Will a Man Rob God? 

Will a Man Rob God?

Voluntary tithing is popular in evangelical churches. Tithing goes back to the patriarchs:

Everything belongs to God: "The earth is the LORD’S and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it..." (Psalm 24:1). He is the Owner, we are the tenants. Those who give to the Lord's work are only giving back what He has given them. Hearing that "God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7), believers look for a benchmark. What level of giving does God consider 'cheerful' and what 'miserly'? Hearing that Abraham, God's friend, used the benchmark of a tenth, many find this to be a convenient, and for most people a readily attainable, standard.

This type of tithing is a voluntary covenant between God and the believer. Jacob, a sharp bargainer, even made his compliance with the covenant's terms conditional upon God's prior compliance:

It is a free undertaking of the believer, not a command of God. The sphere covered by this tithing is "all," "everything." This model of tithing will always be popular, so long as believers seek to emulate those whom God commended. For the great majority of those who live in this still-wealthy nation, giving one-tenth to God's work leaves them with more than enough to live on. But the minority for whom this is not so rarely choose to tithe, when the decision is left to them.

Taking it to the next level, some 'Oneness' Pentecostals and others like the Latter-Day Saints make payment and reporting of 10% of one's income to the church mandatory. Former members even report having been disfellowshipped for failing to document payment of tithes. Can this practice be substantiated from the Bible? Enter the law-giver Moses, who, it is hoped, will provide the enforcement muscle to make even the unwilling impoverished minority pay tithes.

Moses' law includes three tithing commands which differ so widely in circumstance and intended recipient as to elicit two historic interpretations: either these are three distinct tithes totalling not ten percent but 23-1/3% of agricultural production, or these three are the same one exaction differently described. If the latter, the interpreter must again determine whether the tithe's apportionment amongst its several named legitimate claimants is intended to be left to individual choice by the payee, or to societal negotiation.

The first interpretative choice was in force the last time Moses' law was a living law code governing a functioning society. Josephus' understanding of the law was that it enjoined three distinct tithes: "Besides those two tithes, which I have already said you are to pay every year, the one for the Levites, the other for the festivals, you are to bring every third year a third tithe to be distributed to those that want; to women also that are widows, and to children that are orphans." (Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 4, Chapter 8, 22). The apocryphal Book of Tobit also counts multiple tithes: "I used to hurry off to Jerusalem with the firstfruits of crops and herds, the tithes of the cattle, and the first shearings of the sheep; and I gave them to the priests of Aaron's line for the altar, and the tithe of wine, corn, olive oil, pomegranates and other fruits to the Levites ministering in Jerusalem. The second tithe for the six years I converted into money, and I went and distributed it in Jerusalem year by year among the orphans and widows, and the converts who had attached themselves to Israel. Every third year when I brought it and gave it to them, we held a feast according to the rule laid down in the law of Moses and the instructions given by Deborah the mother of Hananiel our grandfather..." (Tobit, 1:6-8).

Not including the tithe of the tithe (Malachi 3:8), by which some recipients pass along a portion of their receipts to others, the three tithes, with their varying expressed purposes, are as follows:

1. First Tithe (Levites):

2. Second Tithe (Festivals). Animals consecrated to the Lord are nonetheless also consumed by human diners. The sacrificial system allotted a set portion of the victim to the priesthood, but the farmer retains an interest in the festival tithe:

3. Third Tithe (Welfare):

It may be objected that leaving interpretation of Mosaic taxation to its recipients creates an obvious conflict of interest. These interpreters had every incentive to multiply exactions. But modern-day tithing advocates also have an agenda. They assert that God has always required precisely ten percent of His people, never more and never less. This impels them to collapse exactions which classical commentators count as distinct, such as first-fruits and the tithe. In Bible fact God has not always demanded precisely ten percent; more was asked of the rich young ruler (Luke 18:22) and Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5). While counting separate exactions leaves us with a high rate of taxation, what welfare state, as Moses designed, has not had a high tax rate?

In any event, whether one or three, the Mosaic tithe was not a tax on income, but a set-aside of a fixed portion of agricultural production. This distinction makes a real difference. Who pays and who does not? From city-dwellers in ancient Israel, cobblers, potters, blacksmiths, soldiers,— Moses did not require one tenth. Jesus was not required to tithe His income from carpentry, nor was Paul obliged to tithe his income from tent-making, nor was Peter expected to pay ten percent of his income from fishing. The tithe was a tax on one form of production, agriculture. Also important in an agrarian society: landless rural laborers did not pay tithes. It was not a tax on all rural incomes, but a tax on agricultural production.

While landed proprietors Henry and Em collect and forward one tenth of their crop, their farm hands Hunk, Hickory and Zeke, paid in cash, do not remit one tenth of their income. To suggest that, if Henry and Em had been able to retain 100 per cent of their crop, they would have been able to pay Hunk, Hickory and Zeke more, equates to saying that, if Wal-mart paid less for the goods they import from China, they could pay their hired help more. Certainly they could. Substituting an income tax for Moses' crop and herds tax creates a new crop of winners and losers. Hunk, Hickory and Zeke are worse off, because they now must pay ten percent of their income. Henry and Em are better off, because any reasonable income tax allows payers to deduct their legitimate cost of doing business: mortgage interest, fertilizer, irrigation, seed, Hunk, Hickory and Zeke's wages, transport to market, etc. Some years farmers make money, some years they don't. Yet every year farmers within Moses' reach pay a tenth of their produce. The market mischievously penalizes communal agricultural success; yet whether a glut sparks a price collapse or famine a price spike, a tenth of the produce is still owed. Modern readers find it easy to monetize farm production alongside every other commodity, yet the Mosaic law, with its strictures on gleaning, retains an awareness that food is different, food sustains life.

Now consider the case that causes scandal to the world: an elderly widow subsisting on Social Security of $6,000 a year. Some preachers accuse her of 'robbing God' if she does not fork over $600. Yet who can live on $5,400 a year? They shrug, explaining that they did not make the rules, God did. Yet God did not make this rule. God never imposed any income tax. They have reconfigured Moses' agricultural set-aside as an income tax. Even under the Old Testament system, this elderly widow living on cash remittances did not owe a tenth, because she manages neither crops nor herds. Moreover, under the Old Testament system, she was a recipient of tithed goods (Deuteronomy 14:28-29), not a payer. As will be seen again when we get to the New Testament, transforming someone from a net recipient into a giver is an absolute change of polarity, not an adjustment of quantity.

To this tithing advocates respond, while under Moses' law the elderly widow does not technically owe a tenth of her cash income, the Bible clearly sets forth the principle of giving to God. Of course it does, and many other principles besides, including not oppressing the poor: "He will bring justice to the poor of the people; He will save the children of the needy, and will break in pieces the oppressor." (Psalm 72:4).

Nailed to the Cross

Christians know that the law has been nailed to the cross. Yet its moral demands linger. Is the Mosaic tithe part of the ceremonial law, no longer binding, or a continuing requirement? The Levitical priesthood is not a continuing Christian institution: "For the priesthood being changed, of necessity there is also a change of the law... For on the one hand there is an annulling of the former commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness, for the law made nothing perfect; on the other hand, there is the bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God." (Hebrews 7:12-19). Does tithing continue as a legal obligation when one institution it was ordained to support has vanished away? To answer, let us examine the practice of the New Testament church. Did the New Testament church practice tithing?

Paul's churches favored voluntary giving. Paul has every opportunity to tell his flock: remember, each one of you, rich and poor alike, owes precisely ten per cent of his income. Yet he says just the opposite, he leaves the amount up to them:

"So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver." (2 Corinthians 9:7);

"For if there is first a willing mind, it is accepted according to what one has, and not according to what he does not have." (2 Corinthians 8:12).

The Jerusalem church took the more radical path, not of tithing, but of sharing the wealth:

"Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need." (Acts 2:44-45).

Someone trying to scrape by, raising a family on minimum wage, would benefit greatly from either New Testament scheme: either letting giving be a matter of conscience, or sharing the wealth of better-off brethren.  A 'flat tax' of ten percent bites very hard indeed on somebody who's just scraping by. From the standpoint of a wealthy member, the ten per cent the modern church expects is milder than the "all" the Jerusalem church expected. But from the standpoint of the needy brother, the nothing he gets from the modern church,—or rather the flat tax he is required to pay of what little he has,—is on the wrong side of zero to compare with the benefits he received from membership in the Jerusalem church.

Tertullian reports the church of his day continued the practice of voluntary giving: "There is no buying and selling of any sort in the things of God.  Though we have our treasure-chest, it is not made up of purchase-money, as of a religion that has its price.  On the monthly day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he be able: for there is no compulsion; all is voluntary. These gifts are, as it were, piety's deposit fund. For they are not taken thence and spent on feasts, and drinking-bouts, and eating-houses, but to support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons confined now to the house; such, too, as have suffered shipwreck; and if there happen to be any in the mines, or banished to the islands, or shut up in the prisons, for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God's Church, they become the nurslings of their confession." (Tertullian, Apology, Chapter 39.)

An impoverished person who joined the New Testament church experienced a rise in living standard, because entry into the church meant sharing the wealth:

"Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common." (Acts 4:32).

An impoverished person who joins a UPCI congregation experiences a decline in living standards, to the tune of ten percent of income. A flat tax is regressive, biting the poor harder than the rich. If your income is $6,000, you pay $600, leaving $5,400 to live on. If your income is $60,000, you pay $6,000, leaving $54,000 to live on. Can one live on $54,000 a year? Assuredly! Can one live on $5,400 a year? How is that possible?

Paul's ideal was "equality": "For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened; but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may supply their lack, that their abundance also may supply your lack—that there may be equality. As it is written, 'He who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack.'" (2 Corinthians 8:13-15). Does one living on $5,400 a year have "no lack"?

Our elderly widow, a net recipient of aid under the Old Testament system, was also a net recipient under the New Testament system of voluntary giving (1 Timothy 5:16). Those who accuse her of 'robbing God' unless she forks over $600 explain that God will more than make up the difference. But God neither taxed her, nor promised to make it good. If they, on their own authority, make a promise God did not make, then let them also guarantee its fulfillment.

Great care must be taken to avoid demanding what is not owed, because God resents injustice to His poor: "Thus says the LORD: For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals—they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way..." (Amos 2:6-7).

Any exaction taken from the hides of the poor which is not authorized earns a rebuke from God:

French Revolution

At the time of the French Revolution, the church tithe became an issue. In the interval between the New Testament church, which did not collect any mandatory tithe, and the French Revolution of the closing years of the eighteenth century, the tithe had been institutionalized as a mandatory tax. The rural districts of France were sadly impoverished, and the new regime was hostile to religion in any case:

"One of the most pressing necessities was the abolition of tithes. As these were a tax paid by the rural population to the clergy, the sacrifice would be for the advantage of those who were oppressed by them. Accordingly, after declaring they were redeemable, on the night of the 4th of August, they were suppressed on the 11th, without providing any equivalent." (F.A.M. Mignet, History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814, Chapter III.)

The Revolution bulldozed over the wall of separation of church and state, and ultimately ended up promoting a preposterous religion of its own invention:

Taxation without representation? The church has always been innocent of it: