We grow up in a church culture that cultivates the sense of religious piety in us. We sing with emotion, and in response lift our hands and sway them to the sensation of the moment (sometimes just because others are doing likewise). And in our songs and our prayers, we profess to be the very ones who - very much like Peter when he was naïve - would follow Christ to the ends of the earth, who’d give up everything in life just to share in God’s dream. And we’re pretty sure we mean what we say.

Until reality hits.

And when God begins dealing with the things we hold dear in life, challenging us to shed these self-motivated dreams and ambitions one by one and bit by bit, suddenly the weight of the cross seems quite cumbersome. It gets in the way of our happiness, or at least it seems that way. It’s as if God doesn’t want us to be happy.

Some people respond to this challenge by trying to scheme their way around the demands of the Kingdom. They silently work their lives out in a way that enables them to drown themselves in affluence whilst still spewing the same self-denying confessions in church each week, hoping that nobody would notice the incongruence. They get by. In fact, more than that, they’re the ones who’re often seen as the most respectable people in the church institution. They eventually become treasurers, stewards, and board members.

God wants us to embrace the life of simplicity because he knows it’s only through simplicity that our hearts can be open to true and pure happiness in life. To live a life of simplicity is a choice. Contentedness in life is a choice. We cannot blame the influence of the materialistic self-glorifying world for the narcissistic choices we make for our own lives. Self-elevation is not a new problem; it’s a perennial age-old disease.