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Old-Timer wrote:
SD, I have NO problem whatsoever with someone working off of actual experiences that are like the ones you describe.
The ideal is a two-way street – and the “partnership” breaks down if either party doesn’t fulfill its role as a partner. Iow, if a Bishop won’t help someone who has been a faithful contributor, that contributor has no obligation to continue to contribute as s/he did previously. The compact has been broken; the aggrieved partner has every right to choose how to act, without guilt, as long as that person still understands and practices the principle of communal sharing to the extent possible – even if the recipient community changes.
That’s my heterodox opinion, anyway.
Wow! That IS heterodox, and frankly, much different than what I would expect to hear from others, who place the onus firmly on the individual to bear down, press-on and keep up with the party-line when the partnership breaks down on the Church side. IN fact, many would disagree with calling it a partnership, and would shudder at admitting the Church side didn’t do its part. They would prefer to call it a mentorship, an apprenticeship (Church as the enlightement, individual as apprentice) or some other relationship that tends to elevate the Church above the individual in the needs hierarchy. And, there are tendencies to exonerate the formal leadership from being obligated to the individual. At least, that is what my experiences tell me.
Now, would I like this perception to change at some point? Definitely. If I was in leadership, would I try to practice what I’m preaching here (balancing the needs of both entities — org and indiv)? Definitely, and if I couldn’t, there would be a discussion why I couldn’t.
Tithing to me has been act of gratitude to God. When I write the check or put in the cash, in my heart I am saying Thanks once again. It may be thanks for all the protection from harm, hurt, etc. It may be thanks for a chance at living such an amazing life. I am thankful for a strong religion that has offered me protection, direction, community, challenges, and growth. I could go on and on. Sometimes I am thankful for just the strength to get out of bed. If I was teaching that message the above is what I would teach. I think His generosity encompasses so much that any effort to make a list of what it will bless or exactly how it will work is unfair to Him. In certain times it may have been a direct one to one promise – I don’t doubt it. Most of all I think the opportunity to find one more way to remember or connect or to demonstrate our connection to him is a good thing. But that’s just me. And I haven’t gotten a call from Salt Lake to preach this just yet.
SilentDawning wrote:Old-Timer wrote:SD, I have NO problem whatsoever with someone working off of actual experiences that are like the ones you describe.
The ideal is a two-way street – and the “partnership” breaks down if either party doesn’t fulfill its role as a partner.
Wow! That IS heterodox, and frankly, much different than what I would expect to hear from others, who place the onus firmly on the individual to bear down, press-on and keep up with the party-line when the partnership breaks down on the Church side. IN fact, many would disagree with calling it a partnership, and would shudder at admitting the Church side didn’t do its part. They would prefer to call it a mentorship, an apprenticeship (Church as the enlightement, individual as apprentice) or some other relationship that tends to elevate the Church above the individual in the needs hierarchy. And, there are tendencies to exonerate the formal leadership from being obligated to the individual. At least, that is what my experiences tell me.
I agree with Ray, and have been fond of the metaphor/comparison between marriage and one’s relationship to the Church since reading Wendy Ulrich’s CogDis article on FAIR.
I have often sacrificed for church/marriage, I have been willing to give myself and change myself to love and support them. I have been hurt when expectations I had of those relationships were not reciprocated in a way I thought was right for me. I have tried to adjust my expectations to try to work it out.
However, at some point, I have to stand up for me and what I need to be happy, to set the boundaries and communicate those, and become detached to reduce my suffering, and turn my desires towards good things that bring me peace, that help me become more the person God wants me to be, regardless of external circumstances…which is what tithing can help do also.
SD, in your note I hear a familiar tone that see the church is hierarchical and cannot or should not be a partnership. I disagree with them. I believe if you allow the relationship to be uneven and accept it that way, that is your doing. But you have a choice. Stay in the marriage/church and live with it however you currently are experiencing it, stay while you work to change the partnership (not try to change the spouse/church, but the “partnership” agreement) so it can meet your needs, or divorce/leave the church because you lose hope it can provide you what you need to be fulfilled.
The church does not HAVE to be only the option as an unfair partnership and you must accept that or go to hell. However, that is one choice if you enable it as such.
Regarding the OP: I keyed into Pres Eyring’s words on how it can make you FEEL, not written contractual terms on results.
mom3 wrote:Tithing to me has been act of gratitude to God. When I write the check or put in the cash, in my heart I am saying Thanks once again. It may be thanks for all the protection from harm, hurt, etc. It may be thanks for a chance at living such an amazing life. I am thankful for a strong religion that has offered me protection, direction, community, challenges, and growth. I could go on and on. Sometimes I am thankful for just the strength to get out of bed.
If I was teaching that message the above is what I would teach. I think His generosity encompasses so much that any effort to make a list of what it will bless or exactly how it will work is unfair to Him. In certain times it may have been a direct one to one promise – I don’t doubt it. Most of all I think the opportunity to find one more way to remember or connect or to demonstrate our connection to him is a good thing. But that’s just me. And I haven’t gotten a call from Salt Lake to preach this just yet.
I like that inward approach:thumbup: Tithing tithing tithing. Boy do they club us over the head with it. I try to pay mine, but I’m not an accountant! Roy wrote:I would like to share what I found to be a very nice FPM by Pres. Eyring.Perhaps you could think of me as your unofficial home teacher. Quote:…Heavenly Father pours out blessings upon us. Anyone who has consistently paid a full tithe knows that is true…They are given in the Lord’s time and according to what He knows is best for us…
He asks only 10 percent of what He has already given us…Whatever our circumstances may be, things will work out for the best……It is the ways this behavior might affect your heart and spirit that are the critical factors. Tithing, in this context, becomes a necessary schoolmaster to much nobler principles. And what are those principles? According to Pres. Eyring, they are:
1) Gratitude…2) Confidence/Assurance/Peace…3) Love of God and all God’s children
SilentDawning wrote:hawkgrrrl wrote:IMO, the blessing of tithing is the blessing of detachment, plain and simple, a principle attributed to Buddha mostly, but you can hear it in the NT quotations where Jesus is reputed to say to go out without purse or scrip and the lilies of the valley, they toil not neither do they spin…
Let’s look at this from a cost-benefit standpoint. Is the cost of giving your wealth away, and wondering if you’ll have enough for retirement, for hard times, for worthwhile pursuits for your children eclipsed by the blessings of “detachment”?…
What are the blessings of detachment? And how is being detached better and different from being irresponsible about one’s economic situation?…My elementary study of the Buddha would say that NOT being fixated on wealth would reduce angst because one principle of Buddhism is to stop wanting things. But if you are comfortable with your current state of wealth, and wealth is not causing you angst, why venture down the road of detachment? President Eyring’s message and this Buddhist detachment idea don’t really help to address my fundamental concerns about tithing. I don’t have a problem with the general idea of voluntarily letting go of some money; it’s the specific and ridiculous amount they are currently asking for that bothers me. If my wife and I were to consistently set aside 10% of our gross income then we could have used it to pay cash for both of our cars in less than 3 years. If we can’t afford to do something like that now then how on earth are we supposed to be able afford tithing the way the Church teaches? If you ask them the answer is that we should just go ahead and hand over all this money and somehow everything will magically work out for the best.
I suppose we could theoretically cut down on some “unnecessary” expenses like eating at restaurants so much, cable, internet, and cell phone bills, etc. but why? Just so the Church can turn around and spend over 3 billion dollars on a mall and who knows how much on all these new temples? There is nothing magical about it; even if you can still manage to get by without a significant portion of the money you earn in reality giving so much away is nothing less than self-imposed and unnecessary hardship and inconvenience. Gross or even net income is absolutely not an accurate measure of what God or fate has actually given most people when they already have all these bills and debts to pay so asking for 10% of everyone’s income as if it is a perfectly reasonable expression of gratitude just doesn’t add up or make much sense.
Even if some discipline, self-control, sacrifice, unselfishness, etc. is good or worthwhile it doesn’t necessarily mean that more would be better. Personally I think the strict asceticism practiced by various monks and religious zealots made a lot more sense hundreds or thousands of years ago than it does now. Some of it looks like it was/is basically a way to bow out of the rat race and avoid some of the typical concerns people have to deal with so they can live a more peaceful or worry-free existence in comparison to other alternatives open to them. However, nowadays it seems like it is much easier to avoid or reduce some of the suffering and natural consequences of “selfish” behavior than in the past without having to go so far as joining a convent. That’s why I think the more the Church tries to push all these extreme and questionable sacrifices the more they will lose credibility and relevance world-wide and become even more of a fringe organization that is increasingly at odds with the mainstream.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:
That’s why I think the more the Church tries to push all these extreme and questionable sacrifices the more they will lose credibility and relevance world-wide and become even more of a fringe organization that is increasingly at odds with the mainstream.Our local Episcopal diocese preaches tithing. Financial support for a religious organization isn’t out of the ordinary and 10% isn’t considered by mainstream religions to be extreme or questionable. Tithing doesn’t buy you anything other than the knowledge that you’ve given in order to allow the organization to survive and to continue with it’s mission. What the church does with the money is on their heads if it’s misused. If finances are such that 10% is going to create a hardship, then don’t give 10%. Faith doesn’t mean checking your brain at the door. Sorry to be a little pointed but the whole pay money and get blessings has done more to discourage and destroy Christ like living that anything else I know of.
Tithing is the biggest barrier with investigators IMHO. SamBee wrote:Tithing is the biggest barrier with investigators IMHO.
GBSmith wrote:…Our local Episcopal diocese preaches tithing. Financial support for a religious organization isn’t out of the ordinary and 10% isn’t considered by mainstream religions to be extreme or questionable. Tithing doesn’t buy you anything other than the knowledge that you’ve given in order to allow the organization to survive and to continue with it’s mission. What the church does with the money is on their heads if it’s misused.
If finances are such that 10% is going to create a hardship, then don’t give 10%. Faith doesn’t mean checking your brain at the door.Sorry to be a little pointed but the whole pay money and get blessings has done more to discourage and destroy Christ like living that anything else I know of. That’s exactly my point; I feel like the Church basically is asking people to check their brains at the door and buy into demonstrably false levels of magical thinking and superstition because it just doesn’t add up in many cases without the assumption that divine intervention will supposedly make everything alright and lame excuses to explain all the cases where these promised blessings failed to materialize. What happens if there is no God or it turns out that God is not in the business of making sure that everyone gets all the blessings they deserve? Basically, this specific amount is way too high for most people to shrug off as charity they can still feel alright about without expecting any return on their investment.
As far as they’re concerned it doesn’t matter if a family has five or more children they need to support with only one average income; if they are faithfully paying 10% of their gross income then the Church is not going to tell them that it’s alright to pay less because taking care of their own family is more important than being a full tithe payer (1 Timothy 5:
. If any other churches are aggressively trying to collect nearly as much money from the average follower as the LDS Church does then I think they have the wrong idea too regardless of how popular or respectable they are otherwise (2 Corinthians 9:7).SamBee wrote:Tithing is the biggest barrier with investigators IMHO.
We had an elder with great numbers who left out tithing and WoW.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:That’s exactly my point; I feel like the Church basically is asking people to check their brains at the door and buy into demonstrably false levels of magical thinking and superstition …
I guess I don’t feel that way. I think some people teach that but I’ve never felt that from leaders I’ve had. It’s odd feeling like I have to defend this since I’m not much of a believer. Guess we’ll just have to disagree.
I agree that 10% of something is asked for by a lot of different Churches, but I have to agree with DA on many of his points. I also feel the wealth the Church has makes my dollars more valuable elsewhere — like trying to get a cure for Type I diabetes that my son contracted years ago, and which could risk his sight, amputations, and organ damage, and cause significant financial hardship to him that tithing funds could never compensate for in this life. I would feel MUCH better about putting the money there, or to some other cause that has the potential to improve the lives of many people and which I believe has scarcer resources than the Church. As I’ve said before, in most Wards I’ve been involved in, the programs are not very good. Not in Canada (all parts) and not in the US where I have lived. I know we don’t give money so it necessarily comes back to us, but I do believe the Church should be trying harder to make sure programs are adequately funded and services which are meant to help members are sufficiently staffed.
However, I would like to know what Tom Haws thinks too — I think he understands and buys into the detachment concept (correct me if I’m wrong Tom), and I would like to know what he thinks about my earlier question, that DA was good enough to put in quotes and bold its main idea earlier.
Roy wrote:…It is the ways this behavior might affect your heart and spirit that are the critical factors. Tithing, in this context, becomes a necessary schoolmaster to much nobler principles. And what are those principles? According to Pres. Eyring, they are:
1) Gratitude…2) Confidence/Assurance/Peace…3) Love of God and all God’s children
I understand that tithing is not a particularly popular subject. I brought it up because I appreciated the way Pres. Eyring framed the discussion. He could just have easily have listed the big three reasons for paying as 1) Obedience 2) Assurance of financial security through subtle divine intervention and 3) Fire insurance. While not repudiating those more controversial motivators, he instead chose to focus on how the principle of tithing might serve to effect a change in the heart of the individual.
Perhaps some would have liked him to go even further, but considering the source (the F.P.) and the audience (of all the Ensign magazine, this part would be the most widely proclaimed in LDS homes), I appreciate the subtle shift in emphasis away from “quid pro quo” promises and “binding the Lord” expectations.
hawkgrrrl wrote:IMO, the blessing of tithing is the blessing of detachment, plain and simple, a principle attributed to Buddha mostly, but you can hear it in the NT quotations where Jesus is reputed to say to go out without purse or scrip and the lilies of the valley, they toil not neither do they spin, but Solomon in all his glory was never arrayed like one of these. Viewing tithing as “quid pro quo” and “binding the Lord” can actually go the opposite direction of detachment for some people. They feel entitled. They literally “count their blessings,” not to rejoice, but to reconcile their accounts for the sacrifices they’ve made.
Interesting — I got a different message. Although I appreciate his attempt at intrinsic reasons for paying tithing rather than the external ones imposed on us, I guess it also emphasized that the biggest benefit tithing may end up having is that it makes the individual feel good. I wouldn’t want to disturb that in another individual, particularly if it’s working for them…however, unless paying tithing is coupled with a really strong belief that it’s absolutely necessary , I find it no longer makes me feel good — unfortunately. GBSmith wrote:DevilsAdvocate wrote:
That’s why I think the more the Church tries to push all these extreme and questionable sacrifices the more they will lose credibility and relevance world-wide and become even more of a fringe organization that is increasingly at odds with the mainstream.Our local Episcopal diocese preaches tithing. Financial support for a religious organization isn’t out of the ordinary and 10% isn’t considered by mainstream religions to be extreme or questionable. Tithing doesn’t buy you anything other than the knowledge that you’ve given in order to allow the organization to survive and to continue with it’s mission. What the church does with the money is on their heads if it’s misused. If finances are such that 10% is going to create a hardship, then don’t give 10%. Faith doesn’t mean checking your brain at the door. Sorry to be a little pointed but the whole pay money and get blessings has done more to discourage and destroy Christ like living that anything else I know of.
Other religions don’t withhold full participation if one does not pay the 10%, however. I think that is the main difference.
Quote:Other religions don’t withhold full participation if one does not pay the 10%, however.
Sure, they do – at least every one of which I am aware that stresses tithing as a principle does in one way or another. If they didn’t, they might as well not make the request in many cases. It’s just isn’t as obvious to “outsiders” as temple attendance is for us.
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