Archive: John Wesley and Christian Lifestyle

by Barbara Jackson

Lifestyles are much in our conversations today, often as a response to world shortages of energy and food. But lifestyle has always been an issue of importance to religious communities. During this Lenten Season, as we meditate on our response to Jesus’ sacrifice and His call to “follow me,” United Methodists may find it helpful to understand how John Wesley related lifestyle to faith.

To Wesley, the Christian lifestyle was naturally a simple lifestyle, in which a Christian was concerned with the most careful use of worldly resources. A Christian would use only the clothing, food, and housing necessary to a healthy and dignified life, using the remainder for the benefit of others.

Such plain living fulfills several purposes for us today, as it did for our 18th century brethren:

• It directs our attention to God and away from the distractions of the world.
• It helps us to avoid the sins of self-indulgence and pride.
• It gives us the surplus necessary to be able to serve others in need.
• It prevents our wasting resources needed by others.
• It protects us from the feeling of anomie of modern man, by giving purpose to the smallest details of daily life.
• It helps us to re-examine the value of life itself—and to rejoice in life, rather than in the material things that are coincidental rather than essential.

John Wesley speaks from a joyful, affirmative view of life, even though he calls us to a strict analysis of motives and needs. In a “Plain Account of Genuine Christianity,” Wesley tells us that Christian love soars above scanty bonds, to love every soul God has made. Such love, he says, produces all right actions: the earnest and steady discharge of social offices, the prevention of the hurting or grieving of any person, the uniform practice of justice and mercy, the doing of all possible good to all men.

In Wesley’s thought the love of God leads directly to the love of one’s neighbor. Such love empowers one to accept as neighbor the person across the ocean and the person across town but in another social station, as well as the person next door. This love requires that we care for and share with these neighbors as God cares for and shares with us. Certainly it follows that the generations to come are also our loving concern. We cannot knowingly plunder the planet without a care for their sustenance.

The inward change of heart vital to Wesleyan piety results in a life of moral purity and of social concern. It is a special Wesleyan characteristic that this concern for others is not to be left to the emotions of a moment, but is to be planned for carefully. One is to work steadily, save regularly, and give both regularly and generously. In Wesley’s sermon on the use of money, he says:

Money is an excellent gift of God, answering the noblest ends. In the hands of His children, it is food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, raiment for the naked. It gives to the traveler and the stranger where to lay his head. By it we may supply the place of a husband to the widow and a father to the fatherless. We may be a defense to the oppressed, a means of health to the sick, of ease to them that be in pain. It may be as eyes to the blind, as feet to the lame; yea, a lifter up from the gates of death.

It is, therefore, of the highest concern that all who fear God know how to employ this valuable talent. … Gain all you can. But this, it is certain, we ought not to do: we ought not to gain money at the expense of life nor at the expense of health … to gain money we must not lose our souls. … We are to gain all we can … without hurting our neighbor. We cannot, if we love every one as ourselves, hurt any one in his substance … neither may we gain by hurting our neighbor in his body. Therefore we may not sell anything which tends to impair health.

God has placed you here not as a proprietor but as a steward. As such He entrusted you for a season with goods of various kinds, but the sole property of these still rests in Him, nor can it ever be alienated from Him … and He has told you in the most clear and express terms, how you are to employ it for Him in such manner that it may be a holy sacrifice.[1]

Having worked to earn all he could, the Methodist was told to save all he could, and to give all he could. This was not meant to encourage investment or hoarding for oneself. It meant “simplicity of living, wasting nothing, spending nothing on cheap or degrading pastimes. ‘Give all you can’ meant the sacrificial mutual sharing among the poor, not handouts from the rich from their superfluity. Wesley’s message was addressed to manual workers and the disinherited, who had a hard time scraping up the one-penny dues used by the Methodist societies for their charity work.”[2]

In contrast, we American United Methodists are rich! However, it may be harder for us to respond to Wesley’s challenge than it was for our ancestors, for we have come to accept extravagance as a way of life.

Oklahoma college students have been analyzing garbage over several years, and their catalogues of what we throw away are startling.

Wesley himself set an example of plain living and of service, along with proclaiming Christ as Savior. He visited prisons. He set up a simple loan society. He established a free medical dispensary, a home for widows, and a school for poor children. He joined with a few valiant Quakers in the unfashionable opposition to slavery. In order to follow his example, we must also express our witness in our homes, our vocations, our schools, and in every level of government.

During this quadrennium we will be working together as the whole United Methodist Church to collect the funds needed to support the work of relieving hunger. Many of us will respond to special Lenten appeals. Let us, however, go beyond a six-week or four-year fund appeal. Let us use this opportunity to study and to pray together in order to reassess our personal and our corporate lifestyles.

Are we witnessing to the love of God by living the Christian lifestyle described by John Wesley? Is it possible for us to begin a life-long effort to achieve a Christian lifestyle?

[1] John Wesley, Albert C. Outler, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.

[2] Christian Ethics, Waldo Beach and H. Richard Niebuhr. New York: Ronald Press, 1955.