I've been waiting to hear you address this question for a long time, Pastor John. I'm glad we've gotten around to it this summer. It's a question that comes in from a listener named Kelsey. "Hello, Pastor John. What are the differences and possible similarities between wartime living and what has recently been called minimalism?

Is wartime living minimalism itself? Or perhaps minimalism, while broadly popular today, is a passing fad for the elite. In your mind, what distinguishes wartime living from minimalism?" The little bit that I'm aware of and the little bit that I understand this newer expression called minimalism, it seems to me to be a loose trend in our culture to own fewer things and strip down the complexities of life to the basics, largely driven by a desire for greater self-realization, greater happiness.

The New York Times describes one advocate like this. He gave up his permanent home, life goals, and negative emotions. He threw away his college diploma, which had been gathering dust in storage. Quote, "I don't hold on to all the things society tells me to hold on to." He now carries nothing but a bag of clothes and a backpack containing a computer, an iPad, and a smartphone.

"I have zero other possessions," he writes, and thanks to this, he has found peace as a wandering techno-ascetic Silicon Valley's version of Zen monkhood. It goes on like this, "From tiny houses to micro apartments to monochromatic clothing to interior decorating trends, picture white walls interrupted only by succulents, less now goes further than ever.

It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the minimalism glut," it's kind of a funny phrase, "as the word can be applied to just about anything. The nearly four million images tag minimalism on Instagram include white sneakers, clouds, the works of Mondrain, neon signs, crumbling brick walls, and grassy fields. So long as it's stylish, austere, it seems it's minimalist.

Minimalism is now conflated with self-optimization." So that's a glimpse from the New York Times about what we're talking about. So it appears that it's no single trend or movement, but a kind of a loose set of tendencies in our culture to react against the complexities and pressures of ownership and maintaining lots of stuff in the modern world that sap our strength, make us feel like slaves to our possessions rather than masters of our fate.

And of course, at 71 years old, this is not the least bit new to me. In the '70s, I can remember so clearly because I was part of it, there was a great outburst of simple living literature just being rolling off the press for same kinds of arguments, same kinds of things with not as much technology to deal with.

And I suspect this will last for a while and then fade until another form of the same reaction and tendency breaks out. So Kelsey's question, I think, is how does this recent expression differ from wartime lifestyle? And I've been talking about wartime lifestyles for about 30 years. I think first came out of my preaching in the mid '80s or so, and it had a very definite origin, which I'll mention in a minute.

So let me say six things about what I mean by wartime lifestyle. And I think with every one of these six, it will be manifestly clear how, in terms of worldview, at least, it differs from the current minimalist fad. First, a wartime lifestyle as I mean it is rooted in a view of this world as created by God and intended by Him to be subdued, as Genesis 1 says, "For the glory of God and good of mankind," and to be enjoyed when received with thanksgiving to God and sanctified by the Word of God in prayer, as Paul says in 1 Timothy 4, 5.

So any kind of austerity pursued in a wartime lifestyle is not based on any intrinsic evil in the created world. That's number one. Number two, a wartime lifestyle is rooted in the biblical conviction that since the fall of the world into sin and into futility and corruption, a war has been going on of the most serious kind between God and Satan, between God's purposes of redemption and Satan's purposes of destruction.

So we read, Ephesians 6, "Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against authorities, against cosmic powers over spiritual darkness, against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." So take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm.

So one of the aims of wartime teaching, as I have tried to represent it, is to wake up the church in many places, especially in the West, that has simply settled in to a peacetime mentality with no sense of urgency of the war that we are really in. I mean, if you took the temperature, the military warfare temperature of the average Western Christian, I doubt that it would sound too urgent.

Number three, third, since we are fallen now and sinful in our desires, the world, the God-created world around us with all of its cares and pleasures is not only a created good to be subdued and enjoyed, it is a danger to be guarded against. So Jesus in the parable of the soils tries to explain why so many people don't mature in hearing the Word of God, and soil number three goes like this, "As for what fell among thorns, they are those who hear the Word, but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life." He's not just talking about sinful ones.

And their fruit does not mature. In other words, the ordinary riches that John Piper has all around me, the ordinary pleasures of life are not simply good. They are also mortally dangerous to the soul. The wartime lifestyle puts us on red alert not to be naive that God's good creation is now only good.

Because of our sin and because of Satan, anything good can destroy us. A wartime footing is essential, lest the enemy of our souls get the upper hand. Number four, therefore, Jesus calls us to a real self-denial in following Him. "Whoever would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." In other words, genuine discipleship in this kind of embattled world necessarily includes self-denial.

We have died with Christ. Our lives are hidden with Him in God. We are now exiles and sojourners on the earth. Our true wealth is in heaven. Our aim here is to glorify Christ by showing Him to be supremely valuable, not our possessions. And all of that is going to imply a certain kind and level of self-denial.

Number five, and this is where the truth of wartime living really took root and came from in my teaching 30 years ago, the aim of wartime living is not that we go without, but that we are able to accomplish more things by a reallocation of resources from self-gratification to missionary penetration.

That's where it began. It began with Ralph Winter. Ralph Winter, bless his heart, one of my favorite missionary heroes, who's now with the Lord, a great statesman in his day, huge influence on me, pointed out that in the Second World War, the luxury liner, ocean liner, Queen Mary, was transformed into a troop transport.

This is wartime use of a luxury liner, and he described in detail the dramatic changes for how many people slept in a room, like 12 instead of three, and the kind of utensils that were used in them in the now-called mess hall instead of the beautiful dining room, and on and on, creating a sense for us that during World War II, there were changes.

Life didn't just go on as usual. And he stressed that God's people in a prosperous land like America simply cannot live as though there were not thousands of unreached people groups remaining to be reached who were under enemy control. And we have, from our commander-in-chief, a commission to go, and we have the most powerful liberating bomb in the world called the gospel, and therefore to just carry on our lives in this country as though it were a peacetime shows how out of touch we are with biblical reality.

And the last thing, number six, the New Testament makes abundantly clear that in fact, in all our recognition of satanic reality and in all of our awareness of the danger of riches in this world and in all of our embrace of self-denial and in all of our pursuit of missions and the reallocation of our resources, we find, in fact, the greatest joy, both in this world and in the world to come, because Jesus said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." More joyful to advance the cause of Christ than accumulate wealth and comforts.

When God calls us to the Calvary road, this is why Desiring God exists to make this point. When God calls us to the Calvary road of cross-bearing and ministry, he calls us on to the road of maximum joy, even if it costs us our lives, and Jesus made that clear in Matthew 13, 44, with that little favorite parable that we love.

The kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up, and then in his joy, he goes and sells everything that he has. And I'm sitting here waving my arms because this is just so much what I want. I want to be one who knows how much I need to sell, how much I need to give away, not because I'm going to be unhappy, but because this is the path to true joy.

In his joy, in his joy, he embraces the lifestyle that will glorify God, rescue people from suffering, especially eternal suffering. So that's the goal of wartime living, glory of God, the good of other people, and our joy. Amen. That is so good and relevant. Thanks for bringing all of this into a contemporary discussion on minimalism, Pastor John and Kelsey.

That is a great question. Thank you for prompting this conversation here on the podcast. Well, you can subscribe to our audio feeds and you can search our episode archive, even reach us by email with a question you may have about trends you see in culture. Do all of that through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

Well in the life of this podcast, we have talked about the TV show Game of Thrones. We've talked about nudity in television and film. But next time we're going to field a question from a listener on the topic of television drama and humor, all the other shows that seem like innocent fun.

For the Christian, what are the questions we should be asking before we binge a Netflix comedy? That is the question on the docket for Monday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the podcast. We'll see you on the other side of the weekend. 1 Page 1 of 2