Dear Walk Show Family:
You shall surely tithe all the produce from what you sow, which comes out of the field every year. You shall eat in the presence of the Lord your God, at the place where He chooses to establish His name, the tithe of your grain, your new wine, your oil, and the firstborn of your herd and your flock, so that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always.
If the distance is so great for you that you are not able to bring the tithe, since the place where the Lord your God chooses to set His name is to far away from you when the Lord your God blesses you, then you shall exchange it for money, and bind the money in your hand and go to the place where the Lord your God chooses.
You may spend the money for whatever your heart desires: for oxen, or sheep, or wine, or strong drink, or whatever your heart desires; and there you shall eat [your tithe] in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household. And do not neglect the Levites living in your towns, for they have no allotment or inheritance of their own (Deuteronomy 14:22-27).
I confess: I’m months behind in removing the Christmas lights wrapped around the parapet (railing) the Old Testament Law required us to build around our home’s roof (cf., Deuteronomy 22:8). And, I’ve been even more remiss in taking down the “Feast of Tabernacles” booth we lived in for eight days last Fall, which God said would be “a lasting ordinance for the generations to come” (Leviticus 23:33-41). But, as Robin bustled about the kitchen cleaning up the utensils from our latest animal sacrifice, today I finally got around to dismantling the Feast of Booths’ dried-up California palm fronds; the withered, local leafy branches; and those expensive poplar branches imported from Kentucky. . . and taking down those pesky Christmas lights on the parapet!
As I worked, however, I was suddenly struck with a deep wave of guilt!
Oh, no! In the midst of all these festivals and other ordinances of the Old Covenant Law we have to keep (plus some new ones we have thrown in here and there from the New Covenant), I have completely forgotten to do what from all appearances is the most important thing to do in the American church: to eat my own tithe!
Since all references to tithing in the Bible have to do only with food and not with money, it is easy to see how in our current monetary system our family had completely forgotten to “eat our own tithe,” in accordance with the provisions of the Holy Scriptures! Yet, because we are no longer farmers like the Jewish people who originally received the Old Testament law that also binds us today, I guess we are duty-bound to convert our cash back into a food tithe this way:
. . . spend the money for whatever your heart desires: for oxen, or sheep, or wine, or strong drink, or whatever your heart desires; and there you shall eat [your tithe] in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household (Lev. 14:25-26).
Almost sounds like a spiritual retreat, doesn’t it? Or, a small family gathering with a divine purpose! So, this Friday evening as the Sabbath begins, I feel the Scriptures might suggest we gather over at a brother and sister’s house and eat our tithes together in a Shabbat-eve dinner. I’ll bring the wine (or strong drink), and the rest of our “family” can bring whatever their hearts desire—hopefully, the most expensive and exotic foods they can find (no spaghetti please!) , as we all might have a little tithing catching up to do! I just know we’ll all make the Lord really happy as we eat our tithes in the presence of the Lord our God and rejoice!
“Don’t Sharply Rebuke an Older Man”–But What About a Younger One?
All kidding aside, I have a confession to make: I’m getting to be an old man now, and I’ve been to Bible camps, Bible schools, a “Christian Evangelical College,” and two theological graduate schools. Simultaneous to my business ventures, I’ve pastored my whole adult life—for 44 years as the founder of a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that is contemporarily called in America “a para-church organization,” plus a stint as the what is mistakenly called a “pastor” of a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that is in America erroneously referred to as “a church.”
In earlier decades I silently endured older pastors teaching on tithing, refraining from screaming out “Fire” in the theater we call “church,” because I wanted to heed the Apostle Paul’s exhortation: “Do not sharply rebuke an older man, but rather appeal to him as a father” (1 Timothy 5:1). Then, for the last 25 years I have concluded that “My church is in the foyer,” so I have in large measure been saved from hearing the unmitigated drivel of the “seed-money” and tithing sermon/mantras.
But now I’m older—often much older—than most of the pastors that would wish me to submit to them and their fanciful teachings on tithing. So, about a year ago when I saw nobody in the foyer, I found myself once again enduring for the umpteen-hundredth time a sermon including the obligatory warning that we are “cursed” if we don’t tithe.
In that otherwise-great sermon I discovered in myself the same compassion for the indoctrinated speaker as for the harassed people, as the poor preacher was from a foreign land and could only be expected to puppet the tithing slogans he had been trained in by his “older and wiser” American mentors, who had paid for his ticket over here so that he could work the crowd on behalf of the “mother church.” As I viewed the audience being alternately enticed and cursed with the tithing propaganda, it was as if the Holy Spirit said to my spirit:
Ken, is there any curse that my Son, Jesus, did not take upon Himself when He was crucified to fulfill all the requirements of the Law? Because after all these years your spirit is finally in control, I now free you to speak up about the source of this teaching on tithing, but be gentle with these guys, because I love them ever so much as I love you!
Indeed, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’” (Galatians 3:13). Who knows, maybe now—at long last—it’s time for an old man to give at least a “gentle rebuke” to some of my younger brothers and sisters still needing redemption from the curse of the Law.
What Is the Source of the Contemporary Church’s Teachings on Tithing?
What has the Holy Spirit taught me through over forty years of overwhelming evidence about the preaching of tithing in the Western church? Purely and simply is this:
The preaching of tithing in the contemporary American church is sourced in the god of Mammon. Full stop.
Yes, I believe that the Mammon-god of riches is an evil spirit who has the destruction of human lives as his goal, and that he has thoroughly duped the vast majority of the pastors and parishioners in this land into advancing his kingdom through false teaching, preaching, and believing on the subject of tithing. Further, this evil spirit’s agenda is greatly empowered by the sister spirits of fear and greed that plague so many of my pastor colleagues, as it has often plagued yours truly in the past.
I remember way back in seminary, when the subject of tithing came up in a class. Let me recount that experience for you from my own 1982 book, INPUTS: A Matter of Lifestyle or Deathstyle:
Once while in a graduate-level class on “hermeneutics,” or, the science of Biblical interpretation,” . . . the professor was developing the principle that “Since the Old Testament shadow derives from the substance to be found in the New Testament, the New Testament interprets the Old.” Right in the middle of his good explanation about the New Covenant substance we have in Christ, somehow the professor got started on what appeared to be a shadow-kissing digression.
The digression dealt with the professor’s strong personal viewpoint on the subject of tithing. A local church pastor, he felt that his fellow pastors in the room should consistently emphasize tithing in their preaching to their congregations. He received the hearty approval of the dozens of pastors in the room.
At that point I asked a simple question, something like: “How do you reconcile your heavy emphasis upon tithing with your just-stated hermeneutical principle which would place the shadow of Old Covenant tithing as issuing from the substance of the New Covenant—where all things belong to Christ? Doesn’t God want 100% of all our resources?”
Unexpectedly I was interrupted by the loud exclamation: “Let’s be practical, Mr. Talbott! When you’ve got a ministry to do for God it takes dollars! When I started with my church only 10% of my people tithed, but now, after consistent preaching on the subject for some years, a full 20% of our congregation tithes! [The pastor-students oohed and aahed.] This past year our budget is $50,000 above last years’, we have purchased three more buses and we have $25,000 in a special savings account. [“Ooh, ooh, ahh, ahh.”] And you can’t do that without preaching tithing!”
What else could I do but respectfully submit, “Might not such a stance possibly communicate a lack of trust in the New Covenant believer-priest’s ability to be led by the Holy Spirit in the use of his resources? Won’t any believer who is really freed to get involved with the substance of Christ’s lordship at least cast a 10% giving shadow?”
What was the hermeneutics professor’s response? He threw up his hands and with a burst of hilarity, loudly proclaimed: “Well, sometimes hermeneutics just has to go!” Through the use of humor, the hermeneutics teacher and his relieved pastor-students buried the subject in heaps of laughter (page 176-177).
Sorry to break this news to you, my dear friend, but I’ve been there in the back rooms, board rooms, and pastor’s seminars where the pastors discuss how to best use verses to extract mammon from the masses. One senior pastor in the largest “church” in a city coached his peers this way: “Let’s get real here: we’ve got to get $15 a head per service in order for us to run our operation, so you’d better get good at taking the offering!” His counsel resulted in one of his prodigies moving from a five-minute “mini-tithing-sermon” per church service to a 10-minute, to 15 minutes, to 20 minutes, to 25 minutes–until the last time I was there the “tithing sermon within a sermon” had reached a full thirty minutes per service!
In Steve Crosby’s Wealth Transfer and Marketplace Ministry book, he summarizes what’s really been going on in the contemporary church in its teaching on tithing, seed-money faith, etc.:
The situation today in the Church is similar to the temple system at the time of Christ. The temple institutions were essentially Herod’s family business, created for one reason: to squeeze money out of the region for his dynasty . . . (p. 46).
Speaking of the Malachi 3 passage that is quoted thousands of times each Sunday morning in America, another friend writes:
These verses have nothing to do with money. Don’t let anyone use these verses to try to scare you into tithing. Don’t let anyone put you in bondage to the law. Malachi was not written to us. Read Malachi 3:9 again. This was written to the nation of Israel. This was written to people who were required to follow the law but weren’t doing it. The people of that time were under a curse for not following the law. We are under a curse if we try to follow the law now that Jesus has redeemed us from it.
Tithing and Seed-Money Propaganda Only Employs Small-“t” truths
The prophets prophesy lies,
the priests rule by their own authority,
and my people love it this way.
But what will you do in the end?
–Jeremiah 5:31 (NIV)
The late Jacques Ellul in his Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, suggests that good propaganda only employs truths with a small “t” (what Ellul calls “facts”) to paint the picture of its lies. There are certainly many good, small-”t” truths employed by our contemporary pastoral propagandists. Tithing was, for example, for the benefit of the Old Testament priests. Yet, the “Capital ‘T’” in that tithing was only the tithing of food, the tithing for the priests to distribute to the widows and orphans, and that portion of the food they reserved for Levitical priests who had no inheritance of land, houses or regular salaries (cf., Deuteronomy 18:1-2).
Yet, when the modern-day pastoral propagandists try to duplicate the Old Covenant sacerdotal (or priesthood) system (with its sanctuary, rites, and sacrifices, such as tithes), they are actually seeking to construct a new law (their own “cultural code of conduct and belief”) made up of arbitrarily extracted elements from both the Old and New Covenants! What happens when they place themselves and others under parts of the Law in this way but fail to obey the rest of it? In effect, they are placing themselves (and their people) under a curse:
All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law” (Galatians 3:10).
Take, for example, the pastoral propagandist’s use of Malachi 3:8-12 passage that is employed like a club to beat the audience into submission. Malachi 3 does line up with the law of tithing laid out in the Old Testament. That’s the small “t” truth of the matter. However, the Malachi 2, Capital-“T” Truth leading up to the Malachi 3, little-“t” truth would suggest that God’s over-arching concern was with the priests, the sons of Levi, who were themselves being cursed by God and were the primary ones responsible for bringing a curse on the people:
And now this admonition is for you, O priests. If you do not listen, and if you do not set your heart to honor my name,” says the LORD Almighty, “I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not set your heart to honor me” (Malachi 2:1-2).
And how are the priests bringing a curse down on Israel? In the words of Douglas Weaver:
You see it was they who had defiled the nation by robbing the Lord, for they were spending the tithe on themselves and neglecting the alien, orphan and widow. Indeed, the all-too-familiar [Malachi 3] verse 9 is not saying that the whole nation is robbing God; rather the priests were robbing not only God but all of Israel as well! For in as much as they neglected the alien, orphan and widow, they brought a curse on the whole nation, effectively robbing them of the blessing of God. Remember, only the third-year tithe went into the storehouse. Therefore, it is only that portion of the three-year cycle to which the Lord is referring: the portion over which the priest held responsibility. How ironic that the passage of scripture so widely used to validate and impose the practice of tithing is actually speaking against those who collect them!
The New Covenant pastors-turned-propagandists have sought to prop up their artificial high priesthood in a temple sanctuary Jesus Christ died to destroy and to replace with all us believer-priests. Of them it can be said what “the LORD Almighty” said of the Old Covenant counterparts they are imitating:
For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction—because he is the messenger of the LORD Almighty. But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi, so I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law (Malachi 2: 7-8).
“Look, your house is left to you desolate”
In our time, it would appear that the pastors being “despised and humiliated before all the people” is only a matter of time now. It is, for example, quite thoroughly chronicled in Michael Spencer‘s 2009 “Christian Science Monitor” article, “The Coming Evangelical Collapse.” I personally believe the collapse is already well underway, as I view much of the contemporary tithe-and-seed-money-extracting-mega-church movement to be but a symptom of the demise of the American church and not an indication of its health. It is a direct reflection of the current trend toward mergers and acquisitions of unhealthy institutions by unhealthy institutions heading us all toward bankruptcy.
Propped up by tithes that I see as a direct parallel to the taxes our nation currently extorts from its citizenry, the mega-churches have also become a reflection of the welfare state after which they have been patterned. Both of those leech systems have no regard for the life of their hosts, and they consume easily the majority of the dollars on themselves, then hand out the paltry balance to the needy in a largely deleterious manner (like the Levites of Malachi’s time).
Happily there will always be exceptions to these rules, as with the small handful of churches that believe the Spirit can guide their members in giving, that are out of debt, that emphasize small groups, and that allow the people’s resources to go directly to needy without getting trapped in the bureaucracy. We should all be on the lookout for and be supportive of such places.
Typically, however, when American believers are presented with a pressing need of some sort, because the believer has been stripped of his wealth by the godless state and church, his or her natural reaction has come to be: “What social services agency shall I put this needy person in touch with?” Of course, by the time the government office is opened hours or days later or the proper church committee is accessed weeks later, the homeless person staring you in the face goes without his meal or bed, and your neighbor, the widow’s, power bill gets paid after she has frozen to death. Perhaps I exaggerate, but you get the idea. The point is that the welfare state and enculturated church effectively flatten our wallets and deaden our hearts toward the poor.
As priests of the Most High God, you and I need our “tithes” to do the work of the ministry now! As for the usurping priests who have brought this curse upon our nation, it is my sincere conviction that the “church houses” built because of their edifice complexes will soon be left to them desolate. Yet, with our prayers of intercession and gestures of love and forbearance, maybe some of them will get down on their knees and beg God and the people’s forgiveness for the huge, multi-billion-dollar theft they have presided over each year throughout their ministries.
A Word to the Younger Pastors
It has been said, “The only way you bring about change in the pastors is through the death of the pastors.” Well, that may be somewhat true for us old gray hairs, but what about you younger pastors? Is it possible that you have found yourself in the place where you are passing on the tithing propaganda with which you have been indoctrinated? As a consequence, are evil spirits like Mammon, fear and greed tugging at you, and “purses with holes in them” plaguing you? Is there hope for you that you can survive a radical, New Covenant change in financial direction for your church [Note to self: “It’s Jesus’ church”]? If you return to the place where your works are born in God and no longer the god of Mammon, you need not fear that God will provide for you and for the flock’s every need.
In fact, an explosion of giving can occur when people are no longer taught to believe that they are “home free” after having given their tithe. Releasing people from mandatory tithing draws them to the Holy Spirit and not a calculator for their New Covenant priest’s inspiration to give.
I know of one pastor, who has consistently for over forty years now preached against embracing the Old Covenant shadow of tithing and for our New Covenant substance of Christ’s ownership of 100% of everything we are and have. When he heard my story about the seminary professor who preached tithing to pay the church’s bills in violation of his own principles of Biblical interpretation and the Scriptures themselves, he commented to me:
Ken, may I let a little secret out of the bag? Did you know that our people, once thoroughly anchored in their New Covenant priesthood, actually give two to three times more money to the work of the ministry than in those churches who preach tithing with a vengeance?
Was that gentle enough?
Pullin’ and Prayin’ with and for you,
Ken Talbott, Host
Editor: This article was recently published by www.ApostolicServants.com, as a subset of a six-author article entitled, “Kingdom Economy,” featuring:
(1) “Financial Jailbirds,” by Steve Crosby
(2) “Kingdom Economy and Ministry Support,” by Don Atkin
(3) “Full Time Ministry & Finances in the New Testament,” by Steve Hill
(4) “How Should I Give?” by Daryl Wood
(5) “Household Finance in the Kingdom of God,” by Jay Ferris, and
(6) Why Aren’t You ‘Eating Your Own Tithe’? by Ken Talbott