The Tyranny of Stuff
Analogy★★★★★They’ve been having this fad called tiny living. Any of you ever seen some of this? And people are saying, you know, we need to because of the environment, we produce too much carbon and we need to reduce our carbon footprint, so we need to start living smaller part of the reason for that is I don’t know if you know the statistics, but in the last 45 years from 1973 the average American new home has gone up 1000 square feet, yet during that same 45 years the number of people in the house has gone down from 3.1 people to 2.5 people, so we’ve got fewer people in bigger houses than ever, and those houses are full of stuff too.
Isn’t that right? How many of you drive down the neighborhood and you know your friends have a two-car garage but both cars are parked outside?
No, We got our cars in our garage. I’m just saying, you know, have you seen that? Jesus said a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of things he possesses. I think it’s so funny though, you watch these people say, you know, we want to reduce our carbon footprint and we’re going to go into a tiny house.
And so they’ll show this program about how they build and design this tiny house, and it does all these...they do everything they can to save space, and they’re very creative. And I sometimes have been next to Karen, And it just cracks me up every time because when they first show them their new tiny house, they go in, they say, boy, this is really small.
That’s what you said you wanted. There’s a law of life. You will fill whatever space you have. Move into a bigger house, wait a few years, watch what happens.
You will fill whatever space you have, and if you live in America, you may rent extra space to store your stuff. And then you have to worry about your stuff.
And you can’t go on a mission trip because who’s going to take care of your stuff? Am I right? You can become a prisoner to your stuff. And you spend your weekends, you could be visiting with your neighbours and giving Bible studies, oiling and maintaining your stuff.
And mowing your stuff. It got really quiet all of a sudden.
Batchelor, Doug, “02 Worrying About Stuff” (AudioVerse teaching 29686).
The point
The speaker observes the "tiny living" fad and contrasts it with the trend of Americans building larger homes for fewer people, which are then filled with excessive possessions. He argues that people tend to fill whatever space they have, leading to a "tyranny of stuff" that creates worry, hinders ministry, and makes individuals prisoners to their possessions.