Margin: A Review

Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives by Richard A. Swenson, M.D. (NavPress, 2004)

Admittedly, this is not a book I picked up to learn about the environment. I picked it up because another book I was reading kept referencing it, and I liked the references. Also, I liked the premise, captured in its subtitle: “Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives.”

That sounds nice.

But to my surprise, as I read Margin, I started to make connections between some of its ideas and what I’ve been learning about creation care. Specifically, in my research, I’ve come to prioritize three terms, replacing the traditional “reduce, reuse, recycle” with “simplify, steward, serve.”

Margin has something to say for each.

How we steward our money and resources, for instance, is a key refrain in this book: “[God] is trusting us with certain resources; He as owner and we as stewards” (p. 144). Swenson advocates, then, for a lifestyle that de-emphasizes stuff and re-emphasizes service: “One of the best ways to heal your emotional pain is to focus instead on meeting the needs of others” (p. 88).  

In particular, though, I appreciated Richard Swenson’s approach to simplicity. In the context of my research on creation care, the idea of adopting a “responsible simplicity of life” was introduced most poignantly by Pope Francis in his book Our Mother Earth.

Yet while the idea of “simple living” sounds great, I’ve struggled to answer, what does that mean? And more important, what does that look like?

This is what Swenson answers well in Margin. From his perspective (as an M.D.), simplicity is pursued for the sake of our health. But what helps our physical, emotional, and mental health need not stop there; it can also serve the health of our environment. So in chapter 12, titled “Health Through Simplicity,” the call to Christlikeness, the appeal to reduce anxiety by “seeking the kingdom first”—these ideas hold true whether you are seeking the betterment of your personal life or the betterment of life on the planet as a whole.

What I love in particular about this chapter is how thoroughly Swenson covers simplicity. He talks about what the simple life is: uncluttered, natural, creative, free. And what it isn’t: legalistic, escapist, ignorant, easy. From there, Swenson leans into the difficulties we will face in pursuing simplicity:

After decades of convenience and affluence, we not only desire but expect ease and satiation. Gratification of our appetites has become a widespread goal not seriously challenged by the Church. If we do not reprogram such expectations, we will experience recurrent frustration in our search for simplicity. (p. 177)

If you are looking for a book that will comfort you, a book that will encourage you to lean into life as you know it, Margin isn’t it. This book challenges Christians to question the status quo.

However, it’s all in service of your best life, your best self, your best lived relationships and your best experienced health. And I would say, by adopting the principles Swenson argues for, I think you’ll find yourself a better manager not only of the life and relationships God has gifted to you, but also of the life-sustaining, critically important, yet finite resources He has provided to our world. 💛

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Margin by Richard A. Swenson