Confessions of a Stagnant Pool

I first heard from God on the subject of clutter about the time my son, Brian, was born. I forget (and sometimes remember, but forget again) whether it was before or after he was born. However, it was either when my wife, Suzanne, was pregnant with him or shortly after she delivered him to me.

What He said was: "Michael, you need to unclutter your life." I took that to mean that I had to clean up our house and get it ready to house an infant. That was part of it, certainly, but not nearly all. He was telling me to simplify my life and get rid of things and activities that do not serve to speed me toward my goals.

He told me, in another time of greater clarity, to be more like a river than a pool: "Don't hang onto your ideas or your creations. Give them away. Don't hold onto your wealth. Give that away as well. If you try to save your life by hoarding it, you will find that it decays when you are not watching it. If you give it away for My sake, you will find that it lasts forever. This is what is meant by "ever-lasting life."

In the narrative that follows, I refer to "SUDs". This is a therapeutic term that is actually an acronym for "Subjective Units of Distress". While removing clutter from our homes, we participants are asked to record our SUDs every five minutes. That way, we are constantly aware of just how much anxiety we experience while attempting to discard belongings that have outlived their usefulness to us.

When I began attending the Hoarding Disorder treatment class at the VA, I didn't know what to expect. After my first session, I was a bit puzzled. “If my problem arises,” I questioned, “from anxiety associated with getting rid of things, how can raising my SUDs level ameliorate it?” I figured that the way to treat the Disorder must be somehow getting rid of my anxiety, not increasing it.

I am happy to report, having attended for twelve (12) sessions now, that I have turned a corner in my treatment. I understand the premise of the class. It is not simply a matter of reducing anxiety associated with discarding hoarded clutter. It is more a matter of reducing the clutter itself, thereby experiencing the anxiety, and getting used to experiencing it.

By becoming habituated to experiencing—and surviving—that “loss anxiety”, I learn that the anxiety itself is neither crippling nor fatal. I can both survive and function although anxious. What I cannot do is continue to function in a cluttered home.

The clutter in our home both incapacitates me (mentally) and stresses me (emotionally). If I am to grow personally and professionally, I must have an uncluttered home.

Moreover, I have learned that exiting the cycles of rationalization that led to our clutter problems in the first place has forced me to confront some uncomfortable truths. Perhaps the greatest of these is the fact that getting rid of stuff that I never use anyway does not result in a loss of value. Inversely, not getting rid of it results in a loss of value.

I decided to purchase a home for two reasons:
a. to hold onto more of my money's value, rather than pass it on to a landlord;
b. to have a place where I can entertain friends and minister to my community.

As it is, I have neither of those things because my house is occupied by clutter. Instead, I provide housing for junk and never invite anyone over because I am ashamed of the clutter. My home consists of 1,034 square feet of living space. For that, I pay a mortgage payment of $705.01 and a Homeowners' Association fee of $307.00 per month. That's an average cost of about 98 cents per square foot per month. Of those, about 400 square feet are occupied by junk. That means that I am paying an average of $392.00 each and every month to store items that neither I nor any member of my household ever uses! Talk about losing value!

We have lived in this house for just over fourteen (14) years. That is equivalent to 168 months. In that time, we have paid more than $65,856.00 to store junk mail, toys our son has outgrown, books we never read, movies we never watch, kitchen- and table-ware that we never use, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In truth, we easily could have purchased many times the value of the stuff we could toss without ever missing it for that much money.

Moreover, had we just tossed the superfluous stuff, we easily could have held onto jobs that we have lost, attended functions that we missed, and saved untold opportunities to earn more spending power than we have saved by refusing to toss it. Had we saved rather than squandered that value (arguably, we wouldn't have actually saved the money, just its value), we might have even managed to remodel and refurnish our home!

Instead, endlessly bickering about the relative worth of the stuff versus the space it occupies, we are on the verge of getting a divorce and having to replace our one cramped, common home with two even-more-cramped, separate ones. To me, the solution to this dilemma is so obvious it bites. Just get rid of the junk already and we'll each have more room to ourselves! It's a no-brainer! Once we simplify our lives and learn to live within our means, we will be better able to acquire—and keep—jobs that will enable us to purchase, not only a bigger home but whatever furnishings we had to sacrifice in order to attain that self-sufficiency in the first place. Hopefully, in that process, we will discover that we don't really miss the “stuff” after all.

What Am I, Exactly?

I preached my first public sermon this past Saturday. It was fairly well received, all things considered. As I hit the high points of my message, a number of “Amen”s and similar grunts of affirmation could be heard from the crowd. I say “crowd”, but “small gathering” would probably be closer the mark. There were only a few people in attendance, with several others within shouting distance. I did have to raise my voice a bit, as I was preaching outside, in a park.

A friend of my previous pastor has sometimes preached in parks. I’m not sure about why he and his wife were removed from the church staff. I know they have started a few businesses, mostly of the “pyramid” type. I don’t know whether that had anything to do with it. My wife and I had just started attending a class they were presenting, having to do with leading small groups. The next thing we knew, they were gone—apparently “invited” to leave by his “friend” the pastor. Odd, that.

But I digress.

I had a conversation with a celebrity of sorts recently. He is known to be an atheist, or “areligious”, as he calls it. Someone who knows me from another setting mentioned to me that he (the celebrity, that is) is an “unbeliever” and asked me what I thought of it. I felt a bit odd. The celebrity, whom I am not naming on purpose, has made clear that he considers “religious people” closed-minded and that their ideas of a created universe and intimacy with its Creator are absurdly self-centered. Being from Europe, he finds it ironic that, while many European countries actually have governments that collude with state-sponsored religions, Europeans as a group tend to regard religious belief as personal. This, while Americans, whose Constitution claims to separate church from state, tend to politicize religion and to invite religious debate into the public square. I felt odd because, while I certainly believe that the celebrity shall go to hell unless he acknowledges the sovereignty of God, I simultaneously agree with him about the irony of American religiosity.

As we had been having a spirited conversation about the directions in which technology seems to be heading, the celebrity now scoffed, “Am I to understand that you are one of these Christians?” No, I replied. A Christian is one who imitates Jesus Christ. My behavior is so far from His that I really don’t deserve that designation. “But you are religious,” he pressed. Again, I demurred. I don’t consider myself religious, I replied.

The celebrity confessed to feeling a bit confused. “You believe that Jesus Christ is God, right?” I confessed that I do. “So, you’re a Christian. Christianity is a religion, right?” I disagreed. That depends on how you define religion, I said.

The word “religion” is from Middle French. It means “the act or process of tying back together what has become detached”. “Reconnecting” to one’s “roots”, for example, could be called “religion”. People striving to establish a connection to the Almighty through observation of rituals or other means could be called religion. Even “getting in touch with” one’s “inner child” could be called religion. However, Christianity is not a matter of Man trying to restore his relationship with God. Rather, it is one of God trying to restore His relationship to Man.

Christian faith does not depend on any particular belief system or ritual behavior. Magic is not a part of it. It is purely a matter of accepting that which God has already done to restore His relationship with His creation. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believed on Him would not perish but inherit everlasting life.” Nowhere in that narrative does Man do anything to restore his relationship to God. Man’s role is completely passive, whereas God’s role is completely active.

So, if I’m not a Christian, and I’m not religious, what exactly am I? Good question. When I have a good answer for you, I’ll post it.

Ever since I preached that sermon, I’ve been troubled by an assertive spirit. Or, perhaps I should say “an assertive Spirit”. I am fully aware of Who the Spirit is who won’t leave me alone. He says that, now that I have preached in public, I must maintain a consistent witness so that “my public” will not receive a “mixed message”.

What have I gotten myself into? Before, I readily confessed that I am an asshole. Unwitting and unintentional, but an asshole nonetheless. Now, I have to actively strive to behave above my base tendency. I’ve always believed that doing so would be phony or inauthentic. I’ve always believed that only a hypocrite would pretend to be better than he is. God says it’s not pretending if you’re truly trying to turn over a new leaf.

I have decided that this process of collaborative sanctification will ultimately result in my becoming a Christian. However, I have also decided that even then I will not be religious. After all, my relationship with God is already established in that He has entered my being and has taken up residence in my soul. My Christosis is less a matter of my striving to become more like Christ than it is one of His Spirit striving within me to transform me into His likeness.