Hoarders

I’ve become fascinated with the show “Hoarders” on A&E (Monday nights at 10:00).  That there are people who never throw away anything I would not have doubted.  That there are enough such people to produce a television program now in its second season, I would never have guessed.

“Hoarders” profiles two people or families each week who have literally filled their houses or apartments with junk.  I don’t mean just that the house is a mess.  I mean it is packed chock-a-block with every imaginable kind of item -  including in several cases dead animals.  There is only a small space left in which they actually live.  Usually there is a crisis brewing for the hoarder which has brought them to the point of being willing to consider changing their lifestyle.  Often this is a threat of eviction or loss of parental custody because of the unsanitary conditions produced by this behavior.

What is so tragic is the degree to which these people have invested themselves in their stuff.  Materialism is certainly a problem for many Americans but this is materialism gone mad.  Hoarders do not just get their identity from their possessions,  they move beyond that to a place where the line between themselves and their possessions blurs.  They don’t know where they stop and where the piles of stuff around them begin. Getting rid of things sometimes causes a physical reaction as if the body itself were being attacked.

That anyone would put holding on to what amounts to garbage ahead the well being of their children or their own health is so bizarre that the only explanation most people can come up with is “mental illness” – that’s certainly the position the show’s producers take.  For the Christian I would say this is an unsatisfactory explanation, however.

We must view these kinds of behaviors as sins rooted in unbiblical thinking.   The key to dealing with them is to identify those unbiblical thought patterns and counteract them with Biblical wisdom – not to imply that the person is sick or otherwise unable to control their behavior.  Hoarding is idolatry plain and simple.

Our goal should not just be that hoarders regain control of their lives – but that they find redemption and forgiveness in Jesus Christ.  Something they need more than a clean house.

“Hoarders”  can be a warning to us of the danger in overemphasizing the importance of things.  However, lest we take too much comfort in comparing ourselves with those featured on the show, there can also be idols in our (comparatively!) neat and clean houses against which we must battle and from which we too should repent.  Only from a position that understands our own debt to the grace of God can we help someone in a situation like this.