I stole from a Mormon.
Well actually from a number of them. But it was only an idea. And it is to share, with you, today.
It appears that, in addition to refraining from caffeine and from having ugly children (Don’t Mormon kids seem so beautiful on tv?), Mormons are urged to let the burden of the disadvantaged fall on them in their monthly economic practices. Lovely Latter Day Saints are urged to forego two meals a month and to use the money that would ordinarily have been invested in Papa John’s, Red Lobster or organic grass-fed beef to put in a fund at their local church for use for the poor.
This system of burden sharing and occasional meal abstinence apparently generates some $50,000 a year for even smaller congregations to use for offsetting the deficits of the economically strapped in their midst...this of course, I assume, in addition to the tithe that is enjoined upon the devout for the maintenance of the church’s life.
“Among 3600 congregations in Utah alone, this system apparently generates some $200 million annually, about a fifth of what Utah’s state government spends on welfare and almost as much as it spends on health care” (You can read Ross Douthat’s take on it here if you are interested.).
And of course, its caloric reductions tend to make Mormons more svelte than average southern religionists, present company included!
I have no other commendations or comments to make about Mormonism or its proponents at the moment. My concern is to highlight an admirable practice that coincides so seamlessly with our protestant theology.
Stretching our Adoration Muscles
When our bone-weary and manna-sick forebears were standing on the threshold of a perpetual life buffet in the land of promise called Canaan, Moses, as heaven’s spokesman, laid out a communal economic practice for everyone to carefully pitch-in on.
These former divine welfare recipients who were about to be working in corner offices in high-rise buildings with weekend homes in the mountains were urged to tithe.
“Be sure to tithe,” they are told (cf. Deuteronomy 14:22).
Is this Yahweh’s income redistribution program? A temple tax? A way of funding operations? Well, sure, perhaps, in a way. But that is not the rationale that slips first from Moses’s mouth.
Instead he proposes that this embedded economic practice of handing over the first and best 10th of the year’s harvest is for the purpose of growing their capacity to marvel at God. Specifically, they are encouraged, and we eavesdrop to hear, to tithe and to eat the tithe in a celebratory worship meal in God’s presence,
“so that you may learn to revere the LORD your God always (cf. Deuteronomy 14:23).”
Well there’s a reason for tithing that doesn’t always knock around in our noggins.
And it begs a question for us:
Do our current giving habits tend to produce jaw-dropping awe at God? If not, maybe we aren’t doing it right.
Jesus Yells at Tithers
It also helps us to understand why on the solitary street in the neighborhood of the New Testament where anything like a clear prescription for us to tithe is mentioned, it is heard in the middle of a rant. Jesus is yelling at tithers.
Let that one sink in for 30 seconds.
The only place where we can look specifically in the New Testament for some sort of explicit teaching from Jesus about tithing and whether we should practice it as his followers, is in the middle of a rather uncomfortable “fanger-waggin” sermonette where the Savior is taking some scrupulous tithers out to the woodshed with a divine switch. And once again, in typical Bible-confusing ways, he yells at tithers BUT seems to like the idea of tithing.
“You sniveling swindlers. You walking Lipitor commercials. You decimal-minding fakes,” Jesus rails, “You think you’re so sterling in obedience, because you give a tithe off of grandma’s birthday gifts, income tax returns, and even the herbs in your garden. But you don’t understand what tithing is all about. You think you’re honoring God, but you’re really paying him off to get him out of your hair. Tithing was meant to move you into deeper connection with God and his concerns on the earth. It was instituted to lead you by the hand to care for those without a safety net, by the heart to thinking of the thriving of others as much as you think about your own. It was meant to cause an elevation of your esteem and allegiance to God. But instead, it has become your tactic for getting God off your back. It’s become your license to say, “I already gave at the office, leave me alone God. Let me live my life now.” (Cf. Matthew 23:23-25 for Jesus’ impolite discourse with tithers)
This episode should make those of us who regularly tithe, look up from whatever we are doing to pay attention. Not to stop tithing, but to make sure this economic exercise is not having the opposite effect that it is meant to. Such attention giving can lead us back to Moses’ directive.
Vow-Swapping to Belong to One Another
Is your giving causing you to revere God? To pause and ponder and to be moved by his warmth and wonder in your daily life?
And if you don’t give a nickel, it should also cause a close listen. Why not?
If giving is meant to increase my reverence, my delight, and the awe in which God fills my eyes, then what hope do I have of growing in this central area, if I don’t participate in the practice given for it?
The reverence motive means that giving this tenth to the Lord re-calibrates us, like what happens in a wedding ceremony.
I love vow-swapping in weddings. When I officiate one, I always say, “With these oaths you are declaring your intention to live like God, by oath, not circumstance, by promise, and not emotion.” Then, when it comes time to wear the symbol of the other’s promise, I look at the nervous and adoring husband and say, using words from the Book of Common Prayer, “Please place this ring on your bride’s hand and repeat after me. I, Johnny, give you this ring as a symbol of my vow and with all that I am and all that I have, I honor you, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
And after the bride does the same, both husband and wife, are wearing the symbol of their beloved’s promise on their hand, a symbol that says, “Another belongs to me and I belong to Another.” What a tremendous consolation on a lonely and sorrowful planet!
God institutes this economic practice of tithing, meant to grow adoration and reverence, in a similar vein. We hand over a check and say, “I give you this check, as a symbol of myself and with all that I am and all that I have, I honor YOU!”
The tithe is Miracle Grow when sprinkled on the heart of a growing worshipper of Christ. Because this practice of giving, itself, grants us pause to consider that we also belong to Another and Another to us. We have received vows from and offer ourselves to the One who has given us the check we have written, the income that underwrote it, the job that generated it, the abilities that could do the job, the environment in which to labor, and on and on.
We belong to Jesus. When we give to Jesus, we get to offer ourselves to him as an act of devotion.
For God’s Ongoing Work on the Earth
And of course, it isn’t just for us. The practical reason, goes back to the Mormon discussion above. Tithing permits an embassy of Jesus, (aka, a church) to ensure that the ongoing work of God on this planet continues to be carried out and amply funded. Worship and places to do it, teaching and folks to teach, leadership and folks to give themselves to full-time leading, spreading God’s good news throughout the world, caring for the orphan, the widow, the poor...an environment where folks are growing in affection for God and neighbor...all these have been guaranteed by God in ongoing, ordinary ways by telling his people to offer themselves to him by setting aside 10% of their income.
And it will be a burden of course, to do this, or at least a small one. Or it should be. But a happy burden. Not like the common enslaving burden of being overcommitted to a life one cannot afford. It’s a privileged and liberating burden, where we shoulder the troubles of others with them and simultaneously receive the giddy relief of getting to die to our tyrannical, demanding, insatiable selves for the sake of helping others. This causes steep gains in our gladness in and reverence for our Redeemer.
What do you think?
If you don’t think you can give, consider some things you could give up to free up funds for growing your own reverence and helping God’s ongoing work of bringing good news in word and deed to the world. The Mormon idea is suggestive. Eat out less. Buy fewer shoes. Wait on getting a new car. Get a smaller house. Make do with your inelegant kitchen. Extend the middle finger to credit card dependence. You get the idea. Then give, as a symbol of self-offering, a token of what God has entrusted to you. And keep doing it.
Then see, if perhaps, just perhaps, you find that Jesus might be right, that it might actually be “more blessed to give than to receive.” Better to give than to get. And don’t worry, as reverence blooms, and the disadvantaged receive a share of our advantages, of course, God’ll see to it that you also get precisely what you need, and because he can’t help himself, probably much more than that.
* I am indebted to my professor and friend Reggie Kidd for many helpful ideas that make their way into these thoughts. He has an excellent chapter in a book called, https://www.amazon.com/Perspectives-Tithing-David-A-Croteau/dp/0805449779.
-----
Eric Youngblood is the senior pastor at Rock Creek Fellowship (PCA) on Lookout Mountain. Please feel free to contact him at eric@rockcreekfellowship.org or follow him on Twitter @GEricYoungblood.