oladotun Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 I can't count the number of times during my "fundamental" days I heard testimonies of people who claimed financial blessings in their lives because they paid their tithes to the church. The implication was always, if you tithe, God is OBLIGATED to bless you because he promises to "pour out a blessing, so big you won't have enough room for it" (my paraphrase of Malachi 3:10). But what I realized is that when you really get to know these people who are saying this, there is an element of self-delusion involved in their statements. I used to tithe faithfully, and yet, when the company I worked for was downszing, I still got laid off. What did I do wrong? Was my motive wrong? Fundies would tell me that maybe my heart was not in the right place or maybe I was not adding a "love offering" to make sure that God blessed me. My take is that the teaching of tithing and how it has so many people living in fear of NOT tithing is one of the main ways that the church keeps people in bondage. I am not implying that being charitable is a bad thing, but I fnid it ironic that the one verse in the Bible that most churches pay attention to is tithing and the implication is that if you don't tithe, you can't really be a moral person because you are hoarding money as your God. Could it be that the same preachers who place so much emphasis on tithing are doing the same thing? And it would be one thing if the church as a whole was using that money to enrich the community(which, to be fair, some do), but when it exists primarily to build an institutional empire, it is something else. Any thoughts on this? A friend of mine recently told me that she knows that God blesses her because she tithes, and I could feel my skin crawling when she said it...What about all those people in thrid world countries who tithe with no real effect? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deva Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 No. Even if I believed in God I wouldn't believe a monetary transaction was necessary for blessings. It is an absurd notion that the God of the universe would need or appreciate my money. Isn't it all his anyway? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oddbird1963 Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Tithing is a mechanism designed to get people to let go of hard-earned resources for the furtherance of a religion. That's the nice way to say, "What a racket!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loren Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Also known as, "Fleecing the Sheep," in the same sense that baptism is referred to as "Sheep Dip." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dagnarus Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 I once heard an interesting testimony on this once. A rather wealthy person went into how he was blessed when he sold a factory to give money to the church when they had a need to do some such. Any way he found that he was blessed in that he save money on the mortgage. He was being serious. Almost as wacked out as the answer to why my church wasn't practicing living by faith (While I was in the school they had a lesson on living by faith in Matthew and how individuals receiving a steady wage for doing God's work was the teaching of Balaam.) The reason why was because several of the full-time workers starved to death in China during a famine. I should of packed my bags then and their. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bush country Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Preachers - the leeches of society. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godlessgrrl Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Loren, that's awesome! "Sheep Dip!" I'd never heard of that. Can I steal it? As to the OP, tithing doesn't do anything but make churches richer. Anybody who thinks that they'll earn blessings by tithing is essentially trying to bribe God. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OpheliaGinger Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 I received absolutely no blessings from tithing and neither did my family. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Davka Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 This was one of the first disconnects I began to have with the church. They teach that the tithe is a tenth of your income, or "increase," right? But that's not what the Bible says. There are all kinds of different tithes - tithes which are a tenth of the Spring harvest, given once every three years; tithes in response to a specific blessing from god; tithes of grain; tithes of livestock . . . nowhere in the OT does it specify a tenth of all your income. But what really frosts me is the purpose of the tithe according to the OT. Everybody repeat after me: "bring your whole tithe into the storehouse." The what? The storehouse. Not the pastor's bank account, and not the church building's mortgage payment. The storehouse, which is a combination grain silo, root cellar, and dried/smoked meat storage building on the Temple Mount. And what was the purpose of filling the storehouse with food? It was there to feed the nation in times of drought and famine. Yeah, you read right: the original purpose of the tithe was to set aside a portion of the nation's GDP during the fat years, to be held in trust for the people as insurance against the bad years. Just try going to your local church and telling them that it's time to open the storehouse and distribute the tithe back to the people, because the hard years have begun. They won't know wtf you're talking about, and they damned sure won't have anything tucked away in a "storehouse," any more than Congress has your SS funds invested somewhere for you. The church has been spending "god's tithe" on their own needs for the past two millenia. When I think of how much money I would have if I'd put all those those tithes into a low-yield savings account for the past 20 years. *sigh* Try talking to a fundy about the storehouse. It might make them think. Where is your church's storehouse? What? You mean they aren't teaching their flock to bring the whole tithe into the storehouse? You're kidding me! You say they don't even have a storehouse??? But - but - don't they read Malachi? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neon Genesis Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Isn't the belief that God will bless you if you tithe a works-based salvation and doesn't that contradict the claims that you can't earn your way to heaven? George Carlin says it best about tithing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNy6ziOyxoA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deva Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Yeah, you read right: the original purpose of the tithe was to set aside a portion of the nation's GDP during the fat years, to be held in trust for the people as insurance against the bad years. Just try going to your local church and telling them that it's time to open the storehouse and distribute the tithe back to the people, because the hard years have begun. They won't know wtf you're talking about, and they damned sure won't have anything tucked away in a "storehouse," any more than Congress has your SS funds invested somewhere for you. The church has been spending "god's tithe" on their own needs for the past two millenia. This train of thought crossed my mind at one point while I was still a church member in the late 90s. I decided that if I were old, sick and broke, the best the church would do for me was send the priest to me (Episcopal) when I was in the medicaid nursing home to "pray with me". I decided screw that, it wasn't worth the return for my investment. Give me my money! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OpheliaGinger Posted July 11, 2009 Share Posted July 11, 2009 Churches never "store" their income. They constantly use it even when nothing needs to be done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HRDWarrior Posted July 11, 2009 Share Posted July 11, 2009 I sure as heck never got any monetary gain from tithing, and neither has my family. I doubt there are any "blessings" that could be attributed to anything other than hard work...so a definite NO for me. I am almost sick to think of how much money I wasted on supporting some religion I have since left. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Davka Posted July 11, 2009 Share Posted July 11, 2009 How did they pay for the upkeep of their temples at that time, then, if not by tithe? Phanta The initial building of the temple (and there was only one, in Jerusalem) was a huge effort. Solomon purchased cedar and pine timbers from the king of Tyre, in what is Lebanon today. He traded olive oil and wheat, which apparently had been collected as taxes. Then he "conscripted" 30,000 Israelites to do the actual labor - it's referred to as "forced labor" in the Bible, i.e. temporary slavery. Once the temple was built, there was a group of priests whose job it was to perform all the rituals as well as keep the temple running smoothly. They were "paid" through the various offerings made at the temple to atone for the sins of the people. These were not considered tithes: thus the phrase "tithes and offerings." Every time someone violated one of the 613 ritual laws - for example, if they got blood on their hands, or touched a corpse, or had a wound that got infected - they had to bring an offering to the temple in order to be ritually purified. A portion of the offering, usually the blood and most of the fat, was burned on the altar. The rest was cooked and eaten by the priests, and sometimes shared with the person making the offering. Grain offerings were dealt with similarly. I like that the priests had special rules for the grain offerings: they had to be prepared with oil and honey, or God would not accept them. And all the offerings had to be salted (salt was quite valuable in those days) or God would not accept them. So the way they ran the temple was pretty much by scaring the people into giving them stuff. But those were sin offerings and guilt offerings, not tithes. Since Jesus supposedly took the place of all those offerings, the church had to come up with a new scam to get your money. Here's a quick overview of offerings. You shouldn't have gotten me started - I've been working on a five-part Bible study on this subject for the past three months, and I'm overflowing with useless facts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oladotun Posted July 11, 2009 Author Share Posted July 11, 2009 This was one of the first disconnects I began to have with the church. They teach that the tithe is a tenth of your income, or "increase," right? But that's not what the Bible says. There are all kinds of different tithes - tithes which are a tenth of the Spring harvest, given once every three years; tithes in response to a specific blessing from god; tithes of grain; tithes of livestock . . . nowhere in the OT does it specify a tenth of all your income. But what really frosts me is the purpose of the tithe according to the OT. Everybody repeat after me: "bring your whole tithe into the storehouse." The what? The storehouse. Not the pastor's bank account, and not the church building's mortgage payment. The storehouse, which is a combination grain silo, root cellar, and dried/smoked meat storage building on the Temple Mount. And what was the purpose of filling the storehouse with food? It was there to feed the nation in times of drought and famine. Yeah, you read right: the original purpose of the tithe was to set aside a portion of the nation's GDP during the fat years, to be held in trust for the people as insurance against the bad years. Just try going to your local church and telling them that it's time to open the storehouse and distribute the tithe back to the people, because the hard years have begun. They won't know wtf you're talking about, and they damned sure won't have anything tucked away in a "storehouse," any more than Congress has your SS funds invested somewhere for you. The church has been spending "god's tithe" on their own needs for the past two millenia. When I think of how much money I would have if I'd put all those those tithes into a low-yield savings account for the past 20 years. *sigh* Try talking to a fundy about the storehouse. It might make them think. Where is your church's storehouse? What? You mean they aren't teaching their flock to bring the whole tithe into the storehouse? You're kidding me! You say they don't even have a storehouse??? But - but - don't they read Malachi? You are perfectly right. The way tithing is mandating in today's churches is NOTHING like the primary reason for tithing in the Bible. In the Bible, the tithe is meant to take care of te flock (as exemplified by the church in Acts 2), tithing today is meant to build an empire. In the Bible, there are actually three kinds of tithes : 1 - Numbers 18: 21-31: the tithe to support the priesthood. 2 - Deut. 14: 22-27: the “festival tithe”. I remember, we used to do this at my church when I lived in Africa where we would bring fruit and produce to the church once a year (separate from our tithe) and use it to partake in a feast of thanksgiving. I had no idea why we did this. 3 - Deut 14: 28-29: the tithe of the produce of the land offered every third year for orphans, strangers, widows etc. Pastors today have perverted the teaching on tithing primarily for financial gain. THey will tell you that Jesus mandated tithing in Matthew 23:23, but he did not, he said tithe but do not forget the MORE important aspects of the law, justice, mercy and faith... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vixentrox Posted July 11, 2009 Share Posted July 11, 2009 Why does god need money? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loren Posted July 12, 2009 Share Posted July 12, 2009 Loren, that's awesome! "Sheep Dip!" I'd never heard of that. Can I steal it? I don't know if that's one I came up with or not, I've been using it for such a long time. Gwen, are you familiar with the Joke Rule? The Joke Rule states that if you're able to use someone else's joke seven times in a row without somebody calling you out for stealing the material, then you're legally entitled to claim the joke as your own. I think it's in the Constitution somewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brought None Posted July 12, 2009 Share Posted July 12, 2009 Does sending money to that email you just recieved guarantee you a larger penis? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghostchild Posted July 13, 2009 Share Posted July 13, 2009 Shortly before my I told my parents I had left the church, my mom came to me and asked me when I was going to start tithing. At the time, I was making about 160 bucks a week, trying to save a little, spend a little to keep myself sane in the family hell. It came so out of the blue, I was shocked. Up until that moment, I had *no* idea that tithing was expected in the ROCA, and the idea just seemed so very wrong to me. I was no longer a believer but even if i had been, I had always believed that it has to be up to the individual to support the chrurch as they saw fit. The idea of a church tax seemed so very very wrong to me... It made me think a lot less of all those willing to pay it, and it made me angry, thinking back on all the years my family was so poor we could only afford the most basic food and housing, with government help, that my parents had taken what little money we had and handed it to the priests and bishops who never gave us nuthin... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oladotun Posted July 13, 2009 Author Share Posted July 13, 2009 Shortly before my I told my parents I had left the church, my mom came to me and asked me when I was going to start tithing. At the time, I was making about 160 bucks a week, trying to save a little, spend a little to keep myself sane in the family hell. It came so out of the blue, I was shocked. Up until that moment, I had *no* idea that tithing was expected in the ROCA, and the idea just seemed so very wrong to me. I was no longer a believer but even if i had been, I had always believed that it has to be up to the individual to support the chrurch as they saw fit. The idea of a church tax seemed so very very wrong to me... It made me think a lot less of all those willing to pay it, and it made me angry, thinking back on all the years my family was so poor we could only afford the most basic food and housing, with government help, that my parents had taken what little money we had and handed it to the priests and bishops who never gave us nuthin... And I have often heard preachers say stuff like "tithing is a principle that works even if you are not a believer". So in essence, tithing is almost the equivalent of a "magic" trick, give your 10% and the blessing is guaranteed. What happens when it does not "work"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramen666 Posted July 13, 2009 Share Posted July 13, 2009 Pretty easy answer, no and no. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
★ Citsonga ★ Posted July 13, 2009 Share Posted July 13, 2009 My answer to this question is the same as it was when I was a Christian: No. Even when I was a devout believer and faithfully paying my tithe, I didn't believe the nonsense some spouted about God returning the money to you multiplied by x. I felt that it was the responsibility of the believer to tithe (and preferably give even more), but that it should be done out of love and reverence for God, with no strings attached. I believed that anyone giving with the expectation to get back wasn't exhibiting "true Christian" character. Of course, now the only part of that that I still believe is that it doesn't guarantee any return. In fact, I started working a full time job when I was 20, and I didn't start questioning my faith until I was 29. So, I spent 9 years working full time and paying 10% or more off of every paycheck, calculated off of GROSS earnings (not net). The only thing I ever got back from it was once when my church gave me $2,000 ($1,000 from the congregation and a matching $1,000 from the district) toward purchasing a vehicle for the family when funds were tight. That was nice of them and did help us out at that time, but that $2,000 pales in comparison to what I had paid in tithes over the years. I should go back through all my old canceled checks and add up all that I gave to churches and other religious organizations over the years. It would be a tedious task, but I should be able to come to a close figure, since most of my giving was with checks. Of course, there's also a lot of gas money going back and forth to church and other religious events, which I could never account for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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