Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. Here we talk every so often about wartime living. And we talk about minimalism, too. But those are not the same thing. The Christian life is not simply about decluttering our closets and living a simpler life. No. We aim at wartime simplicity, which is a more specific goal, a material simplicity in this world that’s on mission, not simply happy with being more organized. You can see how Pastor John has distinguished the two — wartime simplicity and minimalism — in the APJ book on pages 98–101.

Today we look at a new angle to the topic in an email from a woman who listens to the podcast from China. Here’s the email from our friend: “Dear Pastor John, hello to you from Hong Kong, and thank you for this podcast. My question is that my unbelieving husband has the habit of hoarding. He keeps boxes, newspapers from years back, packaging — all the things that average people may regard as garbage once their expected usage is over — all that accumulates in our home. I tried to throw away some things, but it caused disharmony in our relationship. I feel like I live in a rubbish dump. How do I deal with the problem biblically?”

Well, let me admit right away, I am not an expert in either understanding hoarding or counseling hoarders. So, you might say, “Well, why are you even trying to answer this question?” And I’m trying to answer it because it’s so hard. I feel like, as a pastor, I can’t ignore things that I just have not given a lot of thought to. But frankly, I have seen enough of this in the last forty years that I’ve thought about it some. So, don’t take this as a final word — just take it as “Maybe there’s something here that would help me.” And if there’s not, you haven’t wasted too much time.

So, let me at least try to share the kinds of things that I have thought over the years, and then call them together here to show what you can do if you have a friend or a relative or married someone who lives in the chaos of hoarding. And the reason I say chaos is that we almost never speak of a person as a hoarder who saves everything but keeps it in perfect order on shelves, in the attic, in closets. We don’t call that person a hoarder. The house is neat; it’s orderly. Life is functional.

The hoarder is a person who has gotten out of proportion to his ability to manage what he’s saving, and disorder and encroachment is making life almost unlivable. I view hoarding as on a continuum with degrees of messiness, and we are all messy a little bit — some a lot, some a little bit. I think there’s a continuum here.

Why Some Live in the Chaos

So, what are the factors that move people along this continuum to full-blown, almost incapacitating, depressing hoarding?

1. They might not have the inclination to organize.

The first thing I would say is that many people grow up in homes where they do not see or hear anyone modeling or expressing the value of orderliness, or neatness, or cleanliness, or beauty. They may enter adult life with no built-in instinct toward keeping a room or a home orderly or neat or beautiful. It’s just not their natural impulse. It wasn’t built into them either genetically or the way their parents raised them.

2. They might not have the necessary attention.

This lack of any natural impulse toward orderliness may go hand in hand with a kind of attention deficit. As much as we may overdiagnose our children with attention deficit disorder, attention deficit — whether you call it a disorder or not — is a real thing. If you were to ask somebody why they don’t put this or that away — they just leave it there — one honest answer they might give to you is, “It doesn’t register. I don’t even see it.”

Now, those folks leave a trail of things that belong in a drawer, or on a shelf, or in a cabinet, or in a closet, but they don’t put them there for the two reasons we’ve seen. One, partly because there’s no natural impulse toward orderliness, and partly because it just doesn’t grab their attention. They don’t see it. It is as if they are blind to it.

3. They might procrastinate.

There is the complicating factor of procrastination. A person opens a package, takes out the content, and leaves the packaging on the chair or on the counter. “I’ll deal with that later. I fully intend to.” They don’t. So, now you have three factors at work: the absence of a bent toward orderliness, a deficit of attention as though things just don’t even get noticed — they don’t register — and you have procrastination that intends to do the right thing and put something away, and never gets back to it. Now, the effect of those three factors is a room or a house of increasing disorder or messiness or chaos.

4. They might not think to make a plan.

The fourth complicating factor has to do with why it’s so hard to tackle this mess and clean it up once it’s accumulated; namely, many people’s minds simply do not function in a way that makes planning for cleaning and ordering natural. It doesn’t come naturally to formulate a goal. “Okay, this is going to be cleaned up in three weeks.” Conceive of steps to get to that goal. “Okay, I’m going to have my friend and I — we’re going to work on it about one hour a day every morning.” Plan for those times. “Okay, we’ll do it on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

That way of thinking seems so natural to some people — it does to me — and it’s quite unnatural to others. They just don’t think that way. If you talk to them about that kind of planning, they might say something like, “I just do things. I don’t live my life that way. I don’t even think that way. It’s a strain on my mind to even hear you talk about it that way.” In other words, they’re not walking through their lives formulating goals, identifying steps to reach those goals, planning how to take those steps. They just don’t approach life that way.

“God in Christ is ultimately the source of our well-being — not orderliness and not messiness.”

Therefore, what seems like a simple cleanup project to some, to them seems absolutely daunting, which means now that if all those factors come together — absence of any natural bent toward orderliness, a deficit of attention, a bent toward procrastination, the absence of any natural inclination to form a plan in handling the growing chaos — the effect is discouragement, hopelessness, paralysis, isolation (nobody is going to come to their house) and sometimes depression.

5. They might be inclined to collect things.

Which brings us now to the final complicating factor of this tendency toward hoarding. On top of an ever-increasing chaos of things that never get put away, you have this added impulse to collect things and rarely throw them away. I don’t think hoarding is a separate and distinct tendency from all those other things that I’ve just mentioned. I think they’re all interwoven in greater or lesser degrees.

What Feeds the Impulse to Hoard

As I’ve tried to understand this impulse of hoarding that gets added into the mix, it seems to me there are two general ways to describe what’s feeding this impulse.

1. We can find our identity in our possessions.

One is a deep, distorted association in a person’s mind between having and being. Now, that may sound a little philosophical, but it’s not. Everybody can understand this. Let me try to explain. To have stuff is to be okay. “I’m okay. I’ve got my stuff I have, and so I am okay.”

The reason I say it’s distorted is because all of us experience some measure of good feeling that comes from just having, right? This is not weird. We all do this. We collect coins or baseball cards or butterflies or antiques or books. There’s a satisfying sense of well-being that comes from just having a thing, having a collection. What is that? Well, there it is. It’s universal. Most people experience having as part of their well-being.

But with the hoarder, this has been distorted so that the person’s sense of significance and well-being is preserved not by an isolated healthy collection, but by a life dominated by collection. It feels good. It feels significant to have more stuff, even if it’s old newspapers or tools or wrapping paper or buttons or scrap metal. I’ve seen people collect and fill their houses with the most bizarre things.

2. We can find it too painful to discard our possessions.

The other thing that feeds the hoarding impulse is the anxiety caused by getting rid of stuff. Now, this is just the flip side of the good feeling that one has by gathering stuff, but experientially it’s a different feeling. And so, there are two impulses, not just one. Once you have comforted yourself with some acquisition — “I’ve got a lot of stuff that feels good. I feel secure. I feel content. It does good for me” — and you surround yourself with this stuff, then that sense of peace is jeopardized (there’s an anxiety that comes) if you contemplate getting rid of any one piece of the stuff.

It might be the one piece that you’re going to need to complete your well-being, and a huge anxiety is created by thinking, “I don’t think I can give that away because if I give that away, then I might give all this away. And if I give all this away, I have no idea how we’ll feel good anymore about my life.”

How to Help a Hoarder

So, what do you do if you must deal with a friend or a roommate or a relative or a close relative, like a spouse? Here are five suggestions (very briefly).

1. Don’t get angry.

Get beyond anger. The Bible says that the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God (James 1:20). It is so easy to get frustrated and angry. And you will discover that’s not going to help. That’s not working righteousness for anybody. We have to find a way to subdue the anger that rises so that we can talk and relate in a way that doesn’t come from anger.

2. Try to talk about it.

With as much patience and kindness as you can, see how far your friend or relatives will let you draw them into a conversation about what you perceive as a problem. They may not. They may. They might admit it’s a total problem. They might not see any problem at all. Don’t go first to the problems that it creates. “The chaos is killing you.” “It’s going to make a fire hazard.” “It’s unhealthy.” Don’t go there first.

First, go to the kinds of things that may help you understand them. How did it get to be this way? What’s driving them? And they might be helped by your suggesting some of those five things that I mentioned earlier. See if they recognize themselves in any of those traits.

3. Consider how you can compromise.

See if they are willing to think in terms of a both-and, a kind of compromise with you, where both of you can accomplish some of what you desire. I knew one family, for example, that basically solved the problem (more or less) by making one room in the house total chaos. And nobody gave a thought to it; nobody attempted to fix it. If you’re going to store something, throw it in there. And if you opened that, you’d say, “What is this?”

I remember doing that — and it was far away from Minneapolis, so I won’t identify anybody. But I thought, “This seems like a normal house, and that one room is absolute, bizarre chaos. What is that?” It’s a compromise is what it is. They found a way to live together. And I thought, “Okay, that’s what it has to be.” So, that’s number three. See if you can get a both-and — a compromise of some kind. That may not be it, but something like that.

4. Suggest seeing a counselor.

If the problem seems severe enough to be hindering friendships and hindering health, putting life at risk, you might ask the person to see a counselor with you and get more help than I can give. And I don’t mean that there are any magic bullets. I just mean sometimes a third person listening carefully can help both of you talk more clearly, more fairly to each other, and so move you forward toward a solution.

5. Seek your ultimate fulfillment in God.

Finally, God in Christ is ultimately the source of our well-being — not orderliness and not messiness. So, seek together to find your deepest sense of identity and well-being and happiness in him.

Audio Transcript

Happy Friday, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. As many of you can imagine, when one spouse gets saved and the other spouse does not, it leads to new tensions inside the home. Maybe you don’t need to imagine such tensions. Maybe this is your reality. At least five times, we have addressed these tensions on the podcast. (See APJs 397, 680, 1029, 1560, and 1690.) And this now includes today’s episode. It’s a question from a woman who listens to the podcast. Here’s her question: “Dear Pastor John, hello! Although I have always identified as a Christian, I just recently experienced the new birth as a married woman with children at age 34.” Praise God! “My husband, however, is not a Christian. Jesus has transformed my life. And though my husband has been supportive of me until now, he does not want me to be baptized. I feel the time has come for me to be baptized. But I don’t want to go against my husband’s expressed wishes either. Ephesians 5:22–24 says I should submit to my husband. First Peter 3:1 speaks of the influence of a wife’s conduct on her nonbelieving husband. But I am called by Jesus to be baptized. So should I go against my husband’s wishes?”

When all is said and done, my bottom-line answer is going to be yes. But for that act to be pleasing to the Lord, there is more that needs to be said, so let’s take a few minutes and think about this.

The uniform teaching of the New Testament, whether it’s Ephesians 5 or 1 Corinthians 11 or Colossians 3 or 1 Peter 3, is that husbands are to be the head of their wives the way Christ is the head of the church, and that wives should be in glad support of that leadership, that headship, which the New Testament calls submission.

So, I would define submission like this: the disposition of a wife’s heart and mind, for the sake of Christ, to give glad support to her husband’s leadership. And the reason I use that kind of definition — namely, a disposition of heart and mind to comply gladly with the husband’s initiatives and leadership for the Lord’s sake — is that those two aspects of the definition, the disposition and for the Lord’s sake, provide limitations on the absoluteness of obedience to the husband.

Two Limits to Submission

The first limitation is implied in the words “a disposition of heart and mind,” because you can have a disposition to comply even if sometimes, for godly, biblical reasons, you may not comply. In other words, there is a huge difference between a biblically submissive wife, who occasionally sees biblical reasons not to comply with something her husband expects, and a defiant wife, or just an egalitarian wife, who is resistant to the very notion that her husband has a God-given responsibility to exercise initiative and authority in their relationship. There’s a big difference.

“She is first and foremost under the lordship of Christ. That’s what it means to be a Christian.”

And the other limitation that my definition puts on absolute obedience to the husband is when it says that her glad support for the husband’s leadership is “for the Lord’s sake.” That’s really significant. What I mean by that is that she is first and foremost under the lordship of Christ as a Christian. That’s what it means to be a Christian. And then derivatively, not absolutely, she is under the leadership of her husband.

So Paul says in Colossians 3:18, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.” And Ephesians 5:22 says, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” Now both of those statements that connect submission with the Lord imply that submission to the husband is flowing from a prior reality that’s higher and more authoritative — namely, being in the Lord or having Jesus as your Lord.

Then Peter makes this connection most clear when he begins his section on submission — to state, masters, husbands — in 1 Peter 2:13. He says, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution.” Now that’s huge. All obedience to humans is subordinated to obedience to Jesus, the absolute Lord. We do things for his sake, in submission to him, under his lordship.

Obedience to Jesus sends us into earthly relationships with the disposition to serve and acknowledge God-given authority. But that same obedience to Jesus limits our obedience because Jesus does not send us to be obediently disobedient to him. The words of Peter in Acts 5:29 fly like a banner over all Christian relationships: “We must obey God rather than men,” they said.

Obedience and Opportunity

So now, in regard to the decision of this wife to be baptized while her husband disapproves, here are several implications I would draw out.

Christ’s Command

First, when it comes to the command of Christ versus the command of a husband, the command of Christ will take precedence over the command of the husband when they’re in conflict, as they are here, it seems. This is what it means to have Jesus as your Lord. Baptism is a command of the Lord Jesus. In the Great Commission, Matthew 28:19–20, he said that making disciples of all nations included baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

“Obedience to Jesus limits our obedience because Jesus does not send us to be obediently disobedient to him.”

Baptism never became merely optional in the ministry of the apostles. There’s no evidence of any Christians in the early church who were not baptized. The assumption in all the Epistles is that Christians have been baptized. It belongs together with faith as an outward expression of our death with Christ and our resurrection in him to newness of life. That’s the first thing.

Her Disposition

Second, choosing to be baptized against the desire of a husband does not mean that a wife has abandoned her disposition of heart and mind to give glad support to her husband’s leadership. This exceptional act of non-compliance can be pursued without defiance and without anger, and with respect and affection, and with a longing expressed to her husband that he would see in her a loyal wife who delights to be responsive to his initiatives and leadership. But on this particular point, her greater allegiance is to Jesus and his call to be baptized.

Her Approach

Third, I would emphasize that she doesn’t need to be precipitous or hasty in her action, but for her husband’s sake and for peace and hope she can go slowly (it seems like she has) and pray and seek to help him understand, as much as he’ll let her. She does not need to give any impression that she’s acting irrationally, but that she has come to this decision carefully, thoughtfully, and would love to include him in the process — and, indeed, have him be a part of the event as well.

His Opportunity

And finally, by way of encouragement, even though this is a point of tension between her and her husband, it may turn out that by the conversations they have about the meaning of what she’s doing and why she’s doing it, that this would be one of the most clarifying things for him about the very meaning of Christianity. What does it mean that his wife is a Christian?

It may be that some of his resistance to baptism is owing to a very superficial understanding of what it is and what it really means to be a Christian. And this decision on her part may give her an opportunity to explain to him the profound reality of spiritual death with Christ and new life in the Spirit and all the implications of what it is to be forgiven and accepted and loved and indwelt by the Holy Spirit with the hope of everlasting life.

Few things will provide as clear an opportunity for a wife to make plain to an unbelieving husband what it means for her to be a Christian as for her to explain — in great detail, perhaps — what the greatness of baptism stands for. So I will pray that God gives you great grace and wisdom as you move forward, and that your husband will not only be agreeable, but someday join you in the life that baptism really stands for.

C.S. Lewis was fond of quoting English writer Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), who once said, “People need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed.” Both Lewis and Johnson believed that people often possess the knowledge they need; it simply needs to be brought to mind at the appropriate time.

I’ve found this to be especially true when it comes to godly masculinity. I need timely reminders to help me fulfill my calling as a husband and a father, as a friend and a brother. And thankfully, God’s word directs us to a daily and unavoidable reminder of what it means to be a godly man. We find it in Psalm 19:4–5.

In them [the heavens] he has set a tent for the sun,     which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,     and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.

With these words, David invites us to sanctify our imaginations by seeing the sun with godly eyes.

Bridegroom and Warrior

The sun, as it moves across the sky, reminds David of something. He’s seen that brightness before. Then he recalls the wedding day of a close friend, and the link is made — the sun is like the bridegroom.

Those of us who attend modern weddings know that, when the wedding march begins, all eyes turn to the back of the room to see the bride, clothed in white and beautiful in her glory. But a wise attendee will also steal a glance toward the altar, where the groom waits with eager anticipation and expectant joy. The beauty of his bride is reflected in the brightness of his face. It’s that look that David remembers when he sees the sun as it rises in the morning.

But David doesn’t stop looking. David considers the sun again and is reminded of Josheb-basshebeth, one of his mighty men, running into battle with spear raised and eyes blazing because he is doing what he was built to do (2 Samuel 23:8). The warrior is intense and joyful because he is protecting his people with the strength and skill he’s developed.

So then, the sun is like the groom, and the sun is like the mighty man. Both are images of godly masculinity — the bridegroom and the warrior, the lover and the man of war. Both images direct us to a man’s calling in relation to his people. One points us inward, as a man delights in his wife (and by extension his children and the rest of his people). The other points us outward, as a man protects his people from external threats. Which means the sun is an ever-present reminder of what it means to be a godly man: bright, triumphant, blazing with joy and purpose, ready to fight and bleed and die for the ones he loves.

Manly Weight

When we press into this image, we see the gravity that lies at the heart of mature masculinity. A number of recent Christian books on manhood have underlined the importance of gravitas for godly men. Michael Foster and Dominic Bnonn Tennant define gravitas as the weight of a man’s presence (It’s Good to Be a Man, 141). It’s the dignity and honor that pull people into his orbit (much like the sun orients the planets by its mass).

“The fear of the Lord gives weight to a man’s soul, making him firm and stable and steadfast.”

Gravitas comes partly from a man’s skill and competence, and partly from his sober-mindedness and confidence. A competent and confident man catches the eye, much like the sun as it blazes a trail through the heavens. But ultimately, true gravitas comes from fearing the Lord. The fear of the Lord gives weight to a man’s soul, making him firm and stable and steadfast, not tossed to and fro by winds of doctrine or the passions of the flesh.

But as Psalm 19 shows, gravitas is only one half of the equation. Gladness completes the picture. It’s not enough to take initiative and responsibility for oneself and for others. A godly man runs his course with joy.

Manly Mirth

One of my favorite pictures of masculinity comes from Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy. King Lune tells his son Cor what kingship is all about.

This is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there’s hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land. (310)

“Biblical manhood bleeds and sacrifices with unconquerable joy.”

First in, last out, laughing loudest. Here is competence and confidence — initiating, taking risks, and bearing burdens for others. Here is a king who cultivates his strength for God’s mission and the good of others. And he does it all with courage in the heart and manifest laughter in the soul. Biblical manhood bleeds and sacrifices with unconquerable joy.

Gravity and gladness are both essential. Without gravity, gladness declines into triviality. Without gladness, gravity degenerates into gloom. Together, they are a potent combination that inspires others, forms communities, and extends a man’s influence in the world.

Where the Images Land

Psalm 19 depicts the sun as a wonderful picture of true masculinity. But for David, the sun doesn’t merely draw our minds to the bridegroom and the strong man, to the lover and the man of war. More than that, the sun draws our minds upward to the splendor and majesty of the Maker. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). The sun both reminds us of the glory of manhood and displays the glory of God.

More than that, these reminders point us to Jesus. He is the ground and goal of manhood. All true gravity and gladness come from him. He is the one who reconciles us to God so that, despite our sin and shame, we live beneath the smile of a happy Father who says to us, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

Jesus is our older brother, the firstborn from the dead, our model and example who ran his race for the joy set before him. He is the ultimate strong man — a man of war who killed the dragon to get the girl. He is the bridegroom who greatly rejoices over his bride and whose face is like the sun shining in full strength. And every day, he causes the sun to rise, reminding us of who he is and who we are to be.