You’ve probably heard the saying, “The more stuff you own, the more your stuff owns you.” It’s always a great feeling to thin things out of your closet and/or garage and this might be the perfect long weekend to do it. You can try to sell all that stuff weighing you down, because it takes valuable time. It’s faster and feels better to take it to the Salvation Army, the D.I. or give it away to others. You deserve the great feeling of being thinner and lighter!
Where on earth did all that stuff come from? “Money is the ‘root’ of all evil”, and stuff represents money.
Most of us have big eyes for things we gather along our way: a house we can’t afford, a shiny new car that’s advertised on TV, another new pair of shoes, etc. etc. For some the want list keeps getting longer every day. And the list seldom, if ever, gets shorter. Objects, dreamed about, become a reality whether we can afford it or not. It also gets harder to find places to put those things when we get them home. Our garage becomes a storage bin and our car sits out in the cold all Winter long. We are all potential hoarders. We come to the very brink of ‘hoardsmanship’ (my word) and then we see a show on TV about hoarders and we are turned off. That very next day we take a few things to the dump, or the Salvation Army and we prove to ourselves, right then and there, that we are not like that. We will never be like that! What a merry-go-round life can be when it is driven primarily by the material things of the world.
There are several new shows on TV now designed to make housewives (and others) into ‘daily shoppers’. Large wholesale mail order companies give a few percentage points of cash back in return for every item you purchase. They advertise it as a ‘part time job’. A person taken in will purchase several hundred dollars worth of merchandise and gleefully show a return on their investment with a check from the merchant of $36, while wearing a big, gleeful smile, “Look, I got paid to shop!”
All the above, in reality, is a spiritual process. One we aren’t aware of or reminded of on a daily basis but nevertheless it is a spiritual process. One as real as going to church or praying. All mortals are subjected to temptation on a daily basis. Even Christ was tempted. He was subject to the same laws of trial and testing as those that govern all mortals (that’s you and I). Our lives on earth represent a probationary period where every accountable soul is tried and tested; a test which every person must be subjected to. Lucifer was tempted before the world was with one of the greatest temptations of all, ‘power’. Power, too, is one of our mortal temptations. Bruce R, McConkie put it this way; “The Lord is worshipped when men adhere to His standards and emulate His way of life….The Devil is worshipped when we adhere to His standards and emulate his way of life. His way of life is when we are carnal, sensual, and even devilish, thrilled with worldly thoughts and ambitions, primarily things and power. When we forget the Lord, we live after the manner of the world; “for Satan seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.” (2 Nephi 2:27.) When we are enticed by the material things of the world, we are actually emulating the wrong person. Not all things are devilish, not all things are sensual, but there is a point of indulgence at which they become sensual and devilish. Then we are worshipping the wrong person. When we are buying things we don’t need, accumulating things (new or used) because they are things that represent ‘having’ (or wealth). Those who appear to have more, including money, appear to have the power; that is the root of evil. We may say, well, that isn’t the way I am, or it wouldn’t affect ‘me’ that way. On the other hand, you may be like the father who proudly announced that he had sent a check for $25 to a little boy they adopted in Korea a few years ago. “Yes,” said the woman across the table, “and the day before that you spent twice as much on a pair of shoes that you did not need at all.” The rebuke was merited. He was pleased with his ‘generosity’ but was it really generosity or was it a means of buying off his conscience? Taking an honest look at one’s failings is easy; we do it every day. But taking an honest look at one’s honesty – this is a task for heroes and for saints. The way of the Savior is so much simpler, He travelled light. Think about it.