important here. Hinging his argument on the apostle Paul's self-disclosure to the church in Philippi, Miller suggests that our willingness to be content and our ability to be transformed come only as we experience Christ as the true source of our strength and life (Philippians 4:11-13). In other places Miller roots contentment in the experience of grace and the depth of our acquaintance with God's unconditional love for each of us. In light of God's unsurpassed love for us in Christ, the “stuff” that clutters and sometimes controls our lives begins to take its rightful place. A life centered in Christ, he might say, can better be ordered by Christ.

All of this may sound a little cliché, except that the author really seems to mean it. But more than just giving a shallow call to love Jesus more and our stuff less, Miller pushes further to remind us that difficult choices lie ahead for the one who is serious about this.

Is Everybody Happy?

One strength of Miller's book comes in his ability to pretty thoroughly savage the typical North American lifestyle, but in such a gentle way you hardly notice that your whole value system has been called into question! Through anecdotes and self-deprecating humor, he analyzes some of the barriers to living in the freedom of contentment rather than being bound up in the relentless American pursuit of “more.” Advertisements, media, the cult of celebrity, how we compare ourselves to others—all of these and other pressures push us to search for happiness in something other than God. In the end, Miller contends, we have created a culture that is in disarray, loaded with goods but in debt up to our eyeballs, and fearful about how we will manage to keep it all together. Even more telling is the assertion that despite all of our efforts to “pursue happiness,” many of us are anything but happy. While Miller offers no statistical research to back up this claim, having read a good bit of the literature in this field, I can attest—he is right on—we are a culture of unhappy campers.

What Then Must We Do to Be…Content?

Having been given a rather bleak diagnosis about our state of affairs, we are also offered a starting place—a few simple first steps toward learning contentment. This is really the heart of the book.

As one who often lives in disconnect between freedom in God's gracious love and my own restless search for happiness, I find some comfort in Lynn Miller's approach to contentment. He offers no well-constructed formula or slick scheme. Instead, he initially relies on queries—a set of thoughtful questions to be asked in honesty before God. For instance,

• Can you describe who you are in one sentence?
• What does your “stuff” say about you?
• What can you identify in your life that has the potential to take the place of God?
• Can you identify the inherent usefulness of the things you own?
• In what areas of your life do you sense that you just don't measure up?
• Will this purchase help me or anyone else be a better follower of Jesus Christ, or will it just get in the way?

Queries like these come at the end of each chapter and are sprinkled throughout the text. Though they are simple enough in content, given prayerful time and attention they create an opening by which we must look deeply at ourselves, to wrestle with our attachments, insecurities, and areas of dependence. This is uncomfortable work—just the kind of thing most of us need if we are going to change.

Along the way Miller reinforces several messages that need to be heard. For example, “contentment is found in knowing that what things mean has nothing to do with who you are” (p. 23). Unfortunately, too many of us wrap up our identity in our possessions and wind up being possessed by them. Similarly, he reminds us that goods and services have value to us—but only to the extent they help us in “the fulfillment of God's call” on our lives (p. 45). Finally, contentment is, in part, a choice springing from our understanding of who we are in Christ. He writes,

Having enough does not mean gritting your teeth and putting up with what you have. “Doing without” is not a spiritual virtue anymore than “doing well” is. But defining what something means in terms of its inherent usefulness and then deciding what “enough” means by using that definition gives you the “power of enough” and the satisfied feeling that comes with having neither too little nor too much. It's like being neither hungry nor stuffed, just pleasantly full. And that is power. (p. 52)

A Few Practical Aids

Along with the queries, Miller closes the text with a few short chapters offering tips for financial planning. This is, after all, one of his areas of expertise and part of the ministry of MMA.

Again, there is an inherent simplicity about all of this. Being both mathematically-challenged and suffering from investment-avoidance disorder, I could even perform these basic functions! The aim, I suspect, is to provide a starting place and a few practical instructions for reordering our lives around the spirit of contentment God has granted us, and the calling we have received in Christ.

Compared to other books on this subject, the author is very generous. No heavy-handed guilt manipulation calling us “to sell all we have to give to the poor.” Neither are we berated into despising the extravagant lavishness of our society. Instead, we are simply pointed to a vision of Christ, of contentment, and “freedom to model God's extravagant, entrepreneurial stewardship to a world that is looking for more” (p. 92). Given the tenor of the whole book and my own experience of Christ, that last phrase might best be decoded: Christ will teach you to give your whole life away as an offering to God and the world. It will cost you everything…but you'll love every minute of it.

Would More Have Been Less?

I had the pleasure of meeting Lynn Miller last year at a retreat. He did a provocative and very helpful workshop on stewardship in the local church. In addition, we sat next to each other in meetings that lasted much too long. I appreciated his wit, plain-speech, deep insight into the Christian life, and obvious love for Jesus and his church.

Having read a couple of Miller's other books, I sense that the area of stewardship is not only a primary passion, but it is something he speaks and writes about with authority, because he lives it with integrity. A mutual friend confirms this sense saying, “He is the real deal.” For that reason I want to say that I finished this book a bit disappointed. I thought in terms of what Lynn “might have written.” My first impulse was to want to pick his brain—to ask further questions, to push for deeper insights.

“Was this a book written for newcomers to these questions?” I wondered. “Shouldn't it have been more hard hitting? More controversial?” There are places, after all, where it seems rather simplistic, too pat to be of real use to someone like me who struggles under the burden of materialism—a twin to that other burden known as poverty. The truth, however, is that I have read lots of provocative, hard-hitting, controversial books about economic stewardship, materialism, and discipleship. Many of them are excellent and offer much to the discussion. Some have even helped to change my life.

It may just be that what Lynn has done here is “just enough,” since it raises good issues, offers thoughtful questions, and suggests some practical starting places for people just like me—who always tend to want more.

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