Let me offer one example of how the concept of tithing can operate.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“Mormons”) has had a standard of tithing since the 1830s. It also has no career clergy, so all the people at the local level of every congregation are unpaid volunteers who support themselves with regular jobs. In some cases, the bishop and his two counselors who lead each congregation probably contribute as their tithes as much as the salary of a pastor at many churches. Rather than appearing to be self-serving when speaking to their congregation about tithing, they are examples of financial sacrifice.

Costs are reduced by housing as many as four congregations in a single building, with different meeting times each Sunday. Congregations in the more prosperous USA contribute their donations into an international pool that supports Church building and activities in less wealthy nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where half of Mormons now live.

The most senior leaders of the LDS Church are compensated for full-time work, after they have invested decades in voluntary service and making their own tithing contributions. It is also generally acknowledged that they are not paid what they could earn in their original careers (e.g. as a world-renowned heart surgeon, several attorneys who were partners in major law firms, several university presidents, a nuclear engineer, and a sr. vice president for Lufthansa).

Mormons are also asked to voluntarily donate additional contributions. On the first Sunday of each month, they fast from two meals and donate at least the value of the food not eaten to aid the poor. Additional voluntary contributions are made to provide educational loans to members in developing countries, to help support missionaries who cannot support themselves, and to build temples, where special ordinances such as eternal marriage are performed.

Typically each Mormon congregation has at least 60 positions as leaders and teachers that are filled by unpaid volunteers, contributing from 5 to 20 hours a week. Young Mormon missionaries are supported from their own savings and from their families. Many older couples also serve as full time missionaries, living off their retirement income.

Tithing funds are used to construct some 400 new meetinghouses worldwide each year, and to cover the major part of their utilities and maintenance costs. Tithes also help ensure that tuition at Church universities remains affordable. Tithes pay for weekday religious education in Church facilities adjacent to high schools and colleges.

Gary, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. I never claimed there to be a valid tithe principle for the church based on the Mosaic law. I claimed that there is a principle of stewardship going back to Adam, whereby nothing really belongs to us to begin with. We simply safeguard what God gives us and use it for whatever we can do to increase it. This is indeed a biblical principle and has nothing to do with any direct transference of the tithe to the church, so I’m not sure why you’re criticizing such a view, a view I don’t even hold.

My point is that a biblical stewardship view is very basic to all talk of giving throughout the Bible, including the Torah tithe. The Mosaic law gives a particular application to the temporary situation of priests and Levites needing support (and needing sacrifices), but it’s based on this larger principle. The fact that there is language in the NT that can be construed as contradicting the firstfruits Torah practice does not undermine the original principle that nothing really belongs to us to begin with, and thus it’s immoral to think of our possessions as genuinely ours. The implication is that the passages you refer to from the pastoral epistles have to be analogies and about spiritual reward, and only analogies about spiritual reward, and therefore not, as you take it, giving a theology of earned profits.

It’s irrelevant to that point to agree with me that the tithe was only about agricultural yield or that it was only temporary.

“Giving to the poor is an essential part of Christian morality. I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I’m afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, and amusement, is up to the standard common of those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little.

If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things that we’d like to do but cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.”

Proverbs 3:9 (KJV) “Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase:”

Check out the Hebrew dictionary here. “All thine increase” is referring to fruit or grain. This is referring to the first of the crops ONLY, nothing else. There is no other principle involved. This is verified by looking at verse 10:

Proverbs 3:10 (KJV) “So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.”

Church leaders love to take these verses out of context and apply it to your income. That, my friend, is not Biblical.

In the Old Testament, you gave to God by taking the tithe to the Levites, taking firstfruits to the priests, and through burnt and other sacrificial giving.

In the New Testament, you give to God by giving to the needy/poor. See Matthew 25:42-45.

Church leaders add to, subtract from, and mix up the scriptures to suit their needs. Today, many pastors teach man’s traditions instead of God’s Word. No church in the US taught tithing on one’s income until the late 1800s.

Today’s church is full of money changers.

You think that an Old Testament law that you follow today has changed your life. A law that was nailed to the cross.

The REAL change in your life will come when you finally understand that we are under grace, not Old Testament laws. Jesus paid the ENTIRE price already. Once you give up Old Testament laws and start recognizing and using the Holy Spirit that God have given to us, you will be led by the Spirit, not some Old Testament laws and/or principles. If you are born-again, and have received THE Spirit, you don’t need laws to use for your guidance. You don’t need a minimum amount, etc., or a starting point in your giving.

Being Spirit led, I find myself giving far more than a mere tenth of my income. Not to the church, necessarily, but to where and to whom the Spirit leads me. If you follow Old Testament laws and principles, you really don’t know whether or not you are pleasing God. But follow THE Spirit, and you’ll know you are doing what God wants you to do.

God can bless anyone at any time for any reason He chooses.

I don’t think that the claims I am making is all that surprising. See if you don’t agree:

Many have observed that the quirkiness of the typical interpretation of Malachi 3: 9-10, which sees it as a command for contemporary Christians to give ten percent of one’s income to the local church.

What explains this widespread and enduring interpretation? [I suggest] that it has something to do with the fact that such an interpretation tends to benefit pastors and church leaders–the people who not only promulgate the interpretation, but who also depend on such contributions for their livelihoods, careers, and personal projects.

I’m not saying there are no such things as generalities or tendencies, just that they rarely shed a lot of light on things, and serve rather to undermine the possibility that a position could have solid, independent reasoning behind it.

That said, I agree that American Christians, generally speaking, are quite materialistic and need to have their spending examined by people who actually know and love them, and who are willing to have their own decisions examined in turn. People tend to over-spiritualize away Jesus’ commandments regarding giving which are quite strong and simply do not set any upper limit to monies given.