• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are
• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are edited. Thoughts or suggestions for future topics are always welcome. Next week the suggested topic is stories . The topic at the end of the column is for the following week.
Pastor Wayne Patton
Anahola Baptist Church
The Christian life is simple. Not always easy, but remember Christianity does not have to be complicated. We tend to make things harder than they are because, after all, life is unimaginably complex, and everything that exists does consist of innumerable moving parts. Nor are the complicated answers necessarily wrong. Ask a group of chemists to describe water and you will get a complex answer. Ask a group of children about water and they will tell you it is something you drink when you are thirsty. Both answers happen to be correct.
Ask a theologian about Christianity and you may get an esoteric answer that may be correct in every respect. But you do not have to be a chemist to enjoy a cool drink of water, nor must you be a biblical scholar to enjoy the living water offered by Jesus Christ. The more we study the Bible the deeper and richer we will be; but Christianity is best enjoyed simply.
If anyone should be an expert in simplicity it is the Christian. It is not that we are simple-minded; we deal with the deepest truths under heaven. But we are simple of heart and habit. And while Christian beliefs are deep enough to challenge the world’s greatest thinkers, the simplicity of God’s grace is plain enough for children to understand.
Kahu James Fung
Lihu‘e Christian Church
Life is complex. Things are rarely as they appear at first glance. The issues and circumstances of our lives are complicated. Personal and social problems require serious and skilled analysis and strategies to resolve. It takes a lot of brain power and wisdom of the heart to find one’s way through life.
And in the complexity, the confusion, the complications of it all we seek a simpler way. One of the reasons for life’s complexity is that we have so much. Our lives are full to overflowing with opportunities, resources, technologies, etc. There is such a thing as having too much when abundance becomes a curse rather than a blessing.
How do we simplify? That’s a question and a yearning that many people have.
The Amish have a saying: “Less is more.” I believe it. The less stuff that clutters a life the more we are able to appreciate what we have. The less running around breathlessly to do all those things we are led to think of as essential the more time and energy we invest in those things that are really important — especially the things of the spirit, the things of the heart.
Jesus warned us about the hectic madness with which we can pursue seductive trinkets (Matt 6: 19-22), and he taught us to keep things simple by focusing on the present rather than obsessing about all the things that could go wrong down the road of the future (Matt 6: 25-33). And he suggested that the best investment of our time might not be in doing all the things that our culture deems important but by doing one thing — deepening our spiritual life. (Luke 10: 38-42)
Rebecca DeRoos
Science of Mind practitioner
Simplicity comes with letting go and letting God. Twice I’ve let go of complete homes and households and left with very little. Not to look back and being free of all those things that exist in cupboards, closets, on walls. It was much easier than I ever dreamed. Spirit’s smile of simplicity filled my life. I found that it felt so much better to swim in the ocean, take a line and go fishing and sit down and paint my special view. Surprisingly I needed very little for my joy. Even teaching was less complex with fewer tools, but my soul creatively produced so much more in my lessons.
It’s tempting to clutter our lives with things. The fear of letting them go builds. Putting a little music on or sitting quietly in prayer or meditation releases our thoughts and hold on all these things.
Even this man named Jesus had very little material substance. His life was about giving and teaching love and he was happy.
Topic for two
weeks from today
• Will you speak to us on winning?
• Spiritual leaders are invited to e-mail responses of three to five paragraphs to pwoolway@kauaipubco.com.
• Deadline each week is 5 p.m. Tuesday.