Close your eyes and imagine John Wesley. Quick! The first image that comes to mind. You are probably thinking of a white man aged sixty or older, with a long nose and curly white hair down to his shoulders. Okay, good. But focus on that hair for a minute, because there may be something you’re imagining wrong: Wesley’s hair was not a wig. Reading this may contradict the image many of us have of Wesley as an English gentleman of the upper middle class in the 1700s, when the fashion was for men to wear white wigs powdered with talc.
But the truth is that Wesley never wore a wig during most of his life, except at the end when he wore a brown one, made of a mix of human and animal hair, to cover his baldness and warm his head. His rejection of this unquestioned fashion of his time earned him a reputation as a weird fellow. Surely most of the clergy of the Church of England, who already criticized his innovations and evangelistic practices, saw in his natural hair just one more sign of his decision not to play by the rules.
The main reason Wesley didn't wear a wig was economic. A wig at that time could cost some twenty-five shillings, or a week's pay for a worker in London. And they weren't just expensive to buy; you had to maintain them with regular visits to the stylist to fix the curls, apply more talc, etc. In a letter to his brother Samuel, while John was still at university, he writes that despite his mother's wishes he'll neither cut his hair nor buy a wig, because he didn't see a reason to spend two to three pounds sterling each year on all that.
His frugality is well-known and was a life-long habit. It's part of his famous advice to the Methodists to "earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can." Although between the first two verbs some wish to see a vote for unrestrained capitalism (which isn't the case), let's focus on the connection between the final two verbs: save and give. For Wesley, we save not just to have surplus. Rather, we save in order to give more, to God and to the needy. Once, still a young man, Wesley was going down the stairs of his lodging and saw that one of the servant girls was quite cold. He was surprised to learn the simple dress she wore was her only garment. He put his hand in his pocket to find money for her, only to remember he'd spent his last coins on books. He was ashamed to have spent "so much" on himself that he didn't have enough for a person in need.
This perspective, this frugality in the service of the Kingdom and its righteousness, finds its clearest roots in Luke 3:11, when Jesus says, "Whoever has two cloaks, give to him who has none." Or in stronger terms from Basil the Great, "The bread in your pantry belongs to the hungry, the unworn coat in your closet belongs to him who needs it, the shoes rotting in your closet belong to him who doesn't have shoes, and the money you hoard belongs to the poor."
Without getting into a larger discussion of personal economics and the duties of the Christian way, these phrases challenge me to ask myself, "What are my wigs? Where are those things in my life, in my belongings, that are superfluous or even forgotten?" For example, I have at least three shirts in my closet that I never wear and that I've spent years saying, "I really should take these to donate," but I never do it! Why not? If John Wesley were to come in my closet...well, I don't even want to think about it. With a furrowed brow he'd throw most of it into a bag to take to a shelter, then he'd look at me with a big smile and say, "See! Don't you feel better?" And I think he'd be right.
Now, many of us know first-hand people who only own two shirts, because that's all they can afford. I'm not applying Wesley's criticism to them. Rather it's to them that we should give from our abundance. I'm applying this criticism to myself, and maybe to you, and of course to the great commercial machine that surrounds us daily, screaming and whispering, "More, more, more!" Well, no, thank you. No more. God gave me some hair and that's good enough for me. In a world where not having the latest cell phone seems to be a social embarassment, I'll try to save more than I earn. In a world of wigs, I'll give thanks for my natural hair, and I'll find people to bless with the money I save.
