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I would explain my whole circumstance, but it wqould be too long. to get to the point, my husband has a set salary every month. He has a retirement benefit that consists of an over payed life insurance plan. They used to include the life insurance amount with his salary so that the taxes would be payed—but then they pulled it back out of his paycheck, so we had no access to the money until some future date. It made it look like our gross income was higher than it actually was–but it didn’t make our net income any higher. I used to subtract the insurance payment from the total and pay tithing on my husbands actual salary. I figured that when we actually pulled it out, it would have gained interest, and if i payed tithing on it ahead of time, I would end up not knowing how much to pay when we were able to draw the money out. i eventually stopped subtracting the insurance payment and just payed tithing on everything. We have always tried to be honest tithe payers–this is important to me.
My husband had a different job for a couple of years–then returned to his old job, with the agreement that they would start his over payed life insurance/retirement benefits again.
The check stubs are different now, the retiremnt is listed separately and we have to pay a small portion of our insurance premium to get better insurance. Each of these figures is listed separately–the retirement is added to the salary and the insurance is deducted from the total—so our gross shows as less than my husband actual salary. also, there are periodically small amounts listed as slary that are either subracted or added–don’t know what they are.
I just recently realized that I have only been paying on my husbands actual salary (gross–not the less than salary gross) and that I have not been paying tithing on his retirement benefit. He has been back at this job for 1 1/2 to 2 years. I could not decide what i should do.
I talked to my sister about it, she told me that she didn’t feel like I needed to make up the amount that I had missed because she said that in my heart (and mind) I had paid a full tithing–she told me I should just go on from now and pay the right amount and don’t worry about the past. It truly was an honest mistake. I am one that is more likely to overpay just to make sure I don’t miss anything. If it was necessary for me to make up that amount to get my temple recommend—-It would be a disaster—my husband is struggling with the church—i don’t want to lose what little bit he is still hanging on to–he told me to just leave things as they were—meaning not try and make up the amount I missed by accident.
feelings on this please
You’ve done nothing wrong, and you owe nothing from the past. Calculate whatever you feel is right starting now and pay it. As I’ve said in other threads, I pay on my net income. I don’t pay on my salary; I pay on my income. If I never see the money, I don’t see it as part of my income (what comes in to me).
I would not try to pay the back tithing. I don’t pay on gross and I don’t pay on what I put into any retirement accounts because I will pay on that when I take it out. If investments were to completely tank I don’t think the church would reimburse me for any tithing I paid or I don’t think the church would take care of me in my old age. I think tithing is like taxes in that you don’t have to pay one penny more than is required. When I was Branch Pres a couple came to me in September saying they wanted to prepare the temple and were worried about ‘back payments.’ I told them there was no need for back payments, only to start payment. If they paid a full tithe from that moment forward they were, in my view, fully tithe payers.
Imagine a less active comes back from 10 years of inactivity, there’s no way they’d be expected to back-date tithing for 10 years.
Besides, if you have 11 kids I reckon you’ve already devoted most of your time and money to the Lord’s most precious anyway! momto11, I would caution you about pressing your husband to satisfy your own tithing goals. After all, it’s his money, too. If your husband is struggling a bit with the church, but is willing to continue to pay tithing, so long as you don’t pay tithing in arrears… I’d go with that. I can tell you that my wife’s desire to pay tithing, and my desire not to pay it, results directly in our most contentious issue about the church.
I’ll just second (third or fourth?) what others have said. Being a full tithe payer is not a state of being but a state of mind. If you thought you were paying a full tithe then you were. If you change your mind about what to pay just do it. I also found this article a great perspective on what is considered a full tithe. puremormonism articleeman–I read through quite a bit of that article–until my head was killing me. It really made me think. I doubt i will change how I pay tithing, but it definitely got my mind to ticking. I could tell that some of the comments on the thread were very negative towards the church–and I don’t necessarily appreciate that—but i do know that i grew up feeling like it was wrong to question anything—and then as an adult, I discovered that some of the things I believed were not church doctrine. i asked my younger sister if she felt the same way about questioning being wrong, and she said she had—so obviously, what ever we were taught growing up gave us that impression. I now believe it is perfectly acceptable, probably a good thing, to question anything you wonder about or are not sure about as long as it is done with humility and a real desire to understand.
I have seen plenty of anti-mormon things that make claims—and it just took a little research and following footnotes to quickly see that their claims were wrong. Anti-mormon articles have always had a tendency to push me towards the church, rather than away from it. But, I can see how they can easily sway someone who wants to find something wrong with the church—because if they don’t look up the actual meaning of things, they wont know how the anti-mormon stuff has been twisted from it’s original intention.
That article on tithing is one of the first things I have read that I don’t quite know how to process. It really set me thinking. It would have been easier without the negativity about the church in it.
I have come to discover that in a roomful of active LDS people—we don’t all believe the same thing.
I agree that there were some negative bits of the article, especially the parts that linked to off site (hope you didn’t follow those 😳 ). But the logic and historical aspects of tithing were very enlightening. What got me down the road of rethinking tithing was 2 things: the idea of paying tithing before all else, even if it meant losing your house (which conflicts with the principle of self reliance since we would then be forced to rely on others, the church, etc for our living) and if we pay on gross and taxes go up to 60% (which is close to some countries) how do you live on %25 less than others in the same economy, especially if you’re at the poverty line already? And if then you have the exception of paying on gross in some countries why not all? What if the tax was at 80%? 90%? Anyways, I’m big fan of figuring out your 10% interest annually (however you feel comfortable defining it) and paying it as a full tithe.As for the label “anti”… Personally I feel like that label get’s tossed around quite a bit when it doesn’t apply. I’ll link to another blog because here Bruce states what I want to much more elegantly than I can (I don’t find this blog to be negative).
When does truth become Anti-Mormon?I encourage reading the article. But if you can’t for time the gist can be summed up in his closing paragraph.
Quote:Like it or not there are uncomfortable truths about Mormonism. Just because one knows about them does not make them anti-Mormon. Just because one asks questions about them and is seeking to understand them does not make them anti-Mormon. Just because their testimonies might be challenged does not make them anti-Mormon. Just because they are not afraid to ask about it publicly does not make them anti-Mormon. But the quickest way to make them no longer a Mormon is to accuse that same poor fainting struggling seaman of being an anti-Mormon. We are effectively turning the lower lights of our lighthouse off and leaving them to fend for themselves. No wonder when they do finally come ashore, they arrive bitter.
I probably read too much…
Quote:I have come to discover that in a roomful of active LDS people—we don’t all believe the same thing.
Amen – and it can be incredibly liberating to recognize, accept and actually embrace that.
eman–when I mention anti-mormon–i am REALLY meaning anti-mormon—the kind of people who make it their goal in life to get people away from the LDS church. They don’t go around trying to preach what they think is the truth, they go around with no other purpose than to degrade the church and get people away from it. i personally am not bothered by the early doings of the church that people have tried to hush up–they don’t bother me–I figure they were a lot of imperfect, but good people trying to do the right thing in a very confusing time while they were being persecuted. Some of the early LDS people did some horrible things–non-LDS people did horrible things—even to this day, both groups have people who do horrible things—and people who do very good things.
And, i seem to be one of the people who is starting to ask questions………
@momto11 Sorry.
😳 I’m used to people telling me that things the don’t like about history of the church are anti-mormon lies.eman–no problem. i once heard a convert tell me something i thought was really neat. She knew that the church founders were imperfect men–and she thought that the fact that these imperfect men could still be instrumental in bringing about the restoration of the gospel was such a wonderful thing. i had never thought of it that way. Sigh That was inappropriate, Cadence – if it was directed at momto11’s comment and not the post itself. If it was a reaction to the post, it was appropriate – but it follows immediately after momto11’s comment about a view that she likes. If it was a “sigh” about her comment and the view she expressed, it was inappropriate – since, in that context, it is dismissive of something that works for someone else. If it was sighing about the culture that puts people in a position where they feel guilty about overlooking something or feeling like they made a mistake in the amount of their sincere donations, they it was appropriate – and I can agree with sighing about it.
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