Saving all we can

John Wesley’s message about the use of money is probably among the top 10 most quoted of his sayings.

Gain all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.

Some have noted that contemporary United Methodists take to the first two principles, but seem to have forgotten the third. But I’d contend we – me included – do not practice the second very well either.

Part of this stems from a misunderstanding. When Wesley counseled the people called Methodist to “save” all they could, he did not mean put it in a bank. He was not arguing for a fat retirement account and a healthy stock portfolio.

By “save” he meant “do not spend.” Here’s how he puts it in his sermon “The Use of Money.”

Having gained all you can, by honest wisdom and unwearied diligence, the second rule of Christian prudence is,” Save all you can.” Do not throw the precious talent into the sea: Leave that folly to heathen philosophers. Do not throw it away in idle expenses, which is just the same as throwing it into the sea. Expend no part of it merely to gratify the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, or the pride of life.

He goes into detail on what he means in the sermon, but the point is clear if we know anything about his preaching and life. Wesley himself gave up drinking tea in part because doing so was a way to reduce his own expenses.

He taught that Christians need nothing more than “plain” clothing and simple food to eat. He preached against the ownership of multiple homes – and certainly would have been aghast by the mansions many of us feel we cannot live without. I cannot even fathom his reaction to our contemporary consumer culture.

Somewhere along the way, we either decided that he did not know how to interpret the Bible with regard to this topic, or we just stopped paying attention to what New Testament teaches. In some ways, our relationship with money and material things are even more out-of-whack with the origins of our movement than our relationship with spiritual things.

In matters spiritual, at least, we still claim to strive to be wise and faithful. We still claim to seek the fruits of the Spirit and follow Jesus. But when it comes to money and material possessions, Wesley’s diagnosis of his contemporaries fits all too well to us.

With regard to most of the commandments of God, whether relating to the heart or life, the Heathens of Africa or America stand much on a level with those that are called Christians. The Christians observe them (a few only being excepted) very near as much as the Heathens. For instance: the generality of the natives of England, commonly called Christians, are as sober and as temperate as the generality of the heathens near the Cape of Good Hope. And so the Dutch or French Christians are as humble and as chaste as the Choctaw or Cherokee Indians. It is not easy to say, when we compare the bulk of the nations in Europe with those in America, whether the superiority lies on the one side or the other. At least the American has not much the advantage. But we cannot affirm this with regard to the command now before us. Here the heathen has far the pre-eminence. He desires and seeks nothing more than plain food to eat and plain raiment to put on. And he seeks this only from day to day. He reserves, he lays up nothing; unless it be as much corn at one season of the year as he will need before that season returns. This command, therefore, the heathens, though they know it not, do constantly and punctually observe. They “lay up for themselves no treasures upon earth;” no stores of purple or fine linen, of gold or silver, which either “moth or rust may corrupt”, or “thieves break through and steal.” But how do the Christians observe what they profess to receive as a command of the most high God? Not at all! Not in any degree; no more than if no such command had ever been given to man. Even the good Christians, as they are accounted by others as well as themselves, pay no manner of regard thereto. It might as well be still hid in its original Greek for any notice they take of it. In what Christian city do you find one man of five hundred who makes the least scruple of laying up just as much treasure as he can? — of increasing his goods just as far as he is able? There are indeed those who would not do this unjustly; there are many who will neither rob nor steal; and some who will not defraud their neighbour; nay, who will not gain either by his ignorance or necessity. But this is quite another point. Even these do not scruple the thing, but the manner of it. They do not scruple the “laying up treasures upon earth,” but the laying them up by dishonesty. They do not start at disobeying Christ, but at a breach of heathen morality. So that even these honest men do no more obey this command than a highwayman or a house-breaker. Nay, they never designed to obey it. From their youth up it never entered into their thoughts. They were bred up by their Christian parents, masters, and friends, without any instruction at all concerning it; unless it were this, — to break it as soon and as much as they could, and to continue breaking it to their lives’ end.

How radical a change would it require in the life of Methodism in North America to take even this one teaching of Wesley’s as a rebuke and measure of our discipleship?

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