Skeletons in Our Heroes Closets

Todd Rhoades at Monday Morning Insight has a post called 10 Things You'd Hate about John Wesley (and 10 Things He'd Hate About You!).  The post is quite entertaining but there is a discussion in the comments that I really want to focus on.   But before I do that, here's the first four of the ten things you'd hate about Wesley, which are my favorites:

1. Despotism – Even Wesley's own preachers called him "Pope John". He ruled his followers like an enlightened despot, and his beloved brother Charles plotted to "break his power". John expected every Methodist society to follow his rules like a McDonalds franchise, and took personal charge over every member's private life, expelling them for laziness or selling spirits.

2. Superstition – He saw rain storms as God's punishment on him - or the Devil's attack. He made decisions by opening the Bible at random for God's guidance, and even decided whether to marry by pulling bits of paper out of a hat.

3. Copyright – Wesley was a plagiarist and pseudepigrapher - he passed other people's writings off as his own and his own as other people's. He got into trouble for ripping off an anti-American tract of Dr Johnson's. And he attacked a book by Toplady (of "Rock of Ages" fame) by publishing a cheap caricature of it at the same time under Toplady's name. Toplady denounced him as a common crook worthy of deportation to America.

4. Grief – He didn't believe in it, as Christians should be happy when someone goes to heaven. "I believe the death of your children is a great instance of the goodness of God towards you," he told his sister. "You have often mentioned to me how much of your time they took up. Now that time is restored to you, and you have nothing to do but serve the Lord without carefulness and without distraction."

And here are my favorites from the category of ten things Wesley would hate about you:

2. Laughter – Wesley did not much approve of laughter. He rebuked one of his preachers for being willing to "break a jest, and laugh at it heartily", and complained that even George Whitefield's conversation was "often mixed with needless laughter".

6. Marriage – Spouses are far too indulgent on each other for Wesley's liking. He told his travelling preachers that those with wives or families should keep going "as if they had none", just as he did himself. He told his wife that he was forbidden to "laugh or trifle a moment when with you". His theory of matrimony (expounded on a bad day, admittedly) was "You should have given me a carte blanche. You should have said, 'Bid me do anything, everything'."

7. Children – Parents are far too indulgent on children too. In his Methodist school the timetable was from 4am to 8pm, with religious and physical exercises, including fasting, but no play: "He that plays when he is a child, shall play when he is a man". When he married, he planned to dump any children he had there permanently.

8. Foolishness during sleep – If you've passed all Wesley's tests so far, do your hours of sleep also honour God sufficiently? "Is there no vanity or folly in your dreams? No temptation that almost overcomes you? And are you then as sensible of the presence of God and as full of prayer as when you are waking?"

Wow, even our dreams come under scrutiny.  But that's not what I want to talk about, I want to talk about the ensuing discussion in the comments section.         

Todd was chastized in the comments by a brother who said of his post:

The sad point is that our current tendency to reduce all greatness to the lowest common denominator is evident in recent Lincoln studies which infer he was a homosexual. I thought those who claimed Christ were above this kind of personal attack – sadly I was wrong.

And,

I thought this sight was intended for “insight” not character assassination. I am disappointed with your article choice today.

Todd asks:

Everyone reading this... did you find this article to be a serious attempt to bring down the repuation of Wesley, or a tongue-in-cheek look at intersting characteristics of the man and how we'd relate today?

Count me in as a tongue in cheeker.

That same chastizing commenter came back to say:

I believe it is one of the characteristics of our generation to look at our heroes of the past, such as Wesley, Calvin, Luther, Finney, Moody etc, with the “enlightened” thinking of our generation. We tend to dismiss their contributions because the way they lived and thought about things was different then we do today. And instead of doing the hard work of understanding the context of their statements we poke “fun” at their seemingly idiosyncrasies.

Although I caught the humorous vein in which Todd wrote this and didn't see this as a character assassination I do think this chastizing commenter makes a good point.  We judge prior generations based upon the thinking of our current generation.  This assumes two things that ought not to be assumed - 1) that they should have known then what we know now, and 2) that we are correct in what we think we know now.   Past generations did the best they could do with what they had to work with and it is unfair of us to chastize them for not knowing things we know now.  At the same time, we don't know as much today as we think we know.  We can be very sure that hundreds of years from now people are going to be looking at us with the same incredulity that we look upon some folks from the past.

At the same time I think it is healthy to poke some fun at our heroes from the past and to acknowledge their shortcomings and sins.  We have the Bible for an example of this.  The Bible never hid the sins of its greatest heroes and we aren't under any obligation to hid the sins of our historical heroes.

I love Martin Luther, but he had some very serious defects in his life.  I am quite sure he would find anti-semitism, as it has been practiced over the last few centuries as abhorrent, but the truth is that some of his own writings sowed the seeds of anti-semitism.  And his anti-semitism isn't the only huge problem in his life.  But he can still be read with profit.

The same goes with Wesley.  Yes Wesley had some serious flaws, but he still accomplished much for the kingdom of God and can be read and studied with great profit today.  Rather than detracting from the legacy of Wesley, acknowledging these flaws gives us hope.  If God can do great things with a guy like him, maybe He can do great things with a guy like me.

The chastizing commenter is right thought that there is in our day an affinity for character assassination.  If Todd had written this thing in a serious vein and then went on to condemn Wesley and his followers to hell that would have been a whole 'nuther ball o' wax.  And this is what is often done today and it is wrong.

But acknowledging the flaws and sins in our heroes is very healthy.  As I said, it reminds us that if God can do great things with them, He can do great things with us.  But the refusal to openly deal with the sins of our heroes shows another flaw in our modern view of ministry.

We tend to think that our authority for ministry comes from our moral excellence.  But the Bible is clear that none of us are morally excellent.  Just think of the heroes of the Bible.  Go through the heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11.  Even Samson is a member of the hall of fame of faith.  Yet if you read Samson's story in the book of Judges you will be find hard pressed to find even a smidgeon of moral excellence in him.   This is because the Bible is not a story of what great men do for God it is the story of what a great God does for sinful men. 

Our authority for ministry doesn't come from our moral excellence it comes from our status as recpients of the grace of God given in Jesus Christ.  So, there is no need to be threatened by the fact that there are lots of things we would hate about our heroes and that they would hate about us.  Let's have a chuckle at their expense, realize that people will be chuckling at our expense in years to come and thank God for His Grace to us in His Son Jesus.

Hat Tip Evangelical Outpost and Thinklings.