17 Dec 2022
Live Simply So That Others Might Simply Live: an interview with Peter van Kampen
In this episode, Malcolm interviews Peter van Kampen, the author of Live Simply: So That Others Might Simply Live. They discuss the Gospel’s teaching on material wealth and why Christians shouldn’t live lives of luxury while others are starving. You can purchase his book here. Peter’s Story Peter is a cradle Catholic. In college, he become really struck with the Church’s teaching on the universal call to holiness. We are all called to be saints, and Peter wanted to put this calling into practice in his life. Of course, there are many components to striving for holiness; but Peter found that the definition “make love your aim” really sums up what holiness is all about. As he tried to apply this motto to his life, he began to wonder about the way he spent his money. He was tithing his income, since that seemed to be a basic Christian principle; but after that, he felt free to spend his surplus money as he saw fit. At the same time, he knew that there were charitable organizations that could feed and cloth a child in Africa for a little over a dollar a day. And as Christians, we are called to love others as we love ourselves. With this in mind, his spending started to seem selfish and inconsistent with his goal of making love his aim. He would find himself spending 15 dollars on an unnecessary restaurant meal or movie, or two dollars on a Coke—and then think about how he’d just wasted the money that could have provided for the basic needs of somebody else. He eventually confided these concerns to his future wife, Catherine. She challenged him to stop just worrying about it and do something practical. So he decided to implement what he calls his “luxury budget”. He would continue to tithe and would pay for all his basic necessities. Beyond that, he would allow himself only $100 dollars a month for any unnecessary purchases, and the rest of his surplus money would go to charity. This allowed him to give away more money, and he found that he actually enjoyed living a more simple lifestyle. But it also forced him to ask even more questions. Suddenly, every purchase had to be classified as a necessity or as a luxury—and if it was a luxury, it was going to eat away at that luxury budget. On a mission trip to Kenya, he encountered real poverty for the first time. This encounter increased his determination to live within the luxury budget he had set—and in fact, he eventually reduced the monthly amount. Church Teaching Initially, Peter had thought that this attempt to live simply was just a part of his personal spirituality. Eventually, however, while he and Catherine were preparing for a conference, they discovered that the Church actually teaches that wealth is spiritually dangerous and that our surplus money belongs to the poor as a matter of justice. Once he realized this, he felt free to teach it to others. And he became struck by two things. He found this teaching on simplicity of life everywhere he looked; in official Church documents, in the New Testament, in the writings of the saints and the Fathers of the Church. At the same time, Catholics in the “developed world” simply weren’t talking about this teaching. Most of them had never heard of it, and even explicitly denied that the Church taught anything of the sort. This surprising disconnect is what led Peter to write his book, Live Simply: So That Others Might Simply Live. During the podcast episode, Peter quoted the following section from the Catechism of the Catholic Church: 2445 Love for the poor is incompatible with immoderate love of riches or their selfish use: Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fi
