TITHES AND OFFERINGS: WHY?

This is a companion post to another one concerned with the when and where to giving, and it gets down more to the heart of the matter. Since the teachings in the New Testament seem concentrate on that issue than the Old Testament does, let us concentrate on NT examples as we begin discussing the overarching question of why we give in the first place.

Assessment

At least one of the forms of support for the Jewish temple was the assessed Temple Tax (see Exodus 30:11-17 and Nehemiah 10:32-33). It amounted to about one day's wage annually. Matthew 17:24-27 may refer to this tax, and T.E. Schmidt feels that this passage may indicate that the tax was no longer compulsory by Jesus' time, at least for the Christians.

One friend of mine in school said that his family no longer attended church ever since it began a building campaign. Apparently, one evening a church official called on his family at home and explained to my friend's dad that a group had gotten together and estimated what his annual income was. Based on that estimate, the man handed the father an assessment for his expected share of the costs.

Following an OT model for giving may have appeared to be “biblical” to that particular church, but it is in stark contrast to the situation of the early church in regard to special offerings described Acts 5. See Peter's comment to Ananias in v. 4 regarding the sale of his extra land to donate to the early church group: “While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal?”

It is rather hard to be the sort of cheerful giver that God loves when we are forced into giving.

While most church groups today would not go as far as to demand a certain amount of money from their parishioners, it is often made crystal clear to the congregation that tithes and offerings are part of the requirements for all believers if they wish to go to heaven. The congregations in which my wife and I were raised were by no means the most legalistic ones around at the time, and yet practically every week it was hammered into us from the pulpit that we had to tithe, attend all church services, read our Bibles, and invite others to church if we were to call ourselves Christians.

Duty

This leads us to another common motive for giving. In NT times, the most scrupulous of the Jews at the time were the Pharisees, and yet it would be very hard to characterize them as loving or joyful in any way from the biblical evidence. They went so far as to tithe the herbs they grew in their gardens, but it appears that they were acting strictly out of duty. In Matthew 23:23, Jesus does not counsel them to give up this practice, but instead he bawls them out for doing it while continuing to ignore the weightier matters of justice and mercy. Apparently, they were following in the exact footsteps of their ancestors with whom, we are told in Micah 6:6-8, God was not pleased. That was because they did give their offerings, but at the same time had neglected justice and kindness – the very things that God really required of them.

Guilt

So what other reasons inspire people to give if there is no compulsion present and they can't be motivated by a sense of duty? Even in the secular world, guilt can be seen as a very powerful force. Just look at any plea on television on behalf of a pet shelter or starving orphans in the world. These appeals tug at one's heartstrings while filling us with a sense of guilt if we do not respond. And the Christian world is by no means exempt from this sort of powerful approach to our pocket books. We are well aware of popular TV evangelists and megachurch pastors who rake in money with the pretext that their valuable ministries desperately need the cash so that they can continue doing the Lord's work. Too often, the sad truth of where the money actually went sometimes leaks out and brings great damage to the cause of Christ instead.

But just to illustrate that this same sort of appeal can operate on a much smaller scale, I will tell the story of the worst sermon I have every experienced. I heard it when I visited a very small church with my future wife before we were married. She knew the congregation very well, and they could probably be characterized as very sincere and loving Christians drawn mainly from the blue collar working class.

Every year, they would have as a guest speaker the pastor of another church who also ran his own Christian “college” on his church grounds.

His annual fund raising appeal consisting of brow-beating the congregation into submission by comparing their lack of dedication to Christ to his own life of sacrificial service. At one point he told us that we all needed to quit our jobs and take up full-time ministry. He then said (and I remember it very clearly), “But you will say to me, 'Preacher, if we all did that, who would do all the other work in the world.' I tell you, 'None of you has the guts to do what I do!'”

After taking up what was, I am sure, a sacrificial offering for his ministry, he drove away in a new Cadillac worth easily twice what any other car in the church parking lot was worth.

Hope of Gain

Another insidious motive for giving is typified today by the popular churches who teach the Prosperity Gospel. A favorite proof text for these Christians is Malachi 3:10 – “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.” Preachers thus tell their congregations that the more they give to the church, the more money and possessions God will bless them with.

One quick rejoinder to this teaching is found in Mark 10:29-30 when the disciples ask what they are going to get in return for following Jesus. He replies that in this life they will get a hundred-fold return in family, houses, and fields. And in addition they will get eternal life in the time to come. On the surface, this would certainly appear to be another Prosperity Gospel proof text. That is, except for a few points left out of that rather heretical teaching.

For one thing, Marcus points out the obvious fact that “there is a striking contrast between the plethora of benefits promised for 'this time' and the single reward guaranteed for the coming age, which implies that the latter, eternal life, is more valuable than all the advantages of the present age.” Also notably missing from the prosperity message are two element found in the NT text: (1) One of the promises for this age is actually persecution and (2) the hundred-fold blessings in this age are clearly referring to what we have at our disposal through being part of a sharing and caring Christian community. They have nothing to do with any economic blessings we can expect to get to spend on our personal desires.

As a footnote to this point, we more orthodox evangelical Christians should not get on our high horses and criticize the “name it, claim it” crowd too much without first considering that we often carry out our acts of giving with the sole purpose of buying a place in heaven so that the more we give, the bigger our mansion there will be. My personal feeling is that this is the reason we are given so little detail regarding life in the afterlife; if we knew more, it would all too likely bring out the wrong motives in us. By contrast, Tammy Faye Bakker once said on her TV show that she was getting so many blessings from living the Christian life, she would continue doing it even if it weren't true. What a reason for being a Christian!

Acclaim by Others

Jesus directly tackles this motive for giving in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:2-4) . He contrasts the hypocrites who make a great show of their giving (“They already have their reward.”) with the appropriate action, expressed hyperbolically, of not letting your left hand what your right hand is doing. Of course, even this injunction can be taken too far to the point of not even wanting to give a check or money in an offering envelope because the church treasurer will find out how much you are giving. But I certainly think it might rightly discourage the practice in some churches of having plaques around the building indicating who donated which pew, communion table, stained glass window, etc.

The practice of korban is another example of a practice used by some of the religious leaders in Jesus' day. They apparently made a great show of how much they were giving to the temple even though some of it should have been earmarked for the more private support of their own elderly parents. (Mark 7:9-13) Paul calls believers such as that “worse than infidels.” (I Timothy 5:8)

Faith

You may be surprised to see this as listed as one of the inadequate motives for giving, so let me explain myself. What I am specifically addressing is the common practice of “faith-promise” giving. The idea seems to be a good one: commit yourself to give to God a set amount of money which may seem to be a stretch for your current budget. Strike out in faith and start giving that extra amount. By doing so, you will find God blessing you in surprisingly unexpected ways with enough money to meet your commitment to Him.

Notice that this is not exactly the same as the Prosperity Gospel in that your goal is not to accrue more for yourself, but to devote all this extra money to God instead. It appears to be a much more noble goal, but there is one pitfall. If for some reason you do not find yourself blessed with these additional resources, you are then placed in the inevitable position of having basically made a vow to God which you cannot fulfill. Putting yourself in that position is cautioned strongly against in both the OT and NT. The other pitfall is that you may give the promised money anyway and thereby get in over your head financially so that you find yourself asking the church to bail you out. Keep in mind that the usual pattern of giving described in the Bible is to give of what God has already blessed you with, not what you hope He will bless you with in the future.

This last point leads logically into the conclusion. If all of the above are inadequate reasons for giving our resources to God, what are the only acceptable motives? Obviously, it is to give it back to Him in grateful thanks for the many blessings He has given us and in a spirit of love toward those who will benefit from these tithes and offerings as they are used to continue the teaching of the word to believers as well as spreading the word to others.