Hoarding Your Own Hurt

There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.
     -Ecclesiastes 5:13 (KJV)

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles
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As I was reading my Bible today, Ecclesiastes 5:13 really stood out to me. In fact, I read it in another version to make sure I had correctly understood its meaning. The NIV translates the phrase about riches as"wealth hoarded to the harm of its owners".

The behavior of hoarding has become a common problem in our society. We have TV shows that reveal the accumulated junk and living conditions of the most avid hoarders. Hoarding has its own special psychological disorder associated with it. The issue shows up more and more frequently in our news. A recent WFAA report stated that "doctors estimate up to five percent of the population hoards." (Inside a hoarding house: Dirty secret for thousands in North Texas)

The WFAA article points out that hoarding has less to do with cleanliness than with an underlying emotional cause. For Christians who find themselves hoarding it is, in addition, a spiritual issue...as many emotional issues are.

Why do people hoard? The word "hoard" may conjure up an image of a dragon sitting greedily atop his pile of gold. For most people, though, hoarding is not primarily an issue of greed. Primarily, hoarding in the modern western world boils down to one of two things:

Fear: "But what if I need that someday?" 

Yes, you should probably keep your holiday decorations because you know you are going to need them in a few months. Realistically, though, are you going to need the hundreds of pages of first grade schoolwork you've saved - now that your first grade angel is in high school? (Pick a few special ones, and discard the rest.) Or what about the supplies for a hobby you gave up a decade ago but "might get back to someday"? Or the clothes you wore 10 or 15 pounds ago that you're holding onto for "when I get back in shape"? (Again, pick a couple of special outfits, if you must keep something as a goal or to celebrate, and give the rest to someone who needs and can use them.)

Laziness: "But that pile of first grade papers/bucket of supplies/closet is so big and cluttered. It will take forever to clean that!"

The Bible speaks over and over about the dangers of fear and the benefits of diligence and hard work. So fear and laziness should never be motivations for our actions. By hoarding, we mostly hurt ourselves and those around us, since the hoarded "stuff" cuts down on our physical space in which to enjoy life and sucks away our time and energy maintaining it, cleaning it, and finding things lost in it.

The Quakers have a word for all that hoarded stuff: "cumber". As in, it encumbers you. How are we supposed to serve God effectively and run the race set before us if we are runners weighed down by all that extra cumber? And how can we effectively minister to a world that needs God to meet their spiritual needs while we may, in fact, be hoarding uselessly away the very items that might be a blessing to them and meet their physical needs?

Now, off to clean the closet...and the first grade paper box.