A Dialogue on Moderation

Emily is stuck at home today and I stayed home for the morning to help out with a few things. As often happens, we got sidetracked with an interesting conversation and decided to capture it. The conversation was prompted by a book I'm reading, The Challenge of a Disciplined Life by Richard Foster that is very provocative on three big topics: money, sex, and power. Emily talked with a friend earlier this week about another Foster book, Freedom of Simplicity. Moderation is a topic Foster seems to address with energy in his thinking and writing. The best example of his definition of moderation to me is watching television - that discipline can free us to not be couch potatoes, and not to be "TV-totalers," but instead to enjoy watching one program and then to turn off the television. Moderation means enjoying God's gifts without becoming excessive, or rejecting God's gift altogether out of fear of one's own lack of discipline.

From Emily:
"The culture is so excessive. You know what I'm saying? I was looking at the latest edition of In Style, and there are sundresses for $250, and sunglasses for $85. It's so excessive. The church has a response to this. Well, I take that back. Some churches have a response to it which is to ignore it - they don't talk about it. Others have this response that is like "no, this is from the devil - you shouldn't spend $85 on sunglasses." It just seems very extreme. Is there moderation? It's just like our house - we bought this house, it was in our budget, and then its really gone up in value as has the neighborhood around us, and we feel this tension - we own this house, I feel this obligation -- let me back up - we own this house, and I'm just a "nester" and I want to buy nice things to make our house pretty. And we have the means to make our house look great - but my inclination is that we should only buy second hand furniture, only buy used rugs, do everything on the cheap - not in terms of quality, but as inexpensively as possible. And I wonder - what would Richard Foster say? Is this living in moderation? Now don't get me wrong - the couple of rooms we've done are really pretty, and we haven't spent a ton of money, but is even that appropriate? And what's appropriate *where* we live -- in the city we live, around the people with professions where we live? Is there something beyond just trying to get away with spending the least we can get away with spending? Is there a way to do some of things we're not doing that we would like to do but are not for the sake of frugality? So with finances, is there a balance between excessiveness and frugality? And what about the rest of our lives?"

From Randy:
"I do think moderation gets a bum rap today - like you said it's just out of vogue. I feel this tension that in order to be "godly" I need to be self-sacrificing, but in order to make friends comfortable and to satiate some of my own desires, e.g., that new 42-inch flat screen TV, I need to buy expensive things. More than in finances, I think a need for a proper understanding of this concept of moderation is one of the things that keeps me from being an effective witness at work. At work, I feel like I need to either ask people if they would like to be saved today, or ignore the topic altogether. There's something beyond balance between two extremes that I want but I can't define and certainly don't practice. That something would be a positive synthesis that doesn't just thread the needle, but is an equilibrium that can be lived as a principle on its own. I don't know how to think about that except to chunk up life into categories like "finances," "work," "family," "fun" and find the right middle ground in each. I think what I feel, but haven't figured out intellectually yet, is that there is a solution that involves moderation in one's holistic life that expresses itself in the chunks (rather than being rooted in the chunks). Instead of vacillating between extremes within categories of life, the initial approach to new ideas, thoughts, and people should be one of moderation."

From Emily:
"It's interesting that you use the word 'equilibrium.' I'm reading that book Living With Contradiction by Ester de Waal, and that is part of what the book is about - she uses that term too. She's talking about it in prayer, in community, she's talking about the way you manage your time. It's holding together the two extremes. It's being balanced while you hold your one hand in one pot, and one hand in another - it's not compromise, it's being both extremes simultaneously. So for our life in Charlotte, and the people we interact with - is God teaching us about living in this tension, with one hand in the 'extravagant pot' and one hand in the 'pauper pot,' and living in that tension between the two without solving it?"

Agreed - that God is speaking to us about getting comfortable with the tension, and not about resolving it.