Afterword: A Generous Orthopraxy

By Brian McLaren

When Grace and I got married in 1979, somebody gave us a copy of the first edition of the More-with-Less Cookbook. It was our first introduction not only to some amazingly thrifty yet tasty recipes but to the whole subject of simple living. A few years later we came across Living More with Less, which built on that foundation.

To be honest, back then, when we were living on low teachers salaries, the primary attraction wasn't what simple eating and simple living did for the poor or for the planet: rather, it saved us money. Saving money was our "gateway drug" into the simple-living movement. As radically committed twentysomethings, we lived in community, hosted a fledgling house church, had big debates about the virtue of going vegetarian and the vice of Styrofoam cups, and gained a deeper appreciation for the issues of poverty by living in a low-income neighborhood outside Washington, D.C. Eventually, we changed careers from teaching to ministry, serving in that same community for twenty-four years. Always that message of simple living hummed in the background of our lives like an unobtrusive theme song.

Nervous, edgy, and angry

But a few years ago, the song got a lot louder for me. When I wrote Everything Must Change: When the World's Biggest Problems and Jesus' Good News Collide, I began to realize more fully the radical import of the call to a simple, responsible, regenerative lifestyle. Since writing that book, I've seen all my behavior against the backdrop of four crises:

• The planet crisis. A "developed" way of life that takes resources faster than the earth can replenish them and that pumps in toxins faster than the earth can detoxify them.
• The poverty crisis. A global economic system that creates extravagant luxury for the few while withholding basic necessities from the many.
• The peace crisis. A political and military system that mass produces weapons—including weapons of mass destruction—in a self-defeating search for peace through violence.
• The religious crisis. Religious systems that embed adherents in suicidal narratives of fear, revenge, isolation, domination, elitism, victimization, dualism, and consumption—rather than in a healing narrative of reconciliation and the common good.

Once you start noticing these interwoven themes, they jump out at you from headlines and news broadcasts. You see them camouflaged in political speeches and sermons. You even see them in advertisements, TV shows, movie plots, and grocery store aisles. And if you're like me, you start to get nervous, edgy, and maybe even a little angry.

Generosity toward others and ourselves

In this situation, it's way too easy to become an ecological nag, a pain-in-the-neck for poverty, a peace provocateur. It's easy to get to the point where you can't be happy unless you're making somebody somewhere feel guilty for eating that, for buying this, for listening to them, or for living there. In other words, having overcome the temptation to be a mindless consumer, drifting along with the currents of a misguided, hell-bent culture, you become susceptible to another temptation: the temptation to become a critic of everyone who now is where you once were.

How do we thread the needle—when, on the one hand, we want to evangelize for simple, ethically responsible living, and on the other hand, we don't want to increase resistance to our ideas by wagging fingers at all our friends and relatives for failing to buy fair-trade coffee or compact fluorescent light bulbs? Three things, I think, can help us.

First is the realization that if we've changed, others can too. And if our change is ongoing, so will theirs be. We need to extend grace for others not to be on the same timetable or to make the exact same decisions, just as others have extended plenty of grace to us—and are in fact doing so now, since each of us has a long way to go when it comes to truly consistent ethical living.

Second is the realization that the changes that matter most can't be made by individuals but must be made by society at large. For example, if you manage to get off the fossil-fuel-based grid, congratulations. I hope to join you someday. But the fact remains that the grid goes on, and so our environmental future depends on converting the grid from stupid, dirty energy to smart, clean energy. For that to happen, we need to win friends to the big picture, not just nag them about the details. No question: details matter. It's in the details that commitments are turned into habits and habits into values. But the details that matter most to me might differ from those that matter most to you. Ultimately, what matters most to the cause is that all our habits and values synergize to create tipping points and large-scale movements for needed change.

Third is the realization that Christian faith is at its best when it is about grace, not guilt. Other faiths could sign on here too. Our orthodoxy—or "right belief"—must be a generous orthodoxy, a gracious orthodoxy. So must our orthopraxy—or "right action"—be a generous, gracious orthopraxy.

Grace begins, of course, when we look in the mirror; we won't extend it to others if we don't receive and enjoy it ourselves. And that's important to remember when reading a book like this one, because simplicity can become a tyrannical legalism if we let it. There's always another light to be turned off, another degree of heating or cooling to be sacrificed, another drive to be foregone. The good desire for simplicity can turn sour, like a hypervigilant guard dog mistaking its owner for an intruder. When that begins to happen, it's time to recall Jesus' words about his mission: he came that we might have life, life in abundance and fullness . . . not life in guilt, austerity, or neurosis. Simplicity "under law" and simplicity "under grace" are two very different ways of life indeed.

Grace is the best motivation for a more-with-less lifestyle. Having received grace ourselves, we want our neighbors in poverty to receive it too. Even our enemies need grace, we realize. So do the rivers and streams, the soil and wind; we don't want to stress them to their limits, but rather to treat them gently, graciously, generously. And the same goes for the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the flowers and creatures of the field. We want all to be given all the grace they need to thrive and prosper. It is our joy to live with less so that others may have enough.

This is the more-with-less life: it is full of conviction and also full of grace. It is committed to practical action and also to expansive generosity. It is eager to do what's good and beautiful and also to do it in a good and beautiful spirit. It is confident that an abundant life is a simple life, and that one enjoys more by grasping less.

Brian McLaren is an author, speaker, and leader in emergent church circles. His most recent book, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith, was published by HarperOne in 2010.