Love All You Can

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Jesus, quoting the Law.

As followers of Jesus Christ, our primary directive is clear: we are to love God with all we have and are, and love our neighbors as ourselves. I assume that this is an implicit, if not explicit, goal of every United Methodist Conference. What does this have to do with "Gain all you can?"

First of all, it helps clarify what "Gain all you can" does not mean. Wesley certainly held the greatest commandments to be of higher importance than any saying of his own. "Gain all you can" cannot mean:

• sell yourself (literally, or as an employee) to the highest bidder.
• refuse a job for the sole reason that it "doesn't pay enough."
• work as many hours as possible so as to earn the most money.

There will be times when relative salary or number of hours offered is a strong factor in choosing employment, but only when the decision as a whole improves our ability to love. Love is always the goal - not "more money for me."

What, then can it mean? As we saw yesterday, Wesley's "Gain all you can" derives from his belief that all of our time is to be spent for God.  The greatest commandments tell us how our time is to be spent: loving God and people. Some of this is done by directly loving ourselves and others (by caring for needs and responsibilities), and the rest can be spent indirectly loving. Earning money gives us a form of power, power that can be used to provide for needs and responsibilities. For Wesley, "gain all you can" is simply another way of saying "Love all you can": whatever time you are not using in direct loving, should be used to gain money for indirect loving.

How the money might be used for loving ourselves and others will be the topic for the next two weeks: "Save all you can" and "Give all you can." For now, it suffices to be agreed that, for Wesley, the sole purpose of gaining all you can is to better love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

What do you think?
Do you agree that the proper use of money is as a way to carry out the greatest commandments? If not - then what is it good for?