Giving money to God

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.

Two main kinds of giving

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

Recent events in the local church that my husband and I belong to, and in our Annual Conference (regional division of the United Methodist Church), have 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.

Tithing would help the church

Whether or not God commands tithing now as the way to decide what amount to give, it could help many worthwhile ministries get done if we all did it. Thus it’s not surprising that the church so often claims that God wants every Christian to tithe.

For members with the most money available to give today, however, merely determining what’s ten percent of their income may not be easy. They don’t know whether the ten percent should come from gross income or after-tax income, and their income may come from several sources and in several forms, some of which aren’t liquid or easily measured, such as profits on long-term assets.

Still, citing the difficulty of identifying our ten percent may be begging the question. It may be merely a way of trying to justify giving less than we should. But we each have to decide that for ourselves. For now, let’s leave it unsolved and move on again, in our consideration of giving to God.

Give it all to the local church?

How do we give whatever amount we decide to give? How does giving to God happen in today’s world, for those of us who live in a system based on money rather than on plants and animals that we personally grow and barter? 

“Bring the full tithe into the storehouse,” says one of the most-quoted scriptures, apparently referring to the room in which the temple’s sacred objects and tithes of grain, wine, and such were stored in Old Testament times. But in our setting, what’s the equivalent of that storehouse? Is it the bank accounts of the local congregation we belong to? Yes and no, I think.

An obligation to pay our share

I believe that as a member of a local church I’m obligated to furnish some of the financial support it must have in order to exist.  I remember one member saying he didn’t give to the church because he paid taxes to the U.S. government, which was now supporting the poor in the way that churches formerly did. Another said he wasn’t giving to our local church because he gave to the Boy Scouts and the local United Way. 

Those reasons make no sense to me. Those organizations may do good things, but they don’t do all that’s needed to help the poor. Also, I feel that all of us who are financially able are obligated to pay for whatever services we use, whether they come from the church or the electric company.

However, I believe the church is much more than my local congregation. For United Methodists, it’s also the worldwide UMC and its various agencies. It’s also other denominations, of course, and I believe it’s also people who follow the teachings and example of Jesus but aren’t in any institutional church. Therefore, I give some of my monetary gifts outside of my local congregation, to individuals, projects, and organizations that I feel are promoting what Jesus taught and demonstrated. I feel I’m giving to God when I do that.

CHURCH – MONEY

from 4-06

What qualifies as giving to God?

What about organizations that do good things that aren’t specifically mentioned in the Bible? It mentions healing the sick, providing food and clothing for the poor, caring for the earth, and helping to eliminate unjust treatment of people, but I assume God’s work also includes more than those.

What about promoting education, which helps people develop and use their God-given abilities in order to support themselves and help others? What about supporting the arts, to promote the beauty and creativity that reflects God’s nature? How can we be sure when we’re giving to God and when we’re not? Maybe we can’t.

Obey God, or our “high priests”?

Because of what my husband and I see as unchristian and unjustified treatment of several church staff members during the past several years in our local church, culminating in recent unjust treatment of the senior pastor by both congregational and UMC Annual Conference officials, we have now decreased our giving to both of those institutions and have removed them from our wills. We give to many other UMC-related agencies and programs, but we want to give only to those that promote justice rather than injustice. We believe we’re obeying God in this decision, but such decisions aren’t easy or clear-cut.

Is it wrong, we keep asking ourselves, to rely on our own prayerful discernment and that of other Christian friends to identify where God is at work and thus where we need to give, instead of financially supporting all the decisions of official church bodies? What if the “high priests” of our church give orders that we believe contradict the orders of Jesus? What if the official decision-makers of our congregation or denomination allot funds to purposes we believe are contrary to what following Jesus requires? Should we give to those institutions and programs anyway?

I don’t think so. I believe we need to use our money as well as our voices and actions to promote what we believe to be God’s will. But if we withhold money as a way of opposing what we believe is against God’s will, are we trying to exert unjustified control over the church? Are we using money as a threat, or as a way of getting a larger voice than any member deserves? Are we trying to use money to overpower the members who can’t give as much as we can? I don’t think so, but other Christians may say yes.

I’m not even sure what to think about the money I spend on Connections. It’s more than most other church members could spend to make their concerns known. Am I thus exerting power unfairly by using money in this way? I don’t think so. I don’t count what I spend on publishing Connections as a contribution to the church, and it’s not tax-deductible for me or for the Connections readers who contribute. I see it as using a God-given resource to pursue a God-given calling, but I may be wrong about that.

For Christians, having money is a privilege but also a challenge. Even when we make our best effort to use it faithfully, it’s hard to be sure whether our choices are right or wrong.