Principles of Christian Economy
The history of the Christian world shows that Christians have widely felt, in their consciences, the sinfulness of indulging in unnecessary luxuries. This sensitivity has sometimes appeared in unhealthy forms, and sometimes in blind, indiscriminate ones. Among the mendicant orders and some monastic orders of the Roman Catholic communion, poverty and simplicity of life formed part of their vows and rules, however little they may have practiced them. Among the churches of the Reformation, we find the Mennonites forbidding not only all luxuries of dress, carriages, and furniture, but even the fine arts and liberal education. The Quakers, as is well known, practiced a similar restraint. Part of the original Methodist discipline enforced a strict renunciation of all the pomp and vanity of the world. These facts show that Christians have widely felt an obligation to moderation and self-denial in the use of wealth, though they may also show that this feeling has lacked clear definition and understanding.
Several features of the Church’s present condition suggest a strong need to discuss and enforce the true principles of Christian economy today. Material wealth, and consequently luxury, has greatly increased in civilized nations through the remarkable application of scientific knowledge to the means of production. The standard of living in fashionable society continually rises. Rich Christians closely resemble rich unbelievers in their manner of living. And God’s cause has particular demands for financial resources in this golden opportunity for evangelical effort.
If we try to establish the principles of Christian self-denial in spending by drawing a line between the portion assigned to ourselves and the portion assigned to God, we cannot see where or how that line can safely be drawn. How much revenue does God have a right to draw from our possessions? How much belongs to us? What general ratio should determine the division? We can see only one scriptural or reasonable answer a Christian can give: Our property is entirely a trust fund, and all of it is to be used for the owner’s benefit. There is to be no division at all. No line is to be drawn between God’s portion and ours. Everything belongs to God, and everything is to be used for him. This is the only true and safe starting point for deriving practical rules of Christian spending.
Stewardship correctly illustrates the terms on which we hold our possessions. This is clear because Scripture uses it to illustrate our responsibility for all our means of serving God, including our property. A steward manages property that does not belong to him. That is precisely our situation. The property in our hands is literally God’s property. He created it. He preserves it. He calls it his own while it is in our hands: “Every beast of the forest is mine and the cattle upon a thousand hills.” Cattle are the most important property of a pastoral people, and God expressly claims the domesticated cattle as well as the wild animals that have not become individual possessions. Now, nothing could be clearer than this: a steward must manage the estate entrusted to him for the owner’s benefit, rather than his own private advantage or profit. A just and benevolent owner will, of course, allow his steward adequate support from the estate. But the profits of the property belong to the owner, not his servant, and the governing aim of its management is to promote the owner’s advantage.
But Scripture compares our relationship to God with one far closer and more binding than a steward’s. We ourselves are God’s property. We belong to him, body and soul, just as truly as the riches he has lent us. “And ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and your spirit, which are God’s.” “Also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant.” “Ye also have a Master in heaven.” It is an established rule of law that a slave can own no property. Whatever he has, and whatever he acquires, belongs to the master to whom he belongs, except insofar as the master may lend him its use. So we, God’s slaves, can own nothing.
From this we argue that everything which, in human language, is most essentially our own belongs to God: our limbs, our faculties, and the fruits of their exertion. If we ourselves, in the very essence of our being, belong to God and therefore ought to be employed exclusively for him, how much more does our property, which is merely entrusted to us? We may regard our property as one class of materials and tools lent to us for our work. If our limbs and faculties, with all the products of their exertion, belong to God, then the results of using these borrowed tools and materials belong to him by a double right.
The same conclusion follows from all those passages of Scripture teaching that we must give God all the service our faculties and circumstances permit. We must employ every lawful means within our reach and exert every nerve to serve and glorify him. “For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things.” “And whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” “Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength.” And Christian love is an eminently practical feeling, “for this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.”
According to these rules, the only limit to the service we owe God is the limit of our strength, resources, and opportunities. Whenever we can do something without sin that will promote God’s glory, it is our duty to do it. We must serve God with all our strength. Our property is part of our strength, so we must serve him with all our property. Notice also that although no Christian lives up to this perfect rule, no true Christian desires or aims at anything less. No true penitent is satisfied with any imperfection, because imperfection is sin. If, then, there is any part of our property that it is impossible to use lawfully for God’s glory, that part alone may be spent on ourselves. But where can such a portion be found, when so much need, ignorance, and sin await relief, and so many thousands of thirsty channels are open for benevolence to flow through?
We must also bear this in mind: it is not enough to say that our use of property is innocent and has some tendency to promote God’s glory. We must make the best possible use of every part of our possessions in our circumstances. If there was a way within our reach for our money to produce more good and more honor to God, but we spent it on something innocent yet less beneficial to his service, we have fallen short of our duty. We have sinned. For the only rule permitted us is to serve him “with all our strength.” We have no right to waste any part of our ability to serve.
The principle that we must use all the property entrusted to us for the owner’s greatest advantage is surely established by more than enough proof. The steps of the reasoning above are so simple and short that there can be no hesitation in accepting them, unless hesitation arises from something obvious at first glance: this principle condemns the habitual conduct of Christians to a deplorable extent. How few reach into their pockets with a constant, conscientious awareness of their stewardship! How few earn for God! How few look around, among the needs of God’s suffering cause or his suffering poor, for the strongest claim and the best means of glorifying him with their surplus wealth! Instead, do we not look within, among the idle desires of vanity and self-indulgence, to see which we will satisfy first, thinking ourselves very conscientious if we pause to ask whether it is innocent?
We turn now to some examples of how this principle applies. First, it is proper to use as much of God’s property as we need for our own support. The servant must be properly fed and clothed so that he can work for his master. This spending is, in the strictest sense, spending in God’s service, because it results in work done for him. It justifies spending on ourselves not only what is needed to sustain the body, such as wholesome food, clothing, and shelter, but also whatever is truly needed to make both body and mind most effective in God’s service, and whatever truly promotes the finest development of our moral qualities.
This includes, for example, comfort and cleanliness in food and dress, and the recreations and enjoyments needed to give our muscles the greatest firmness and our bodily spirits the healthiest energy. It includes nourishment for the mind, such as sound education, good books, and useful skills; appropriate medicines and remedies in sickness; and a wholesome, natural cultivation of tastes that refine and elevate our moral nature. We believe that neither God’s providence nor his law intends man to serve him as a dull, overworked drudge. Giving the highest, best, and greatest service is entirely consistent with the highest enjoyment of life’s natural and rational blessings. The simple, temperate use of all these enjoyments strengthens us for our work by promoting contentment and cheerfulness. In a word, it is right to spend on ourselves everything that equips us to serve God most effectively. This is, strictly speaking, spending God’s property in his own service.
If we are asked whether this allowance extends to artificial luxuries and the costly refinements of fashionable life, the answer lies in another question: Can anyone show how they make us more effective servants of God? Do they promote health? No, they weaken it. Do they cultivate the mind? No, they stunt it. Do they promote cheerfulness? They produce far more anxiety and petty jealousy. Are they necessary to give us the respectability among others that extends our influence for good? No. Do they promote the humility and spiritual outlook that are more essential to usefulness than health or bodily spirits? Sadly, no. Let an honest conscience answer these questions, and the answer to the original question is found.
Second, it is right to use part of our Master’s possessions to support and raise the families he has entrusted to us. After preserving our own lives, this is the most binding of all the uses we must make of the property entrusted to us. By placing our families nearer to us than to anyone else, God’s providence identifies us as the proper agents to support them and train our children for usefulness. In supporting his servants and raising new servants for his use, we are strictly applying his property to his advantage. The same observations about the extent of provision for our own support and equipment for service apply to our households. We should spend on them as much as will bring their bodies, minds, and hearts to the greatest effectiveness in God’s service that our circumstances permit.
But surely we have no right to misuse our Master’s property by providing our families with luxuries, amusements, finery, or wealth that add nothing to their physical, mental, or moral energies. On the contrary, these produce vanity, effeminacy, envy, and self-indulgence, and make them unfit to “endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ.” That fashionable refinements and luxuries have this tendency is too clear to dispute, especially among the young, whose characters are still forming. Consider this single fact: in the Church and in secular professions alike, few of the men who make their mark and serve their generation are raised in the lap of wealth. The useful men, the working men of every community, are usually the sons of poverty or of modest means.
Using God’s wealth to bestow such indulgences is doubly dishonest. It embezzles the trust and robs him of our children’s service by making them unfit for active usefulness. Those who deny their children a thorough education for usefulness commit a related abuse of the trust when they devote so much of their resources to selfish indulgence, or, more often, to schemes of greed.
Third, part of the possessions entrusted to us may rightly be used to make reasonable provision for ourselves and our dependents against future uncertainties. Since a parent is now responsible for supporting his children, it is proper to set something aside to keep them from need when death takes him from them. How much of God’s property may rightly be retained for this purpose must be decided according to each case’s circumstances. But we can say this much generally: no consideration of our obligation to God justifies accumulating wealth for our children. Experience declares that nothing is more likely than a large inheritance to make a young person useless both to his Maker and to his fellow human beings. How, then, can it be right to take a large part of the trust we are bound to use wholly for God’s glory and employ it to destroy the usefulness of one of his creatures?
The proper rule for those with great wealth seems to be this: set aside comfortable support for the dependents they will leave behind, and devote the rest to God’s glory. Or, if they leave more than this in their heirs’ hands, it should be with the express understanding that those heirs receive it only as successors to their stewardship. If there is a reasonable probability that an heir will be unfaithful to this trust, the parent has no right to bequeath that heir property beyond an adequate provision, whether the expected unfaithfulness arises from wastefulness or greed.
What would we think of a steward who, compelled to make a long journey and appoint a substitute, entrusted his master’s property to someone known to be unfaithful? In the same way, God’s steward, departing on the journey from which he will never return, has no right to commit his master’s possessions to unfaithful hands merely because they happen to be his son’s. Before he departs, he should himself devote his surplus wealth to its owner’s use. Nothing exposes Christian men’s defective understanding of this property more clearly than the way they bequeath it. How few remember, when making a will, that the possessions they are about to dispose of do not belong to them, and that the most they can presume to do as Christians is appoint successors to their stewardship!
If, through weak partiality, they knowingly appoint an unfaithful successor, they are themselves unfaithful stewards. How will they stand in judgment and “give an account of their stewardship,” when its final act was to place the trust in a defaulter’s hands? When the Church’s conscience is properly awakened and enlightened on this point, there will be more instances like the rare and honorable ones we occasionally hear of, when Christians entrusted with great wealth bequeath more of it to religious and charitable uses than to their children.
After these three lawful deductions, our principles plainly require anyone with property remaining to use it in doing good. Wealth can promote the glory of its owner, God, in many different ways, and the choice in each case must be left to the individual steward’s conscience. But there will be no danger of serious error if the sincere purpose in every case is to use all our possessions for God’s highest glory. Let this truth be impressed on us again: since we are commanded to love and serve God with all our strength, it is not enough to say that the purpose we have chosen for spending surplus wealth is innocent and has some tendency to honor God. Our duty is not fulfilled until we have conscientiously chosen the purpose through which our spending will bring the greatest honor to God and the greatest good to his creatures within our reach.
Little argument is now needed to show that the entire list of unnecessary luxuries, fashionable indulgences, and extravagances must be excluded. No Christian, indeed no person, can spend his master’s wealth on them without sin. We might even grant that many of these extravagances were innocent and had some tendency to refine taste. In a word, we might grant everything the most indulgent luxury could plead in their favor. Yet while God’s providence leaves other ways open for wealth to do greater good, spending any of it on unnecessary luxuries is sinful and wasteful. Who does not know that there are thousands of ways to do that greater good with wealth in this world of need and ignorance? The greater the contrast between the kindness and usefulness of these works of mercy and the supposed benefits of selfish luxuries, the clearer the sin of indulging in them.
Some may ask, “What counts as unnecessary luxury, and what is extravagance?” We fully acknowledge that it may be impossible to draw a line between allowable comforts and sinful extravagance by a general rule fitting every particular case. But drawing such a line is entirely unnecessary. All that is needed is to establish sound principles on this subject in people’s consciences, and supreme love for God in their hearts. The particulars will then easily take care of themselves.
Still, the subject can easily be illustrated by examples clearly on the wrong side of the supposed line, examples in which many wealthy Christians will find themselves plainly condemned. Consider a Christian man who has professed to dedicate himself and everything he has, body, soul, and estate, to God’s highest glory and the love of his fellow creatures. He passes by the hundreds of starving poor and degraded sinners around him, the thousands of ignorant people at home, and the millions of perishing heathen whom his money might help rescue from hellfire. Yet he sells his safe, strong, comfortable family carriage for almost nothing and spends hundreds to obtain another because his rich neighbor is about to surpass him in this possession. Or he disposes of his silverware and china to buy replacements at great cost because the old style is a little dated. Or he pulls down his spacious dwelling and spends thousands building another because the first was unfashionable. Is this not sinful waste?
When hundreds and thousands of God’s dollars are diverted from the needs of a perishing world for which the Son of God died to purchase the barbaric finery of jewelry, is this not extravagance? Such jewelry is as offensive to good taste as to Christian economy. It keeps out no cold blast in winter and no scorching heat in summer. It fastens no necessary garment and provides no bodily comfort. When large sums are spent on exotic plants not half as pretty as a clover blossom or as fragrant as an ordinary apple blossom, whose sole merit is that no other lady in town has one, what is this but extravagance?
We are deeply convinced that if our principle of self-dedication were honestly applied throughout the customs and indulgences of fashionable society, many common luxuries would be eliminated. Indeed, we do not doubt that the depth of its cuts, and the extent to which it would convict fashionable Christians of neglecting their duty, would be the chief argument against it.
In a word, awakening the Church’s Christian conscience to the truth and to its duty would bring all Christians to a life of comfortable simplicity. Among those with taste, natural and inexpensive elegance would embellish it; everything else would be cut away. All the immense wealth now sacrificed to luxury would be laid on the altar of religious benevolence or devoted to works of public usefulness. True courtesy and genuine refinement would only be promoted by the change. Every useful branch of education, every form of training that makes mind and body more effective in God’s service, would be secured, whatever the cost. Every truly ennobling taste would receive simple, natural cultivation.
But material luxuries and adornments would be sternly eliminated. Christian society would display Spartan simplicity joined with pure, restrained decency in dress, carriages, sacred and domestic buildings, food, and every other gratification of the senses. Wealth would be regarded as too sacred a trust to spend any part of it on something not truly necessary to God’s highest glory in the rational and spiritual welfare of his creatures, our fellow human beings.
As already indicated, everyone will recognize that applying these principles of Christian economy would produce a great revolution in the habits of Christian people. Even well-meaning Christians with wealth everywhere permit themselves far greater freedom and act on very different principles. We therefore ask to pursue this part of the discussion further and offer additional reasons for extending Christian restraint to the degree described.
First, we strongly urge that a principle far stricter than the one Christians usually follow is urgently needed to remove the reproach of conformity to the world. The Church’s outward resemblance to the world undermines our effectiveness in saving souls. We profess a difference between ourselves and the unregenerate as radical as the difference between light and darkness, almost as wide as that between heaven and hell. Yet in all the visible, practical concerns that interest the unregenerate heart, we closely resemble them. Our words declare that riches are vanity and emptiness. Our actions seem to say that we love and seek them as intensely as those who make them their everything and their god. In words we say that “we have here no continuing city,” but in practice we are as eager to adorn our dwellings here as though they were our only home. We profess to have richer and nobler enjoyments than this life’s pomp, then swell and rustle with as much pomp as any other human insect living for a day.
