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In one of the articles on this site, I think it mentions that how you define 10% of your increase is ‘up to you”? In spite of of many years in the church, I’ve always just paid on gross. There are times when I wonder if I’m even getting any blessings for it because sometimes I sort of regret paying it. For example, when I think about the months I have to work just to pay my tithing commitment. Or when I start losign motivation to pay down real estate debts because I’m not making progress fast enough, and tithing is yet another commitment that stands in the way. Do we have any firm doctrine or statements as to what a full tithe represents? The How to Stay in the Church article suggests it’s just
“up to you”, but I’m not so sure.
There are so many ways to interpret it. Gross, Net, savings after non-discretionary expenses are paid, etcetera. You can look at it from an accounting standpoint — even the government makes you pay your share on your savings after expenses necessary to earn the gross revenue are paid. Companies “increase” is described as their net income after all taxes have been paid — the growth in their retained earnings represents their true increase, not in their sales (which is income/salary/wages from a individual’s financial viewpoint).
Hopefully I’m not just inviting discussion on old chestnuts here. But it’s something I’ve been wondering about recently.
The complete spiritual practice is, of course, to let go of everything. Tithing in any form is just a shadow. Interpreting it in a personally generous way is probably a good thing. On the other hand (the legalistic one), I think tithing would have been more meaningful and sociologically interesting if “one tenth of all their interest annually” had been interpreted to mean an annual divestment of 1/10 of gross assets (so much for treasures on earth!). Ah, the quirks of tradition; “interest” ended up meaning to us “income” (an
extremelyspecialized meaning!). Tom, What would an annual divestment of 110 of gross assets look like? One tenth of your home? One tenth of your furniture? One tenth of your boat?
Curious
There is no definition published by the Church – and local leaders have explicit instruction not to define it for members. Personally, I believe that is for two reasons:
1) It is seen as a compromise from the ideal in the first place;
2) There are other FAR more serious commitments that are desired – and getting legalistic about tithing would defeat totally the spirit of asking for those commitments.
Fwiw, I personally pay on my net income, since that’s the only money I ever see – that truly is “mine” in any real sense.
I’ve done that all my life, and it didn’t come from my parents teaching it to me. Honestly, I have no idea if they paid on their net or gross. I simply saw it the way I do from the moment I first considered it seriously. I have NO problem with someone else paying on their gross, and I’m NOT saying my own view is doctrine or right or truth or anything else other than what I believe personally.
In this instance, I believe strongly that the Church handles it properly – teach the principle and let the members govern themselves.
My husband and I are currently in negotiations as to how to approach tithing. I have all sorts of ideas on how to approach it. I’m not sure what would be best for our family. My husband feels that we usually get every penny we pay in tithing back in our tax return so it is worthwhile paying 10% of our net income (income after government deductions). I’m wondering if we can get ourselves out of debt if we pay on our increase, meaning deducting the cost of living ie mortgage, food, insurances etc from our net income and then paying 10%. Whatever we decide, I want it to feel right to us and for us to be very conscious of the decision, making sure we don’t “forget” to pay tithing every other month or so. I believe in the principle of tithing but I’m not sure how exactly to carry it out. SD – I think it is important that one remembers that one of the most important disclaimers in the first section of the article, and this site in general is this , Quote:If you are completely content with your membership in the LDS Church, or if you have left the church and feel no desire to return — this essay is not for you.
I think it is important to remember that most of the people here are currently going through a crisis of faith or have gone through it. Most of the folks here are struggling through Fowler stage 4 and some perhaps are getting comfortable in stage 5. I say this only to remind you that if the folks here, myself included, were happy with the status quo of the church – we wouldn’t be here. Also – if we had no desire to remain in the church, we wouldn’t be here either. Therefore, the “SMA” (Standard Mormon Answers) that one hears on Sunday during Sunday School and priesthood meetings/relief society meetings –
don’t really apply.You’re right – perhaps the language in the article could be “offensive” to the TBM type members, perhaps even be considered “apostate” to some, but one needs to remember what the site is all about — helping people stay in the church, after going through a crisis of faith —- in the word of Old-Timer, “not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” It someone has lost their testimony of tithing – is it better to just leave and quit the church altogether, or continue to stay LDS and maybe forget about the tithing SMA and adapt a different belief when it comes to tithing that is more fitting to one’s personal spiritual growth?
Here is the way I view tithing, fwiw —- for 30 years I paid tithing on my gross income. I now pay tithing to the church on a much smaller scale, and give THOUSANDS of dollars to my local community groups and charities, including some of the local christian youth groups. (I even pay some of my tithing money to help support this site
I have very recently changed my views on tithing, as I posted last week sometime. I went from paying on gross to paying on net – and I actually feel really fantastic and relieved about it. Before, my motivation was to prove to … God, I suppose, that I was willing to sacrifice as much as I could to prove my devotion. All that was doing was stressing me out. Now, I pay on net and plan to divest that extra into other good things. It’s awesome. The other posters are correct – it’s up to you. Only you can know the answer to the question ‘Do you pay a full tithe?’
canadiangirl wrote:
What would an annual divestment of 110 of gross assets look like? One tenth of your home? One tenth of your furniture? One tenth of your boat?I guess so. “Sell 1/10th of what you have and give to the poor or the church” starts to sound almost like 1/10th of the gospel of Jesus.
😆 Seriously though, I guess you would have to either a) give liquid assets or b) decide what to sell or what to downsize. In practice, I imagine folks would save up enough annually to be able to keep their beloved stuff after paying annual tithing.
For those of you (like me) not much up on financial matters – http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_gross_and_net “Gross is the profit from the transaction without deduction. Net is the profit from the transaction after deducting cost of goods and cost of the sale (manpower, taxes, rent, etc.)”
Okay, so moving on, I definitely agree that “net” is the way to go here, so long as the “net” doesn’t include expenditure on a lot of luxury items, e.g. sports car, TV, sound system, expensive restaurants etc. Net should include your electricity, gas/heating, travel and food expenses, and telephone bill (if used reasonably)
I admit I have reservations about how the money might be used, but I suppose at least it’s not going into weaponry like much of the money we pay our governments.
Quote:Here is the way I view tithing, fwiw —- for 30 years I paid tithing on my gross income. I now pay tithing to the church on a much smaller scale, and give THOUSANDS of dollars to my local community groups and charities, including some of the local christian youth groups. (I even pay some of my tithing money to help support this site ) And I tell you – I feel REALLY REALLY good about it.
Don’t quote me on this, but that counts as tithing IMHO. Giving to the local homeless shelter (as opposed to certain sillier charities) or cancer research is a good and Godly thing to do.
Some charities do waste money, but others make our communities better, and we should support that.
One thing that seemed wrong to me about tithing was the position it put some people in, in our Ward. They would come to us with financial needs, sometimes due to bad decisions they made, or just bad luck, and our Bishop was VERY cautious about how the funds were used. I agree that they should be disbursed cautiously (I’m talking about fast offering funds to people with welfare needs). But I saw people who paid tithing all their life in dire straights due tono fault of their own, and coming to the Church for help. Our advice was for them to downsize, reduce their expenses in ways that hurt their already low-income lifestyle (like cut their cable, or Internet), move into a smaller place, etcetera — things that really hurt people who were already suffering and didn’t have much to begin with. In paying tithing, they actually decreased their ability to be self-reliant during these hard times — much of it went to the Church, on whom they were then having to convince to help them through tough circumstances. If they defined tithing as a lesser amount, perhaps on the amount saved after non-discretionary expenses, and were responsible enough to save the difference, they would have money for a rainy day. I hate to be in a position when I can’t fund my own necessities and have to go to the Church, and I think of that when I write these large tithing checks.
The other thing bothering me is how the average Ward in an area I lived in, where the financial statements are public on a ward by ward basis, brings in $200,000 a year in donations. However, only about $5000 of that goes back to the Ward budget. And, as a leader, I was trying to get results through mailing letters to people who wouldn’t see us, generating valuable forwarding addresses so records could be moved into the proper ward — giving people messages that were the only spiritual contact they had from the church. To the tune of several hundred a year on top of my tithing and fast offerings. Our local leaders would not authorize this amount out of our Ward budget, in spite of the benefits they admitted from this initiative. So, to continue the initiative, I had to fund it out of my own pocket. Or, cancel the mailing list program altogether and then face the wrath of the stake for so many people not home taught (I counted letters in my home teaching stats as a priesthood leader).
It seemed as though effort to reach out to less-actives, or make programs good were only important if they didn’t cost money.
With the sacrifice that tithing entails, it bothers me that more doesn’t go back to make programs good, and to fund valuable efforts like a mailing list. It also bothers me how some of these families I ran into on a welfare basis paid all their lives, but had to go through downsizing and give up less expensive comforts of life when they eventually came to the Church for help……and only to save piddly amounts like $40 a month, or mayb $150 a month in rent.
And I’m not convinced the Church actually needs the money. That’s one reason they won’t open the books, I think — if the members saw just how awash in cash the Church is, they would start questioning whether all this sacrifice is really necessary.
These have been my concerns for some time. Perhaps I just lack faith, but I’ve been studying finance lately in school, and when I saw that companies define their increase as “increase in retained earnings” (ie savings), it struck me that THIS is a reasonable definition of “increase”. It struck me that the same principle really fits tithing very well. My increase is the amount I have left over after I pay my essential expenses.
I broached the subject with my wife, but she refuses since we make decisions about how to use the income I generate together. So, now I have angst.
SilentDawning wrote:I broached the subject with my wife, but she refuses since we make decisions about how to use the income I generate together. So, now I have angst.
Pay what you think is right and good for you and be happy with it. I do not think God is keeping a ledger. I did some research on this, and there was a first presdiency letter in 1970 indicating the following: The General Handbook of Instructions quotes from a March 19, 1970 letter from the First Presidency which sets forth a definition of what is tithed. Here is a portion of the General Handbook of Instructions from that section: “The simplest statement we know of is the statement of the Lord himself, namely, that the members of the Church should pay one-tenth of all their interest annually,’ which is understood to mean income. No one is justified in making any other statement than this.” (First Presidency letter, 19 Mar. 1970; see also D&C 119:4). Because the General Handbook of Instructions quotes the 1970 letter from the First Presidency, the 1970 letter remains the official written policy on tithing. [I’m just not sure if this is a current wording of the handbook].
I think conventional interpretation is that it’s 10% of gross or net income. But I feel a case can be made for one’s savings after basic necessities have been paid for. That’s what I feel good about — even for a temple recommend interview.
That’s what I think. And as far as my wife goes; I think she is free to pay tithing as she sees fit on her own income, and I will do it as I see fit on my own income….
Quote:And I’m not convinced the Church actually needs the money. That’s one reason they won’t open the books, I think — if the members saw just how awash in cash the Church is, they would start questioning whether all this sacrifice is really necessary.
There has been a lot of controversy over this, for what it’s worth, I believe that the church in the UK has to publish its expenses. I don’t know where these can be got hold of online.
It’s said that the church is a massive landowner, not just of church land, but of farmland and businesses. The same could be said of many other churches, but it does make me wonder where all this money is going.
If you think about it, we do pay for a lot of things. We pay a lot just to get into temple, in fast offerings, to go on missions, and for temple clothing.
SamBee wrote:Quote:And I’m not convinced the Church actually needs the money. That’s one reason they won’t open the books, I think — if the members saw just how awash in cash the Church is, they would start questioning whether all this sacrifice is really necessary.
There has been a lot of controversy over this, for what it’s worth, I believe that the church in the UK has to publish its expenses. I don’t know where these can be got hold of online…It’s said that the church is a massive landowner, not just of church land, but of farmland and businesses. The same could be said of many other churches, but it does make me wonder where all this money is going…
There was an article about this in Time magazine in the late 90s. The cover has a picture of the Salt Lake Temple and the title “Mormons, Inc.” It talks about some of the investments and businesses the Church spends some of this money on. Basically, it looks like they have a very large surplus of extra cash and were raking in an estimated 5.9 billion dollars per year at the time of this article. I’m not so sure this is the best kind of publicity for a church nowadays, to be looked at almost as a profit-oriented corporation.
When Lorenzo Snow originally started to put a lot more emphasis on this Biblical commandment the Church really was in debt and hurting for money. Of course, the problem with trying to revoke it now is that people who have been faithfully paying tithing all these years would wonder what purpose it served and why they were asked to pay this much before if it wasn’t really necessary all along. I guess leaders also assume that if it was good enough for them to sacrifice so much for the Church then it is alright for the next generation to sacrifice as well.
For me Tithing is really the main reason I still haven’t been married in the temple and haven’t had a recommend for over 10 years. I’m still debating whether to go ahead and pay it at least long enough to get a recommend just to try to make my wife happy because even though we’ve been inactive much of the time she still thinks the ultimate goal is to eventually get married in the temple. However, I would never pay 10% of gross income. As far as I’m concerned wages I’ll never be able to use might as well be imaginary and I don’t see any good reason to thank God for all the taxes I have to pay.
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