Part of the basic toolkit for any accountant, historian, scientist, journalist, lawyer, and theologian, should be to ask three simple questions:
1 - is that true?
2 - is there evidence for that?
3 - is that what the text actually says?
As a blogger who is little more than a hack opinion writer, I would ask you dear reader to apply those questions to everything that I am going to say; on the base assumption that I am lying to you. Likewise, you should also ask those questions of anyone who is trying to convince you of something; precisely because of that same base assumption that they are lying to you. That's especially true for anything which has political outcomes where the goals of the writer is to convince you to surrender power and money to someone else.
In general, I do not mind people having different opinions provided that they have come to those opinions having thought about the set of facts and truth which underpin their opinions. If someone is going to tell me something which is someone else's message verbatim, then I have tendency to be annoyed that they haven't asked the most basic of questions and have been sold lies with the truth that they may have bought.
I find it extremely disappointing when the lies that have been sold which are mixed in with the truth that people have bought, lead to power and money being surrendered to the powerful for a song and the expansion of chronic societal unkindness.
This brings me neatly to the subject of the tithe. There is this sort of weird undercurrent in Christianity that Christians should give a tithe to their churches and that there is a secondary corollary that doing so is going to mean that the giver is going to get some kind of blessing in return. Often the proof text cited for this is found in the book of Malachi.
There is a problem here. The old testament and the law contained therein is very much framed within the context of a covenant which has been agreed to by the nation of Israel and God. Even the most elementary reading of contract law will tell you that covenants and contracts only bind the parties which have agreed to those covenants and contracts. It gets really murky legally when you have after the fact parties who were never part of those contract negotiations.
What's even murkier is that Christians believe that the death and resurrection of Christ results in a new covenant. You even have arguments in the new testament book of The Acts, where Paul rebukes Peter to his face for trying to bind Christians and Greek Christians at that, to a covenant that they were never part of and have never entered into. That last point in particular has all kinds of implications for issues such as sabbaths, food laws, laws about punishment and who should be put to death, and even the issue of tithes. The short answer is that the law contained within the old testament covenant has been replaced by a new covenant. Again, when a covenant has been replaced, the old covenant no longer applies.
Why then would churches this side of a new covenant want to peddle some story about old covenant law if it no longer applies? Churches are subject to the same kinds of forces that the rest of society is because Churches are made up of people; just like the rest of society. Where you have someone trying to bind someone to a set of rules which a basic reading of the text should have already told you that it isn't true, then you have to look at the underlying motivation for doing so; and the expected political outcomes where the goals of the opinion writer is to convince you to surrender power and money to someone else.
If someone wants you to give them money it is an exceptionally short journey to come to the conclusion that they want your money. In that respect, the accusations of people outside of the church who think that Christians and churches just want your money, is well founded upon evidence.
"But ahah" the Christian readers of this piece may have cried out, "Aren't we supposed to give a tithe to the church?" To which I answer:
1 - is that true?
2 - is there evidence for that?
3 - is that what the text actually says?
I suppose that you could bind yourself to the old covenant law if you wanted to. I'm not going to stop you but if you are going to do so, then you had better made sure that you're doing it properly or else look like a hypocrite.
What have you signed up for?
10% - The Masser Rishon which is the First Tithe (Numbers 18:26)
10% - The Masser Sheni which is the Second Tithe (Deuteronomy 14:22)
2% - The Massed Ani which is the Poor Tithe (Deuteronomy 14:28)
5% - The Masser Behemar which is the Animal Tithe (Deuteronomy 14:22)
1.25% - The Priest Support levy (Numbers 18:15)
By my reckoning, the total statutory tithes is not 10% but 27.5%. Within the context of the old testament, those tithes pay not only for the priests but the entire tribe of Levi who became the civil administrators of the nation, and a kind of social security net for widows, the poor, the disabled, and refugees, asylum seekers and aliens. By the way, that also doesn't include the 24 different voluntary offerings and penalties which are prescribed by the law.
By the way, the amount of tax that someone on the average income in Australia (which is massively dragged well above the median wage by some people being rewarded with a wage which is many many multiples above the average) of $89,427.00 is $22,301.14 or an effective tax rate of 24.93%; which all means to say that in several thousand years, we've really not moved the needle that far at all.
As I sit here on a public train which is run by the state government and where I can see no fewer than five stickers on the walls from Transport For NSW, and as I turn over a Five Dollar Note which has a picture of The Queen on one side and Parliament House on the other, I can't help but feel that in the twenty-first century, the civil administration of the nation that I live in (which by the way is the Commonwealth of Australia and not old covenant biblical Israel), that I should probably be paying my statutory tithes to the Australian Taxation Office, as per the set of laws that I live under; which includes the Income Tax Assessment Acts 1936, 1997 and the GST Act 2000 among others.
At this point I'd like to lower my eyebrows disapprovingly at preachers who want to tell their congregation to tithe to their church, based upon a seemingly deliberate incomplete reading of scripture. An unbelieving world finds the evidence of superstar preachers with multi-million dollar property portfolios unbelievable because truth has a sneaky habit of speaking from its own pulpit. It is really easy to fleece a flock if you are pulling the wool over their eyes.
By the same token, if you are someone of faith who is part of a community, then you do owe an obligation to help maintain it. But as for paying tax?
Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
- Matthew 22:21
Then Jesus said to them, "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." And they were amazed at him.
- Mark 12:17
This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honour, then honour.
- Romans 13:6-7
Put simply, pay your taxes and pay them properly. I don't care about fancy notions about what you think that the moral implications of how well or badly you think that the government is doing, the fact of the matter is that the government is the central custodian of force; and governance if it isn't being done by the government is exactly a zero sum game, which means that if the government doesn't do it then private self-interest will result in power and money being surrendered to the powerful.
Further to this, I do not think that any reading of scripture with even a passing glance to either what it actually says or the implications therein, lends itself to any other rational conclusion than people should give what they have made up their minds to give and that they should be happy about it; that also means that everyone else should also be happy with it as well. Holding someone else to a standard which you haven't bothered to properly investigate, is cruel.
In what should be an entirely voluntary situation, binding other people to something which might be beyond their means, is awful.
Now this I say, he who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who sows bountifully shall also reap bountifully. Let each one do just as he has purposed in his heart; not grudgingly or under compulsion; for God loves a cheerful giver.
- 2 Corinthians 9:6-7
Please note that this is not exactly an IF-THEN-ELSE logic construct. To assert that God is going to bless someone with something extra because they have have given more money, is a stupid reading of this; including in context.
This to me looks as though someone is treating God as a giant vending machine; where you put stuff in, only to get out a sweetie. This suspiciously looks like idolatry because the logic here is that we are putting ourselves and our happiness at the center of everything. This also looks like a very very attractive lie where the goal of the speaker is to convince you to surrender power and money to someone else; which is where we started.
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