Derek: 00:28

Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. This episode marks the start of a new season, a season on simplicity. This is a season that has really been on my mind for several years now, and you've probably heard me reference, you know, this idea of simplicity and studying for it in some of the episodes that I've done, you know, even before going through the the Kierkegaard episodes that we just finished up. But, you know, I feel like I've really been spinning my wheels on this season. And there are a lot of factors that go into making this season particularly challenging for me to prepare for.

Derek: 01:09

First of all, my life has changed quite a bit over the last year in regard to my vocation and my living arrangement. A year ago from writing this, I had two weeks left in Romania, a place to which my family was called to serve for seven years and a place that I feel is more like home than The US is in a lot of ways. I just feel more comfortable there and more at peace. I never longed to return to The US while I was living in Romania, but, you know, daily, I ache to be back in Romania. I miss so much of our Romanian community and the Romanian lifestyle.

Derek: 01:48

And getting used to life here in The States in a different community and in a different vocation is really difficult. It's difficult not only for me to get motivated to write and record this season in light of that, but the pace of US life is also just so much more frenetic. It's more complex or I guess you could say it's less simple, right? My wife and I very purposefully have avoided getting involved in a lot of things for the last year because, you know, since being back in The States, we knew that the pace of life could just chew us up here. Yet, even in avoiding most of those obligations and commitments and extracurriculars, we still feel just overwhelmingly busy even though, like, when we look at it, it feels it looks like we're not really doing anything.

Derek: 02:45

There's just something about our culture that feels all consuming. I feel like I'm in the belly of the Sarlacc being slowly digested by the acidic juices of busyness knowing that it's gonna take me a thousand years to be digested. But more than my life circumstances, I feel like working through simplicity is difficult because I have such little background knowledge about it. As an American, I was raised on busyness. I played sports year round.

Derek: 03:14

I participated in ministries and clubs throughout church and school. I did summer camps and just constantly filled my life with events. Busyness and complexity are second nature to me. Simplicity has rarely crossed my mind throughout my life and when it has, I always instinctively knew how to silence that feeling or those thoughts. I silenced them with busyness.

Derek: 03:39

By circumstance, but much more often by choice, I never had or never made any time to dwell on the concept of simplicity. And anytime I've read books or studied, you know, the topic has rarely been simplicity until preparing for this season, of course. But even in preparing for this season, it's really been difficult finding too much on the topic of simplicity. It's just not a very popular topic. For me, when it came to reading, if anything, I grew up reading to learn more and add more complexity to my life, not to make things more simple.

Derek: 04:22

I learned about history, about science, learned how to work with wood, learned how to fix a car, you know, all kinds of things that are useful, practical, that do something, that add something. One studies and learns about how to do more and how to do it more efficiently. And sometimes efficiency might require some form of simplicity, but usually that's a simplicity aimed towards doing or accomplishing something else. Simplify your life by freeing your home of clutter so everyone can find all their stuff and so you can make it to all your sporting events and theater productions on time. Whittle down your woodworking tools so that you have more space for working on more projects.

Derek: 05:04

Reading and studying were rarely done to truly simplify or to enjoy the peace that simplicity can bring. I do think that we've seen a bit of a turnaround here in the last few years, sort of, with a decluttering and simplification movement, And there are inklings of simplicity in some of these movements at times, but that hasn't been super mainstream. And even when it has, like I said, usually it's in order to be more productive or to do more things. Right? It's not a decluttering because the idea of simplicity itself is good.

Derek: 05:40

And this is it's certainly not anything that most people were steeped in when I grew up and it it's something that people still don't really give too much ear to. So even now, when I am seeing more of the logical importance of simplicity, I still find it a really difficult concept for me to explain and grasp, let alone implement. So this season is is really challenging for that reason alone. And that brings me to the other difficulty that I'm having in doing this season on simplicity. It's been really hard for me to think about talking about this topic because I feel like such a hypocrite.

Derek: 06:26

When I think about nonviolence, I have a fairly high degree of confidence that I'd be willing to give up my life nonviolently. Now, if we're talking about nonviolence in relation to others, that gets a whole lot harder, right? Like if it involves my kids or loved ones or something like that. But for my life, if someone put a gun to my head, I think I'd take the bullet pretty easily. So even though certain aspects of non violence would be difficult, I feel like I'm on the right track with those.

Derek: 06:57

But with simplicity, I feel like I don't even come close to measuring up. I am a waster of time, of money, of gifts. I do and I do and I rarely rest. I am more confident that I could willingly take a bullet to the head than I could simplify my life financially or technologically. What is it that George Washington tells Alexander Hamilton in the play?

Derek: 07:22

Dying is easy. Living is harder. That's so true. But just last week, I actually heard a sermon that was helpful in which the pastor said that hypocrisy is not not practicing what you preach. It can't be that.

Derek: 07:39

That would make all failure hypocrisy and that's just intuitively not the case. Rather, hypocrisy is more like a refusal to hold oneself up to the standards that one preaches. So if I tell my kids not to lie, but then I lie myself, I'm not a hypocrite merely for my misstep. If I'm confronted with my lie or if I come to the realization that I have indeed lied, I admit to it and I declare it wrong and then repent, then I'm not a hypocrite. I'm a fallible human being.

Derek: 08:12

Hypocrisy doesn't come in the failure to implement, but rather in the failure to hold accountable, in the failure to uphold the standards preached about, not in the failure of their execution. Sure, if one has a double standard, then they will also act in opposition to what they preach, but it's not the acting itself in opposition that really makes one a hypocrite. It's the duplicity of standards. So repentant, broken, honest individual is not a hypocrite for their failure because they recognize the standard and don't deny their deviance from it. And that was encouraging to me because in this season, I don't have much to offer you in the way of example.

Derek: 08:55

Not that I really had a whole lot to offer you in the other seasons either, but in this season, the deficit is much more apparent to me. So I approach this season with the openness that if you choose to continue receiving my words, you are receiving the words of a failure. Hopefully not a hypocrite, but a failure. My hope is that in understanding my failure though, you will also see how God has been teaching me and convicting me and that we might learn together and repent together as we pursue the simplicity of God's world and teaching. Alright, with those caveats out of the way, I want to spend the rest of this episode recapping the last 15 episodes that I did, which were their own introduction or foundation of sorts to this season on simplicity.

Derek: 09:47

Now, don't expect most listeners are going to go and invest ten to fifteen hours listening to the previous episodes. So I want to make sure that we cover that here. And if this piques your interest, then please go back and listen to the previous episodes from season twelve on Kierkegaard's Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing. This work by Kierkegaard was what really solidified for me the need to move forward with the season on simplicity. The idea of simplicity was something that I had been thinking about for a while, but when I read Purity of Heart, it so captivated me that I knew I had to move forward with such an important season.

Derek: 10:26

And really, that's what the book is ultimately about. Right? It talks about purity of heart, but it's ultimately about simplicity. Kierkegaard discusses a variety of simplicities and complexities, talking a lot about the enemy of or antithesis to simplicity, which he saw as busyness. But ultimately, Kierkegaard's simplicity is focused on one simple thing, the good.

Derek: 10:57

Purity of heart, the descriptor of those who Jesus says will see God, is to will one thing, one undivided thing. Kierkegaard spends his book showing how all movement away from simplicity is double mindedness, which is to have one's will bifurcated. Someone who seeks good not for the good itself but for honor is not truly seeking the good with their whole heart, but rather the honor as well. The one who seeks to do the good in avoiding consequences is not truly seeking the good with their whole heart, but also the avoidance of pain. The doubleness of mind is what leads to various moral compromises ending often in the great self justifying evil of consequentialism.

Derek: 11:46

Consequentialism is an ideology which seeks to accomplish the good ends while avoiding the costly means which are often required to produce those real ends. And rather than obtain true lasting ends, consequentialism leads one to obtain the counterfeit ends that are empty and fleeting. Kierkegaard calls all of these paths to the counterfeit doubleness of mind. This doubleness of mind leads to ends which usually dissipate because they're not eternal ends. They often produce byproducts that are far from the good.

Derek: 12:21

According to Kierkegaard, it is only single mindedness, moral and spiritual simplicity which is what ultimately leads to the true eternal good. Now there's a ton to take away from Kierkegaard here and I consider Purity of Heart is Will One Thing as the most influential book I've ever read in my life up to this point. But really, there are two major takeaways that I want you to keep in the back of your mind, specifically for this season on simplicity. First, recognize that complexity, a term that we'll define and work with throughout the season, and I'm sure we'll redefine it we go too, I'm learning as we go. But this complexity is something that at least in its negative form often arises out of well intentioned motivations, but motivations that are deviant from the pure good.

Derek: 13:18

The good is the good. If you try to pursue the good and something, then you're not pursuing the good. It's not in the purview of this episode to hash that out or defend it as that's the core of Kierkegaard's work which we just spent 15 episodes on. So go back and listen to those if you want, you know, if you want to kind of address that and work through it. Second, what is probably the single most concept talked about in Kierkegaard's work here in relation to the antithesis of single mindedness is busyness.

Derek: 13:52

Kierkegaard has a lot to say about busyness and the way that it undermines purity of heart. And I want you to constantly be on the lookout for where busyness comes in in regard to our discussion this season. All right, so I think for this preface to the introduction on simplicity, which is clearly, I was trying to be funny and make a really complex title for the irony on a season on simplicity, just in case you didn't catch that. But I think we're going to kind of end there for now because I just want this to be a preface of sorts. So, this is a warm up for what's to come.

Derek: 14:35

I'm sure you probably have a whole lot more questions than answers after this episode, but come back next week and we'll do more of an introduction and work our way towards simplicity. That's all for now. So peace and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to non violence and Kingdom Living.