For many Christians, the subject of money is taboo in church. Many don’t want any advice from the church about how to spend their money. They don’t want to hear requests for money, either.
That’s odd, because Jesus apparently spoke often about money, and he didn’t mince any words about how it should be used. The Old Testament prophets did the same. In fact, use of money is one of the subjects addressed most often in the Bible.
Much of what the Bible says about money deals with giving to the poor rather than using it for living luxuriously ourselves. Especially in the Old Testament, however, we also read about giving to God, which at that time was apparently understood as giving to the temple through its priests. Some of those required gifts were for the poor, but some were for the support of the temple and the people who operated and maintained it. Presumably, today’s equivalent of that would be giving to the church. In our culture, however, seeing how best to give to the poor and to the church can be hard.
Reconsidering our giving
Events in the local church that my husband and I belonged to, and in our Annual Conference (regional division of the United Methodist Church), had made us feel the need to rethink some of our previous decisions about giving to each of those, and to make some changes in our commitments to them. I’m therefore doing some of my thinking here by writing, in the hope that it will help me clarify my thoughts about giving money and maybe at the same time help some readers clarify theirs.
How much? and how?
The question of giving money to God has two main parts: first, how much of one’s income to give, and second, how to give it. In church, the answer we usually hear to the first part is that every Christian should tithe—give a tenth of his or her income. Advocates of tithing point out spiritual benefits that they believe it brings, and they cite scriptures in which they believe God commands us to tithe.
A command from God?
I can’t deny the spiritual benefits these Christians report experiencing. However, because of what is known about the Bible’s origins and the nature of documents considered sacred by religious groups, I doubt that the few scriptures about tithing are God’s timeless commands.
It seems to me that the Bible’s commands about tithing, like those about several other subjects, apply only to the settings in which they arose. They seem to be merely human impressions, and not necessarily correct impressions, of what God requires, based mainly on customs of earlier times. However, I know that many other Christians have a different view of the authority of scripture, so for considering the subject of giving money to God, let’s move on instead of getting stuck there.
Read more on this subject here.Barbara continues her article by addressing topics such as, "Give it all to the local church or other worthwhile causes?" "What qualifies as giving money to God?" and "Obey God or our “high priests”?"
