The Unoriginal Muse

This was originally going to be a comment on Gates of Vienna, but it got too long for that, plus it actually has nothing to do with it.

The church building was traditionally a place of fellowship and meeting, where all sorts of issues could be resolved. It used to hold courts and parish council meetings, fairs, “clubs” - for want of a better word and nearly every aspect of life that is now parcelled out to dedicated buildings. The use of a church for worship and ceremony was only one small part of the building’s function and was never meant to be its sole, didicated purpose. But things change, as they’re wont to do.

The problem, of course, is that some changes have been very unscriptural. Dogma and the ideas of men have replaced the words of god in so many churches. The biggest issue for me, personally, is the handling of the tithe. Churches say give it all to the church, as it will make you prosperous. Then they go on to use it for mission work. The problem is, according to scripture, this is wrong.

Modern preachers like to quote Malachi 3, regarding the tithe:

From the NIV
Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.”

They add on that the church, their church, is the storehouse and that tithing to them will bring you prosperity. It’s a lie. No, that’s too harsh. It’s a mistake brought about by misunderstanding the context of the above scripture. In order to glean the full meaning of the above we need to go back to Deuteronomy 14:

From the NIV
22 Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year. 23 Eat the tithe of your grain, new wine and oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the presence of the LORD your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name, so that you may learn to revere the LORD your God always. 24 But if that place is too distant and you have been blessed by the LORD your God and cannot carry your tithe (because the place where the LORD will choose to put his Name is so far away), 25 then exchange your tithe for silver, and take the silver with you and go to the place the LORD your God will choose. 26 Use the silver to buy whatever you like: cattle, sheep, wine or other fermented drink, or anything you wish. Then you and your household shall eat there in the presence of the LORD your God and rejoice. 27 And do not neglect the Levites living in your towns, for they have no allotment or inheritance of their own.

28 At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year’s produce and store it in your towns, 29 so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

The above makes it abundantly clear what the tithe was for. It has three purposes. The first was a feast of fellowship with teh lord, at his temple. Those nearby could use their tithe there and then. Those further away were commanded to sell their tithe and use the money to travel to the temple, buying whatever food they needed on the way, and buying more when they got there to take part in the fellowship. After this comes the dealing with the poor and only then do we get to the levites.

Elsewhere we learn that the levites were to serve in the temple or ministy one year in every three, and were to be fed out of the tithe that went to the temple when they weren’t tending fields set aside for them to sustain themselves when they weren’t ministering to the population. Levites also had other occupations - Paul was a tent maker by trade, as well as an acolyte to the sanhedrin - and they were expected to sustain themselves out of this first. There was no professional priesthood in Israel.

We also learn elsewhere how the tithe was portioned up. Nine tenths of the tithe went to a general fund that was meant to feed those that had nothing to eat, and which was to be used when the city was seiged or had a bad year, as well as for use travelling to the temple. It was kept in storehouses, and the storehouses were kept by gate keepers who weren’t priests. They weren’t even levites. The other ine tenth went to the temple, or to the levites, to keep them going when they were ministering.

The long and the short of it is that the modern church has adopted a very unscriptural position, demanding all the tithe be paid to it for unspecified uses. This is simply wrong, as they should be making do with just 1% of your produce, not 10%. This problem came about because the church adopted the role of administering the tithe stores at some point in the past, creating its huge tithe barns. Now the problem with that is that the administration of the tithe was in the hands of the people who, traditionally, were paid and fed out of it. You can probably see the problem this creates. Of course, even then, the tithes were largely agricultural, and consequently they had to be eaten. As social mores have changed the concept of the tithe barn fell out of use entirely, as more people were earning money rather than producing food. This placed a great deal of wealth in to the hands of the church, creating a professional priesthood in the process, who could survive entirely on this income and who had a vested interest in keeping that income going. As the role of church buildings has diminished in society, the focus on maintaining funds through the tithe has increased to the point where it’s considered heretical to deny that the church is the “storehouse” spoken of in scripture. This is plainly not so. In the face of this it’s not surprising that church attendence is falling so rapidly. People see the state taking over the one, final role that the church claims for itself outside of evangelism, so that charity is now provided by “benefits”, and ministering to people is seen as preaching and nothing more.

And so malachi, a challenge to the israelites who were refusing to tithe ate all and ignoring their social responsibility to their neighbours, is used as a club to berate and cajole the unwilling to fork over their cash to the church for unspecified “outreach” and “ministering”. Most of it goes on frivolities. Were Jesus alive today he’d have a lot of tables to turn over. The worst part is, those preaching this message believe they’re preaching God’s truth. The passages from Deuteronomy that deal with how the tithe was handled are completely ignored, and prosperity is lost as a result. The only ones getting rich at the preachers.

I believe that God wants christians to prosper and become influential in society. How else can we change society but by having the means to bring about real, substantial changes to our world? If more christians were genuinely charitible, how much better an image would we have? But, by and large, we don’t want to be charitible. We’re grudging in our giving because we believe that God demands so much from us already. If the way is to become the bedrock of our society again, it must start by returning to this fundamental principles of the tithe as a means to bring people to fellowship and provide for those in need first and foremost. Priests should barely get a look-in.