Thursday, March 15, 2007

10% Tithing?

The chart deals more with the financial troubles the catholic church is running into, but I found one of the charts in the amalgamation particularly interesting (highlighted)

I thought it said in the bible that you should give 10%? I guess religious folk pick and choose which rules to follow.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not really wanting to get into an argument, let me note that some of us do. One might also argue that those who claim to be Christian may not actually be so. I (we) have no real way of knowing, ultimately. We can get clues from how the person lives his life, but we will never really know for sure. There are a lot of people who claim to be Christian because their parents are, or they go to church at Easter and Christmas, or that they were born in America (I'm not kidding). At any rate, that particular demographic is a bit more complex than you seem willing to accept. :)

Anonymous said...

Hmmm... looks like about one in four Mormons aren't paying their tithing, vs nine out of ten Catholics who don't.

We should put together a hypocrisy index in which we could formally control for a wide range of variables so that we could more accurately judge our neighbors.

I can see it already... "Chart 3b clearly shows that I am 28% holier than thou." :)

Anonymous said...

Actually - it's often closer to the fact that 10% of the congregation give 10% and the rest give whatever coins are in their pocket..

Captain Capitalism said...

DMK - HAR!!!

Anon 1 - No, I agree with you. I know some good, true christians, unfortunately I think the true participants in the religion are outnumbered LITERALLY 7 to 1.

Ryan - You know they already do that.


Anon 2 - You are correct.

Anonymous said...

"Where does it say 10%?"

"Tithe" means "tenth" in Old English. Supporting the poor is a separate obligation than supporting the church. Give 10% to the church, and whatever you can spare to the poor. Check Genesis 28:22 and Numbers 18:26. In Matthew 23:23, Jesus says the Pharisees did well to pay their tithes, but their failure to apply good judgement, mercy, and faith are more serious matters.

"Ryan - You know they already do that."

I haven't seen an index. It seems like more of an ad hoc thing, prone to all sorts of inaccuracies due to the poor statistical methods involved and a general lack of data. I mean, if people are going to screw themselves over wallowing in their own self-righteousness, they might as well do a good job of it, right?

If people are going to get serious about establishing hierarchies to ostracize those who are not as good as them, they'll need better methods than just taking a wild guess at what their neighbors make and then guessing at what their contribution was. With such primitive methods, they might accidentally look down on someone who was actually doing their part, or even worse they might accept somebody who actually wasn't good enough, God forbid. Er.... crap. I'm going to stop now before the lightning bolt. :)

Anonymous said...

The 10% figure appears exclusively in the Old Testament and is often treated as no longer in effect (same as the laws against the eating of pork and the laws in favor of the stoning of sinners). 10% is still considered a good target for giving, but modern Christian doctrine on giving is closer to what DMK said.

Is it true that your dad was a pastor, or did you just put that in your profile cause you liked the song?

-Andrew L

Anonymous said...

I love how you just say, that the bible says that you should give 10%. um, yeah, sure it does, it also says a lot of other stuff that you don't do. so make your point a little more clearer. http://churchtithesandofferings.com

Anonymous said...

When I was in college, I had a job where about 25% of my coworkers wanted to become preachers or do some sort of ministry, and I always wondered why (especially since many of them did not seem particularly interested in following any religious laws.) This explains it all. Being a lay chuch worker earns you $45000 a year, working at a plasma center (full time) earns you $18,000!

Junam

Anonymous said...

It really depends on what sort of church you work for. Apparently the Catholics pay their lay ministers quite a lot. If you set up independent shop in the South someplace you can keep whatever people give you, so it's mostly a matter of how good your sales pitch is. I've done some proselyting in Florida and Alabama, and noticed that a lot of those little churches in poor neighborhoods had a Lexus in the parking lot. Priestcraft is a pretty lucrative profession if you want to get into it. Then there's the Mormons, who have an entirely lay clergy and none of them get paid a dime.