BOOK REVIEW: Simple Spirituality

By Chris Heuertz

2008, Intervarsity Press

In spite of the popularity of the term “simplicity”, it seems that not much is simple these days. “Real Simple” magazine gives guidance on decorating your table for a five course meal or coordinating your living room curtains with your TV remote control. Stores sell wall plaques declaring “Simplicity” for $19.99 to add pizzazz to your home ambience.

To further complicate matters, we live in an information saturated society with the ability to access incredible amounts of knowledge in rapid fire succession. At times, this excessive knowledge spills over into spiritual lives, leaving us with piles of books, concordances, and commentaries with which to understand our spirituality. Sometimes the tools are useful, and sometimes, the weight of it all can be slightly overwhelming.

The attempt to sort through such complexities first drew me to a little book entitled Simple Spirituality. Written by Chris Heuertz, director of Word Made Flesh, an organization which serves among the poorest of the poor, Simple Spirituality stays true to its title by exploring five simple yet profound commitments:

• · Humility
• · Community
• · Simplicity
• · Submission
• · Brokenness

In exploring these “lifestyle celebrations”, Heuertz uses stories of his relationships with the poor around the world to illustrate the depth of spirituality he has learned from the poor. He examines what the wealthy western church misses from its lack of connection to the poor. “I believe that God is using the cries of our friends who suffer in poverty today to call the church out of its sound-proof sanctuaries,” he writes. “God is challenging the church to respond to a world in need. Too often, however, the church has isolated itself and failed to listen, and thus contributed to the suffering. God is calling us to establish communities that offer the prophetic presence of Christ in today’s world.”

Heuertz addresses the temptation to use personal geography to justify disengaging from the difficulties of the rest of the world. His conclusion that “those who go without the basic necessities of life, regardless of their geographical location or proximity, are nevertheless counted as our family: fellow believers in the Sudan or Sri Lanka or Peru are as much an intrinsic part of the body of Christ as are the Methodists, Presbyterians, or Catholics down the street.” He asserts that it is simplicity that helps us to remember such family obligations.

With deep gentleness, Heuertz uses the brokenness of the world as a springboard for spiritual vitality. Using what he calls the “Five Stones of Brokenness” – humility, community, simplicity, submission, and brokenness – he challenges those of us who live in plenty to seek a fuller faith by reconsidering how we might “live more simply so others may simply live” (Ghandi).