QUOTE : Most people in our culture-- and in the church-- believe wealth is always a sign of blessing from God, and we have almost no category for understanding wealth as a barrier to God..It's like seawater. If you're thirsty out on the ocean, you look around at all the water and think, I should drink this. But..the more you drink it, the thirstier you will become..In drinking what you think is a source of life, you unknowingly plunge yourself into death..The "more" that we want will never satisfy because it will never be enough..The gospel compels us to humbly identify what is enough for us in order to freely give away our excess to others..we are bombarded by the lie that says a higher salary requires a higher standard of living..God gives us more not so that we can have more but so that we can give more..God is our greatest treasure, and our lives will count on earth only when we invest them in his Kingdom for eternity..Instead of that money increasing our standard of living, it only increases our standard of giving..He has given us his Spirit to lead and guide our every decision as we surrender to him our every dollar..I realized that in my efforts at simplicity, I had left the realm of the spiritual and moved into the realm of the absurd.