Friday, December 25, 2020

The Very "Mormon Sounding" Commentary on Tithing by R.T. Kendall

Many critics tend to bellyache over the Latter-day Saint practice of tithing. Consider the following thread from Simon Southerton (“Simon in Oz”) et al., “Tithing:  Blind obedience or mindless irresponsibility?” (they are moaning about the article by Nancy Kay Smith, “Could Tithing Ease My Worries?” which appeared in the July 2009 Ensign). On the other side of these (mainly secular) critics are Evangelical Protestants who claim that tithing is, at most, optional, and that it being a commandment within “Mormonism” is evidence of the “unbiblical” nature of Latter-day Saint practices.

 

In light of such criticisms, it was refreshing to see the following from R.T. Kendall, himself a Calvinist (and no friend to LDS theology!) write the following about tithing which sounded very “Mormon”:

 

Some Christians do not tithe because they refuse to do so. Some are convinced, others don’t want to be convinced; but at bottom is a refusal to part with what we regard as ‘ours’ . . . I know what it is to be in a temporary state of indifference to the matter of tithing. I know what it Is to be a non-tithing Christian. I know what it is to be so deep in debt that tithing seemed an utter impossibility. Shortly after my wife and I married we found ourselves plunged deep into debt. The reader would find it hard to believe how much money we owed during the first year of our marriage. I blush when I think about it. Some of the bills could not be helped, others were the consequence of imprudence on my part. At any rate, tithing was not on the agenda. I was enraged in secular work, for I was in no financial position to allow a Church to call me as a minister.

 

I came in one day from work very, very discouraged. I fell to my knees in a sense of desperation, hoping that God would give me a way of light that He would help me through. I walked into our dining room and there lay on the table a large white Bible my grandmother had given me. I picked it up and opened it. I didn’t like what I found. Not a bit. ‘Will a man rob God?’ (Mal. 3:8). I just closed the Bible and sat down to watch the TV (which I still owed for).

 

But I was perfectly miserable. I knew that eventually I would have to go back to tithing. But I postponed this for a while longer. In the meantime things went from bad to worse. Although my wife and I were both working it seemed that paying our bills was like dipping a cup into the ocean of debt. One day I made the turn. I started tithing—despite my debts. Here is how we did it. We took 10% of our gross income right off the top—making tithing the Number One Priority. (If you don’t pay your tithes that way, you will never do it!) I paid the bills with the remaining 90%. We were not out of debt in weeks but we were complexly out of debt in less than two years, and those days became among the happiest we have known.

 

I had not been tithing because I did not want to do so. One of my deacons in a former church used to say, ’If you don’t tithe, God will get it anyway.’ Not that God will get is for His work but He most certainly has a way of keeping us from enjoying the entire 100%.

 

I fear that many do not want to be convinced. They haven’t really thought it through, nor do they want to think it through. They retreat into blissful ignorance. But they are not enriched. They are impoverished. (R.T. Kendall, Tithing: A Call to Serious, Biblical Giving [London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982], 22-23)

 

What if one cannot tithe? The answer is, we cannot afford not to tithe. Who can afford to rob God? Those who rob God are impoverished and they perpetuate the melancholy state of the Church in the world today. J. Wilbur Chapman cited the only case he know of in which a regular tither felt cheated in the end. A woman shared publicly with her church in a prayer meeting that God had failed her: ‘Tomorrow I am to be discharged from the job I have held for many years. I do not have money saved up. I do not know what will become of me. For many years I have given to the Lord’s cause; now, when I am old and not able to work, I face direct poverty and the shameful support of public charity. I feel that when I am laid off my job permanently tomorrow, I must tell God that He has not cared for me as He promised.’

 

Dr Chapman was invited to lunch the next day by a Christian businessman. This man told Dr Chapman how thrilled he was that his company was installing a pension plan for employees. ‘Today we put this pension plan into effect, and the first person to go on retirement pay is a member of your church, Dr Chapman.’ The church member was the woman who had complained the night before. (Ibid., 82)

 

It is not a sin to tithe when you are in debt? Shouldn’t we pay our honest debts first, then begin tithing? No, to both questions. It is a sin, a high crime, not to pay your ‘debt’ to God—the tithe. It is His. On the second question, how much money do you really think God would end up getting if every Christian waited until he or she was out of debt before they began tithing? Most Christians I know are in debt, and many are likely to be paying for a house or a car or a TV or whatever for a long time.

 

My own experience (as I related earlier) was that I was going deeper and deeper into debt until my wife and I started tithing. At that stage the 90% began to go so much further (don’t ask me to explain it—I can’t) toward paying my debts than I had been able to do with the entire 100% at the start.

 

By the way, notice that I said ‘my wife and I’. Carl Bates once said: ‘My wife and I are Storehouse Tithers.’ It is a wonderful thing when both husband and wife feel the same way about this matter. It draws them closer to each other, they even work as a team. (Ibid., 84)