A Letter to Strict Tithe Payers

When you accept a mortgage loan, utility service, or other obligation, you are bound by God to meet your obligation. It is a contract. To not live up to the contract is dishonest. If you want a service or asset, you must pay for it.

If you choose to donate ten percent to your church when you cannot meet your contractual obligations, the result is deliberate dishonesty, because you deliberately choose to donate rather than live up to your contractual promise. When you deliberately break a promise, that is sin! To say otherwise is to say that God allows sin in order to support his church operations. So, in essence, you are saying it is okay to break a legal contract in order to make a voluntary payment. You are defaulting on your word, so your word means nothing.

Furthermore, when you support your church, you are supporting its operations and its membership. When you do so at the expense of your wife and child—whom god has obligated you to support and protect are you really doing what God wants? Does he rather you support the church budget or those you have promised to feed and protect? If church members could no longer afford tithing, would the church cease to exist? No! The church would meet in homes, and members would lovingly give to each other of their excess. Tithing would be unnecessary. So, this bears the question: Why is the church more important than your family?

You say that when you are tithing you are giving to God. Isn't giving to your family giving to God? Does God appreciate it more when you support your church operations than your family? Think about it this way: Would God rather you provide shelter and food for your family, or pay the expenses of day to day operations of an organization? Food or an organizational budget? Cutting operations expense does no cause physical or emotional harm. Cutting food and/or shelter can have dire consequences. If you can honestly say church operations are more important than shelter and food for your family, you are choosing legalism and sin over love. You are putting your family second and church expenses first! God put people first. That's why he overturned the tables in the temple. The church was making a killing selling at the expense of the church. It was unnecessary for the church to make more money, as they could easily have made do with a smaller budget. People come first.

When tithing was commanded in the Bible, it was not to support church expenses. Tithing was used to support its people and make life better for the less fortunate. In those days, the "church" did not have electricity bills & office expenses. When a church has enough documented wealth to equal a Fortune 500 company (like the LDS church), tithing of its poorer membership is equivalent to bankers charging exorbitant interest. Like the doves being sold on the tables overturned by Jesus.

I was a Christian for many years, and I understand what tithing is. I also understand that you do not tithe at the expense of your own family! Tithing was not intended to be a legalistic decree (such a thing would be contrary to a loving God). It was intended to protect the poor and helpless who would be otherwise taken advantage of. Tithing originally came out of one's excess, not one's wages. Tithing was ordained as the top ten percent of one's profit. Profit, by definition, is the amount of income which exceeds your expenses. Wages are not profit, they are an exchange of services—your time and skill in exchange for something you yourself need (in this case, money). If you can't shelter your family, there is no profit.

You cannot love you church expenses more than you love your family. That is not God's way. When Jesus talks about hating one's own family, this is what he meant. If you choose to make a voluntary donation in lieu of meeting contractual (legal) obligations or providing for your family, is nothing less than sin. To feel otherwise is to put ideology ahead of love.