What are the causes of our economic crisis? Deregulation of financial institutions? Subprime mortgages? Housing bubble? Fraud? Adam Hamilton, in his little wise book called Enough: Discovering Joy through Simplicity and Generosity
, gets this right. And it takes a pastor-theologian to get to the bottom of the problem.

Five words: gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, and pride.

Those are words we are not hearing often enough. And the word “enough” is both a warning to halt and an estimate of how full our basket of vices is. How full our basket of things is.

We can use this time of financial stress (and disaster) to reevaluate our approach to money and things, to put our house in order, and to establish a way of life that is liberating because it escapes the tread mill chase of keeping up by accumulating more.

What are you doing differently because of the economic conditions? What advice would you give? What can we do to change and to help? What does Michael Kruse have to say?

Our problems today: beside the reality that some of us are unemployed, many of us are still afflicted with affluenza and credit-itis and impulse purchasing and eating out (the avg is 4x/week). He’s got practical principles, too. (Wise ones.) Nice section on contentment and steps toward simplicity, and an excellent chp on generosity: “we were created to give, tempted to keep.”

If I were a pastor or a marriage counselor, I’d give this book to every young couple who’d read it. Start out with a book like this and you will do well. I will be recommending it to my students.