“Moderation is a necessary response, an appropriate duty that lives in the space between those opposite extremes. Moderation eschews the antitheses of too little and too much, of austerity and excess, to find contentment within appropriate limits. Moderation is the duty of every Christian.”

This is an age of consumption, an age of abundance, an age of excess. At least for those of us in the developed world, it is a time of all-you-can-eat buffets, of room-sized walk-in closets, of unlimited bandwidth and endless binge-watching. Our homes are so loaded with stuff that we’ve made self-storage units a thriving and growing multi-billion dollar industry. We’re overflowing and overwhelmed and unhappy.

Some have responded with a new emphasis on frugality and minimalism, of spending as little as possible and owning only the bare essentials. Yet such efforts never live up to their promise and rarely last for long. Minimalism quickly proves just as disappointing and soul-wearying a god as abundance.

There must be another way. There must be a better option. And, according to God, there is! In a short series of articles I have been examining the 10 duties of every Christian and now, in this context, we turn to the duty of moderation.

Vanity of Vanities

Solomon had it all. There was no desire he would not attempt to pursue, no appetite he would not attempt to satiate. Near the end of his life he remembered, “Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil” (Ecclesiastes 2:10). He denied himself no fleshly indulgence, marrying hundreds of women and sleeping with many more. He was rich beyond measure, so fantastically wealthy that even luxuries became nearly valueless in his time: “The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stone, and he made cedar as plentiful as the sycamore of the Shephelah” (2 Chronicles 9:27).

Yet from the vantage point of his old age, he would make these words his repeated refrain: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” All of that pleasure, all of those possessions, all of that wealth turned out to be as significant as dust blown by the wind, as lasting as breath on a mirror. It promised fulfillment but delivered emptiness. It would have been far better to pray with Agur, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God” (Proverbs 30:8-9). Enough is enough.

Inhabiting the middle ground between the vices of excess and austerity is the virtue of moderation. Moderation is a necessary response, an appropriate duty that lives in the space between those opposite extremes. Moderation eschews the antitheses of too little and too much, of austerity and excess, to find contentment within appropriate limits. Moderation is the duty of every Christian.

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