Finally my studies on tithing are complete. My conclusion is:
"We should give
EVERYTHING not 10%. The tithe mandate disrupts the journey of believers to a
complete giving of their selves to the cause of Christ"
According to human logic, those who find it hard to give 10%
will not give 100%. If we are called to be saints, our first responsibility is
to be like the saints before us!
Imagine if the early Christians in all of Asia Minor and Rome
and Africa tithed 10% of their income. Perhaps St. Peter would have received a
Private Yacht from the faithful. Perhaps the gospel would have spread
faster.... but what kind of gospel would have been passed down to us?
Now the prosperity gospel derives in large path from the
"prosperity" of the pastors who preach it. They point to their own
prosperity as a tip of the iceberg of what God could do for you if you
persisted in giving (mandatorily) to the church.........Imagine now that this
was gospel was preached by St. Peter and the early disciples, who showed off
their private yachts and those of their senior 'pastors' and imagine they built
really large buildings with all the trappings of the wealth they possessed as a
result of the faithful giving of their flock....
Imagine all that and try to imagine again what kind of Gospel we
would have today, and what kind we would pass on if the Lord tarries to the
centuries after us.
Link below speaks eloquently to the issues I have struggled
with. I love this passage:
The tithe has been used as a method of collecting tribute, but
this does not justify its use as a principle for Christian giving. Christian
giving is much more than tithing. It is a different kind of thinking about the
resources God has given us.
In 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 we find some acceptable principles for
Christian giving: full generosity, submission to the Lord, willingness, love,
joyfulness, proportionality, and sharing. All of this stems from God’s love
that we have experienced through Christ, who “(gave) up all his riches and
became poor, so that you could become rich” (2 Corinthians 8: 9).
The superb irony is, it was written by a female deacon
(Deaconess). It puts me in an amusing situation.... the apostles did not allow
female church leaders. Am I then to disagree with her thoughts on this matter
on the basis of her gender? Or am I to cop out and say: "Since the men
have refused to listen, God decided to speak to women!"
I choose neither - I'll just say (as Father Barron - auxiliary
Bishop of Los Angeles loves to say - "If you think you understand
everything about God, then it isn't God" - there is always a part of God
which will remain a mystery to us.
I rest.
dk
(unedited)
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