Wesley’s Three Simple Rules: The First Rule

Whether we are a Methodist or a Christian in a different tradition, we can benefit from the study and application of John Wesley’s “three simple rules.” Wesley in his sermon, “Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Discourse the Fifth,” makes it clear that adherence to these rules was not to be external only but was to be accompanied by inward transformation—a change of heart toward God and our neighbor.

We are not be like the Pharisees who scrupulously obeyed the rules they found in Scripture but whose hearts were far from God. They failed to show the mercy toward others as God expect them to do.

I propose to look at Wesley’s General Rules, their official title, as they appear in The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church. We often hear Bishop Reuben Job’s abridgement of the three simple rules quoted in sermons or talks, but Job’s abridgement does not capture what Wesley was emphasizing in the original rules.

In this article I am going to look at Wesley’s first rule. In the original rules it is “By doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind, especially that which is most generally practiced….” Wesley then lists some examples of these kinds of evil. Wesley describes a number of practices that have not changed since biblical times. He also describes a number of eighteenth century practices that have their modern day equivalents. We find all these practices alluded to in Scripture. It clear from the full rule that Wesley means more than refraining from deliberately inflicting physical injury on someone, causing them emotional suffering or pain, or hurting them in any other way. We are to avoid all kinds of evil.

Among the kinds of evil that Wesley lists is taking God’s name in vain. In other words, we take God, his name, and other aspects of his reality, to paraphrase John Piper, into our thoughts, into our emotions, into your words, and into your actions in such a way that our thoughts and feelings and words and actions are futile, empty, pointless, wasted. We empty our hearts of affections for God. We no longer love, admire, reverence, cherish, or treasure him. God means nothing to us. We empty words about God, statements about him, of God’s truth and replace them with human opinions. In summary, in Piper’s words, “to take the name of God in vain is to take up some expression of God’s reality into our thoughts or emotions or words or actions when the truth of God has gone out of them, and true affections for God are missing.” How are we ourselves doing that in our own lives? It is worth some thought.

Wesley identifies profaning the Lord’s Day as a kind of evil. In our time working, buying, and selling on a Sunday has become normative. Those who do not have work on a Sunday devote their Sundays to sleeping late and various recreational or leisure time activities.

Unless Christians are involved in a particular ministry, we at most devote a couple of hours to the service of God on a Sunday. We attend a Sunday school class and a worship service.

The early Methodists, on the other hand, visited the sick and those in prison, performed acts of mercy, and other ways devoted themselves to God’s service on a Sunday.

What can we do to give more time to God’s service on a Sunday or whatever day we attend a church? How else might we make the day “holy unto the Lord”?

Wesley goes on to list, “drunkenness: buying or selling spirituous liquors, or drinking them.” 

Heavy drinking was common in Wesley’s day. Parents would spend their money on gin instead of feeding their children. Drinking was often accompanied by crimes of violence—brutal beatings, rape, and murder. Both women and children prostituted themselves for cheap gin, exchanging their sexual favors for money to buy the gin or for the gin itself.

When Wesley talks about drunkenness, buying or selling alcoholic beverages and drinking them, he has all the various kinds of evils associated with these activities in mind. In our day we can expand these activities not only to the illicit sale, purchase and use of intoxicants and other substances that affect our thinking, emotions, and behavior but also pornography and anything else in which we indulge or over-indulge with harmful effects to ourselves and/or to others.

The harm may occur at any stage, for the example, in the treatment of women and children in the making of pornographic videos; in the attitudes the videos promote toward women and children; in the effects that the use of pornography has on someone’s sexual appetites and their inhibitions against rape, sexual activity with minors, or so-called “rough sex,” which may consist of physically and emotionally abusing a sexual partner and forcing them to perform degrading sexual acts against their will; and the damage that its use can cause to a marriage or partnered relationship.

What do we indulge in to excess? How is it affecting us? How is it affecting others? Do we look at our phone all the time and not really engage with people? Do we use our cell phone as babysitter?

Among the kinds of evils that Wesley lists is human trafficking, exploiting and profiting at the expense of adults or children by compelling them to perform labor or engage in commercial sex. Human trafficking includes sexual exploitation, labor exploitation, forced marriages, domestic servitude, forced criminality, child soldiers, and organ harvesting.

Sexual exploitation “is when someone is deceived, coerced or forced to take part in sexual activity.” When one sexual partner posts photos or videos of sexual activity with another sexual partner on the internet, sells them to a porn site, or circulates them by other means without the knowledge or consent of the other sexual partner, it is sexual exploitation irrespective of whether the other sexual partner consented to the taking of the photos or the making of the video. It is also sexual exploitation when a third party takes photos of their sexual activity or makes videos of it and shows them online, sells the photos or videos, or circulates the photos or videos without their knowledge or consent. It includes posting revenge photos or videos online, selling them to a porn site, or circulating them.

Has anyone encouraged us to post photos or videos of us engaging in sexual activity with someone on the internet or to text them to someone else? Did we understand that they were using us and engaging in a form of sexual exploitation? Did they then use what we had done to make us do the same thing again and again? Did they trick us in any way to do it the first time and then kept tricking us into repeatedly doing it?

Wesley listed fighting, quarreling, and brawling. This would include trolling on the internet, deliberately stirring up trouble, provoking arguments, and adding more fuel on the fire once an argument starts. It includes deliberately looking for arguments, intentionally misinterpreting and misunderstanding what someone else says, setting up strawmen, and otherwise indulging in contentiousness.

Wesley also lists “returning evil for evil.” If someone shows us what we perceive to be an unkindness, we respond to them with cruelty of our own. Whatever they do, we retaliate not only in kind but we may also treat them more badly than they have treated us. We may read into innocent acts, intentional wrongs. If they use harsh, insolent, or abusive language with us, we may use the same kind of language with them. We do not temper what we say but let them feel the full force of our anger. We hang onto anger and resentment and hold grudges again other people.

Do we blow up at the slightest provocation? Do we use our anger to intimidate other people and to force them to do what we want them to do? Are we aware that psychologists have identified treating people in this fashion to be a form of emotional abuse?

Do we encourage other people to gang up on someone and hurt, intimidate, or coerce them? Do we urge them on? Do we join with other people in bullying someone? Are we aware that psychologists have identified bullying as an extreme form of emotional abuse whether perpetrated by one individual or several?

When we are annoyed or irritated with someone, do we give them the silent treatment? Do we stop speaking to them, studiedly ignore them when they are in the same room with us, turn our backs on them and walk away from them when they go to talk to us, avoid then whenever we can even on the internet?

Do we use the silent treatment to control people, to keep them at a distance, to force them act the way we want them to act?

Do we use it to punish them for perceived unkindnesses and mistakes? Are we aware that psychologists have identified the silent treatment to be a form of emotional abuse, a form of silent bullying, when it is taken to an extreme?

The actions that Wesley identifies as kinds of evil include gossiping about people behind their backs and saying unkind things about them, spreading false rumors about them and doing whatever else we can to turn other people against them.

When we share our perceptions of someone else with other people for any reason, do we acknowledge that what we are saying is only our perceptions and not fact? Do we admit that our perceptions may be inaccurate and that we could be wrong?

Wesley identifies doing the reverse of the Golden Rule as a kind of evil: “Doing to others as we would not they should do unto us.” We all have a laundry list of things that we would not like others to do to us, but does this list, when we are angry or in a bad mood, keep us from doing them to others. Let us be honest with ourselves.

Are we treating everyone God has placed in our lives as we would like to be treated—in the spirit of love and kindness that God has shown us? Is there one or people that we are showing by our behavior toward them, they are on our shitlist—the list of people who are in ill favor with us, the people we dislike or plan to harm? Are we acting toward them as Jesus taught us?

Wesley further lists as a kind of evil, “doing what we know is not for the glory of God.” We are doing it to gratify ourselves. He gives several examples. Here are a few of their contemporary equivalents.

Dressing in expensive clothes, wearing expensive jewelry, owning an expensive, state of the art cell phone, driving an expensive car, and living in an expensive house. We want to draw attention to ourselves. We want people to envy us. We want to show them that we are richer, smarter, more successful, and therefore superior to them and they are inferior to us. We are important and they are not.

Engaging in recreational activities and pastimes which as Wesley put it “cannot be used in the name of the Lord Jesus.” For example, using a leisure time to watch videos of men raping teenage girls and forcing them to perform degrading sexual acts is not such a diversion. Neither is seducing young women or young men, videoing them unbeknownst to them while having sex with them, and then posting the videos on the internet and circulating them among friends for their entertainment.

Listening to songs, reading books, watching videos, attending concerts, and engaging in other activities which, in Wesley’s words, “do not tend to the knowledge or love of God.”

Wesley realized that the kinds of evil that he listed not only harm people, but they also lead people away from God. They are things that are not in keeping with what God in the person of Jesus taught us how to live. They do not embody the love that he showed us or the love that he taught us to show others. In my next article I will look a Wesley’s second simple rule.