On Money - John Wesley's Take

Gain all you can,
Save all you can,
Give all you can
~ John Wesley

I've had some interesting conversations this past week about voluntary simplicity, money, finances, the economy, and giving of ourselves to the larger world. As sometimes happens, this week I also ran across an article I had bookmarked a long time ago about Wesley's view on money. Charles Edward White published an article for Leadership magazine for the Winter 1987 edition. An adaption of that article can be found here: http://www.missionfrontiers.org/oldsite/1994/0910/so949.htm

While the article talks about Wesley's understanding of money, and his teachings upon money, it doesn't mention much about Wesley's greater work in alleviating dangerous working conditions, and the systemic problems that were keeping people poor. In this, the article is lacking in some of its context. None-the-less, I find this article to be inspiring and challenging, especially considering these views came from Wesley, one of the richest English preachers of his day.

Here is a brief synopsis of Wesley's teachings:
Wesley grew up poor, he even watched his father hauled off to debtors prison. But as a professor/lecturer at Cambridge, he found himself making 30 pounds a year. Yet, he found himself unable to give any money to the poor. This started a life of earning money, and giving most of it away. During his lifetime, he kept his living expenses as close to 28 pounds as possible, giving the surplus away. Consequently, when the time came that he made 192 pounds, he used 28 upon himself, and gave 92 away. Or the year that he made close to 1400 pounds, he lived on 30 and gave the rest away. When he died, he left his books, and change in his pockets and drawers.

Here are his views:
Gain all the money you can - but not at the expense of yourself (health - both spiritual, physical and environmental) or at the expense of others (dangerous working conditions, etc.).
Save all you can by living simply, for this allows you to ...
Give all you can. Wesley's understanding is that all money is God's to start with, we are merely the trustees.

He then instructed the Methodists to follow these four scriptural principles, which Wesley interpreted as follows:

1. Provide things needful for yourself and your family (I Tim. 5:8). The believer should make sure the family has "a sufficiency of plain, wholesome food to eat, and clean raiment to put on" as well as a place to live and enough to live on if something were to happen to the breadwinner.
2. "Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content" (I Tim. 6:8) . "Whoever has sufficient food to eat, and raiment to put on, with a place to lay his head, and something over, is rich," he said.
3. "Provide things honest in the sight of all men" (Rom. 12:17) and "Owe no man anything" (Rom. 13:8). Wesley said the next claim on a Christian's money is the creditors'. He adds that those who are in business for themselves need to have adequate tools, stock, or capital for the carrying on of that business.
4. "As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith" (Gal. 6:10). After the Christian has provided for the family, the creditors, and the business, the next obligation is to use any money that is left to meet the needs of others.*

But what about those things that don't quite fit in the above "rules," what then? Wesley provided a series of questions:

1. In spending this money, am I acting like I own it, or am I acting like the Lord's trustee?
2. What Scripture requires me to spend this money this way?
3. Can I offer up this purchase as a sacrifice to the Lord?
4. Will God reward me for this expenditure at the resurrection of the just?*

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*from the adapted article at: http://www.missionfrontiers.org/oldsite/1994/0910/so949.htm

Apocalypse and Paradise

I have been hesitant to discuss this topic, but as we now have predictions of the end of the world occurring in October (sense it didn't happen over the weekend) I have decided to add my two bits to the discussion.

Before I start, I would like to say that this has serious ramifications for our society in general. Family members of friends of ours sold everything and gave the money to charity because they were no longer going to need it. It's a great gesture. I'm not sure what this means about their feelings of those running the charities. The concern is what do they do now? They've got nothing left. Do they dare trust another authority figure again? Will they trust the church?

Secondly, predictions about the world coming to an end and Christ's coming back are very old, as old as Christianity. So, in some regards, this phenomenon is nothing new.

Here's my perspective, view on things. Any of you are welcome to disagree, but this is how I see things at the present moment.
I have always read Apocalyptic literature (like the Revelation of John) as a way of giving hope to an oppressed group of people. In essence, Apocalyptic literature says, "It is going to be ok. God is ultimately in charge. It may not look like that now, but in the end, God's kingdom will prevail."

When we remove Paradise from this earth, we lose a sense of who we are as beloved children of God. In the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew's gospel, Jesus says, "Consider the lilies of the fields..." We consider them because we are connected to them. If the Divine cares for them, how much more are we cared for? Yet we are connected to them. What effects the lilies of the fields effects us in ways we have always suspected, but are only just now scientifically discovering how close the connection is.

When we insist that Paradise is someplace else (Heaven, accessible only in the afterlife, or after the end of the world), we remove ourselves from the world around us. Inadvertently, this separation allows exploitation of the lilies of the fields to which we are so connected. Which means our own exploitation, of course.

Keeping Paradise connected to the earth, knowing it is just around the corner, and is something we can participate in the here and now, connects us to another part - actually a stronger part - of the Christian tradition. I invite you to look, ponder and read Saving Paradise by Brock and Parker (I've mentioned this book in a previous post) for a fuller discussion of this tradition. Keeping Paradise, the Kingdom of God, the Great Economy a part of the earthly experience, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, provides a critique of our smaller economies, kingdoms and environs. As such, the critique gives us something to work towards. Paradise shapes our actions. I believe it also reminds us of who we are, beloved children of God.

I think you can see my own bias. It shapes my perspective in how I live and how I see the world. What underlying beliefs and biases shape how you see and interact in the world?