I know I write about this particular issue on this little blog, probably too often but...it kind of is a place for me to collect some thoughts without losing them and plus, I think that I have a long way to go when it comes to actually obeying God when it comes to this issue and want to kind of keep it front and center in my attention...Anyway, I found a book the other day "Good News to the Poor: John Wesley's Evangelical Economics..." I know Wesley is Wesley and all that, I do think it is pretty amazing someone could write an entire book on his attitude towards the poor and about showing mercy.I thought I could just jot down a few interesting quotes I picked up glancing through:Wesley comments about the willful ignoring of Jesus’ command to not lay up treasures on earth among the Christians of his day:“There are many who will neither rob nor steal; and some who will not defraud their neighbor; 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 of treasures upon earth; but the laying up of them by dishonesty. They do not start at disobeying Christ, but a branch of heathen morality. So that even these honest men do no more obey this command than a highwayman or a housebreaker. 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.”“They have read these words about laying up treasure an hundred times, and yet never suspect that they are themselves condemned thereby, or any more than those which forbid parents to offer up their sons or daughters unto Moloch. O that God would speak to these miserable self-deceivers with his own voice, his mighty voice, that they may at last awake out of the snare of the devil and the scales may fall from their eyes.”On some of the dangers of wealth:It can make it more difficult to be humble:“How hard it is for them, whose every word is applauded not to be wise in their own eyes! How hard it is for them not to think themselves better than the poor, base, uneducated herd of men!”It can make it more difficult to serve the poor:“What hinders? Do you fear spoiling your silken coat? Or is there another lion in the way? Are you afraid of catching vermin? And are you not afraid lest the roaring lion should catch you? Are you not afraid of Him that hath said, ‘Inasmuch as ye have not done it unto the least of these, ye have not done it unto me?”He writes,“Persecution never did, never could, give any lasting wound to genuine Christianity. But the greatest it ever received, the grand blow which was struck at the very root of that humble, gentle, patient love, which is the fulfilling of the Christian law, the whole essence of true religion, was struck in the fourth century by Constantine the great, when he called himself a Christian, and poured in a flood of riches, honours, and power, upon the Christians, more especially upon the Clergy…Then not the golden age but the iron age of the church commenced.”He warns one particular Christian,“The grand maxims which obtain in the world are, The more power, the more money, the more learning, and the more reputation a man has, the more good he will do. And whenever a Christian, pursuing the noblest ends, forms his behavior by these maxims, he will infallibly (though perhaps by insensible degrees) decline into worldly prudence.”He admonishes another believer,“Riches increased; which not only led you, step by step, into more conformity to the world, but insensibly instilled self-importance, unwillingness to be contradicted, and an overbearing temper. And hence you was, of course, disgusted at those who did not yield to this temper, and blamed that conformity…Can you be too sensible, how hardly they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven? Yea, or into the kingdom of an inward heaven? Into the whole spirit of the gospel? How hard for these…not to conform much to the world! How hard not to be a little overbearing, especially to inferiors.”When it comes to thinking about our children's future, Wesley writes in ‘On Family Religion’“In what business will your son be most likely to love and serve God? In what employment will he have the greatest advantage for laying up treasure in heaven? I have been shocked above measure in observing how little this is attended to, even by pious parents. Even these consider only how he may get most money, not how he may get most holiness.”“Which do you judge best – that your son should be a pious cobbler, or a profane lord? Which appears to you most eligible – that your daughter should be a child of God and walk on foot, or a child of the devil and ride in a coach and six.”