Less is more, more or less, until less becomes less and more becomes more

A friend appropriately encouraged me by SMS to keep things simple and to take more of God's truth at face value. He closed by saying, "Less is more".

Now, whilst in essence I agree with his challenge and indeed as a family we have significantly simplified our lives of late, I still have some dilemmas, most notably that it is just too easy for outsiders to oversimplify the realities of others.

How do I tell my wife and children that we should find ways to simplify our prevailing challenges, without provoking a cynical response? How do I tell them it will all be okay, whilst in reality it is anything but? How does my friend reconcile mounting debts against a non-existent income? Or how does my missionary friend, who lives in a completely off-the-beaten track village in Zambia, rationalise his trust in God whilst his resources are being consumed by the disease that is threatening the life of his child? I could go on, suffice to say that for those in crisis, life is rarely simple.

I recently reached out to someone in dire straights, but then heard that her daughter, the dux of her school and a fine young woman, was being asked to leave the school because the family could no longer pay her fees. Hmm, that's not a simple issue is it, well not if you are in the middle of it? We could help them to a degree, but with our own resources rather strained I chose to approach the school board and plead her cause, only to be told, "No we can't help her, she must learn to trust the Lord".

To say that I almost choked on my breakfast at the remark, would be an understatement. Look, I know schools have their own challenges and must walk their own tightropes, especially so for smaller, private Christian schools, but I had to counter with arguments about a limited bursary or a fee discount and a few other options, none of which proved to be acceptable to the school. Last I heard they were faced with a dead-end.

Its that kind of oversimplification that James criticised when he said, don't say God bless you to your brother and leave him wretched.

Look, this is not about challenging anyone to help their brother nor am I trying to put you on a guilt trip - that's another issue altogether. But I am inviting a debate about where the balances lie. How far do we take simplification, which, in principle, is a great, vital and biblical call? I concede that we do tend to over-complicate a lot of things, but is over-simplification an appropriate antidote? What do you think? What are your personal experiences and how have you found your own balances?

(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.4u2live.net