The Uncertain Basis for Today's LDS Tithing
Policies
Beginning at book
page 101, see a more complete discussion of "The Paid Ministry
Issue," including why the Scriptures unanimously condemn a paid ministry
system, while also setting forth the correct and far more efficient charity and
welfare systems operating at the beginning of the restoration of the church at
the time of Christ and at the time of Joseph Smith, which ended the use of the
mechanistic Law of Moses tithing system. "The Correct Answer"
begins at page 106 and explains the early church's method of exercising member
charity, in a way far more efficient than today's centralized tax-and-spend
tithing system.
Some
general observations:
There is an uncertain basis for
today's tithing policies. At no point in our voluminous scriptures or history is
there a totally complete and unequivocal statement that fully supports the
extreme claims made by the church today that every member must pay 10% of his
income annually to the central church in order to attend the temple and
otherwise constantly and continuously be considered a member in good standing. This
also means keeping his salvation up-to-date and continuously effective in case
he dies. This is our version of the Protestant idea of being "saved,"
although theirs is a better "once and for all" situation. This repetitive subscription model of salvation
is a very clever way to extract money from people, playing upon their fears of
not knowing if they are continuously approved of God. This puts the LDS church at least
60 years ahead of software subscription services such as Adobe who came
relatively late to adopting this subscription technique for establishing a
continuous revenue stream.
And, after receiving those payments,
the central church then has accepted no responsibility whatsoever to report back what
that money was spent for or to be responsible for achieving good results with
that money or to even report how things turned out. Almost every other
charitable organization is expected to report its receipt and application of
monies, but the LDS church tells no one, not even its members. That seems to explain
why the church is unrated by charity auditing organizations.
I have invented my own church charity
rating system, and by that measure, the LDS church only effectively applies
about 2% of the money it receives to its main scriptural mission of spreading
the gospel. Certainly, the extreme upper limit of what it might be credited
with spending effectively is not more than 10%, and I consider the whole
situation almost a complete failure, based on original expectations
Overall, the church now spends about
$400,000 in resources for every long-term member it adds to the rolls. It seems
likely that in a better system, spending $4,000 would be much more than enough
to give people the information and experiences that would bring them into the
church, and it should really be much less than that. Using the $4,000 measure,
that would indicate that the LDS church has a 99% overhead rate on
administering the gospel, making it among the worst-performing charities.
The church headquarters unit has the
good fortune of having a captive audience -- its members, perhaps mesmerized --
which apparently stopped paying attention to what the central church was
actually doing nearly 100 years ago. No one seems to care anymore about any
general church missions or accomplishments in the broader world as long as each
individual member has his personal needs mostly met. This general
self-centeredness is a major problem, as I see it. It is a gospel content
problem as well as an administrative problem.
If a person does NOT pay his tithing,
in today's church policy structure that is the equivalent of committing a
serious sin, a crime, because that person becomes a person not in good standing
and cannot attend the temple. That person is thus effectively partially
disfellowshipped, regardless of any other factors that might be operating in
his favor. The LDS concept of an afterlife does not include a Hell for people
to burn in, but its leaders get the same rhetorical effect of consigning the
members to a burning if they don't pay their tithing.
When defining a crime, it is common legislative
practice (and presumably should be religious practice for sins as well, for the
same reasons) to define all the elements of that crime so that there can be no
misunderstanding, since the consequences of failing to abide by those rules can
be very serious, possibly including fines and incarceration -- the loss of
freedom. Justice cannot be seen to be done if a crime is not first carefully
defined long before anyone can legally commit that crime. The principle is
demonstrated in our nation's Constitution where it is forbidden to make
something a crime after the fact – any so-called ex post facto legislation.
Reverting
to some of the worst aspects of the old Law of Moses, times 10
Tithing
As a very general issue to be brought
up before going on too far, it should be mentioned that the Law of Moses was
very specifically ended with the restitution of the full gospel by Christ
himself. That alone should make us very leery of reinventing even a single
"Law-of-Moses style" rule within the church, especially if it is for
the convenience of church leaders. The old Law of Moses rule of tithing was
perhaps the most intrusive rule of all of the 613 constraints on Jewish
behavior. It required the Israelites to send 1/10th of the foodstuffs they
produced to the cities occupied by the tribe of Levi. The Levites in turn sent
1/10th of that 1/10th to the capital city of Jerusalem for supporting the
Temple and priestly activities there. So, to begin with, under the law of
Moses, the law of tithing was quite a bit less burdensome than the current
rules, and, we might carefully note, only 1% of the foodstuffs made it to the
central offices in Jerusalem for religious functions there. In other words, we
start out with multiplying the Law of Moses at least times 10 in our own era by
demanding that all contributions go to Salt Lake City. That ought to require an
extremely strenuous explanation of why this "Law of Moses times 10"
rule ought to be observed in our own time.
Supposedly, we have no more
professional priests today, since under today's rules, every man is his own
priest, and it would be foolishness for a priest to pay himself 10% for
conducting his priestly duties. Nonetheless, at this point, we have a self-perpetuating
"tribe" of extremely well-paid "Levites" carrying out their
professional priestly duties in Salt Lake City, apparently in complete
contradiction to the intent of Christ in doing away with the Law of Moses and
most of its enforced social rules including tribalism and the Sanhedrin/central
bureaucracy.
We should certainly notice that the
Word of Wisdom -- something which sounds very much like an old Law of Moses
law, and yet is a great deal less intrusive and demanding than the relatively
recently imposed policy on tithing -- was not given to us in the form of an
exact Law of Moses rule, but rather as "not by commandment or constraint,
but by revelation and the word of wisdom." It certainly has some
cleanliness and health factors to commend it, and we make quite a production
out of letting people know that we don't drink or smoke or do illegal drugs.
Logically, since tithing is perhaps 100 times more important to most people
than the Word of Wisdom, we ought to make the biggest possible production out
of telling everyone that we all must pay all of our tithing directly and only to
church headquarters before we can be considered serious members of the church.
If living the simple Word of Wisdom makes us seem like devout religionists, we
ought to wear a big tithing receipt on our clothing at all times, or around our
necks, like the old Jewish phylacteries, to signal our far more extreme level
of exacting Mosaic virtue.
Recommends
Even making the 13+ questions of the
recommend interview a critical part of living the gospel, including swearing
fealty to a particular earthly organization, sounds strangely like bringing
back the old Law of Moses lists of precise behavior to conform to before members
can be certified as good members and considered pure and not unclean. Such a
list, administered by a new form of Sanhedrin, was quite evidently NOT part of
Christ's gospel. It seems like some kind of line has been crossed when the
church moves from "teaching correct principles," and providing good
examples, to enforcing certain quality control rules so that the central church
can claim they have created a specific standardized product out of their
members.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/comments/3dqj2m/here_are_the_13_questions_lds_bishops_will_ask/
Christ not only said that he came to
end the law of Moses, but he spoke with scorn about its tithing aspects.
"Ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier
matters of the law." Matt. 23:23.
It appears that the precise tithing aspects are objectionable for the very reason
that they are so precise and thus can give the illusion of having completely
fulfilled one's responsibilities. The concept of an exact tithing is advocated in
our own time by saying that by fulfilling that law precisely, one can then
claim they are perfect in at least one thing. But it is that very precision
that might be sought for and claimed in religious matters that is indeed an
illusion and a diversion from the more imprecise but more valuable feelings of
empathy for the needs of other people.
As has occurred in our own time,
members can justifiably claim that they have fulfilled all of their charitable
duties by sending their 10% to Salt Lake City, and then they can forget about
any other needs around them, whether obvious or not. This actually creates an
insensitive and insular state of mind which does not have much to commend it.
One might expect that if Christ were
going to change his mind on something he had treated with such disdain during
his life, that he would "repent" if he had earlier made a mistake on
this point, and then would explain in excruciating detail exactly how one was
supposed to live this law in the times that were prophesied to contain the
gospel in its most perfect and complete form.
There is no sign in the New Testament
that the early Saints had any such program, although they did have a great
reputation about taking care of their own members in times of hardship, along
with taking care of their neighbors, in commendable Good Samaritan fashion. It
seems they were indeed being better Christians than we are today when we have
allowed power-seeking central organizations to take very large amounts of our
money and then spend it in unchristian and wasteful ways, seriously interfering
with our ability to act spontaneously as good Christians as the early Saints
obviously did.
Our own more recent Scriptures do use
the word "tithing," but even those scriptures make it clear that the
term "tithing" just refers to any and all member contributions. Even
when the modern-day Scriptures seem to set 1/10th as an expected minimal level
of contributions, it never explicitly says that those funds may not be
administered by the members themselves without any precise Law of Moses payment
to some central organization, if such a central organization even exists.
Getting
into some details
Maybe the time has
now come to analyze and account for every use of the word or concept of tithing
in the doctrine and covenants and other scriptures. The point is, I believe
that nowhere in the doctrine and covenants -- today's important revelation and
policy document -- is the complete tithing policy today justified by any clear
statement. There are fragments of statements dealing with the issue of tithing,
but they never add up to today's policy.
Rather, they support the exact historical
behavior of the Saints, as being the correct behavior, at least until 1896 when
the church leaders attempted to change this rational and very effective tithing
policy to something else which was tailored to the personal desires and empire-building
ambitions of church leaders. The reported 1899 statements of Lorenzo Snow, at
least on their face, were simply a restatement of what had always been the
gospel policy on tithing after the ending of the Law of Moses. It appears that
only by implication and unofficial and off-the-record administrative statements
and policy changes was that restatement gradually and secretly rewritten to
reach where we are today.
Here are all the D&C verses that
appear to deal with the definition of tithing:
64:23 Behold, now it is
called today until the coming of the Son of Man, and verily it is a day of
sacrifice, and a day for the tithing of my people; for he that is tithed shall
not be burned that his coming.
85:3 It is contrary to
the will and commandment of God that those who receive not their inheritance by
consecration, agreeable to his law, which he has given, that he may tithe his
people, to prepare them against the day of vengeance and burning, should have
their names enrolled with the people of God.
97:10 Verily I say unto
you, that it is my will that the house should be built unto me in the land of
Zion [Jackson County, Missouri], like unto the pattern which I have given you.
11 Yea, let it be built speedily, by the
tithing of my people.
12 Behold, this is the tithing and the
sacrifice which I, the Lord, require at their hands, that there may be a house
built unto me for the salvation of Zion –
Section 119
Revelation
given through Joseph Smith the Prophet, at Far West, Missouri, July 8, 1838, in
answer to his supplication: “O Lord! Show unto thy servants how much thou
requirest of the properties of thy people for a tithing.” The law of tithing,
as understood today, had not been given to the Church previous to this
revelation. The term tithing in the prayer just quoted and in previous revelations
(64:23; 85:3; 97:11) had meant not just one-tenth, but all free-will offerings,
or contributions, to the Church funds. The Lord had previously given to the
Church the law of consecration and stewardship of property, which members
(chiefly the leading elders) entered into by a covenant that was to be
everlasting. Because of failure on the part of many to abide by this covenant,
the Lord withdrew it for a time and gave instead the law of tithing to the
whole Church. The Prophet asked the Lord how much of their property He required
for sacred purposes. The answer was this revelation.
1–5, The
Saints are to pay their surplus property and then give, as tithing, one-tenth
of their interest annually; 6–7, Such a course will sanctify the land of Zion.
119:1 Verily, thus saith the Lord, I require
all their surplus property to be put into the hands of the bishop of my church
in Zion,
2 For the building of mine house, and for the
laying of the foundation of Zion and for the priesthood, and for the debts of
the Presidency of my Church.
3 And this shall be the beginning of the
tithing of my people.
4 And after that, those who have thus been
tithed shall pay one-tenth of all their interest annually; and this shall be a
standing law unto them forever, for my holy priesthood, saith the Lord.
5 Verily I say unto you, it shall come to
pass that all those who gather unto the land of Zion shall be tithed of their
surplus properties, and shall observe this law, or they shall not be found
worthy to abide among you.
6 And I say unto you, if my people observe
not this law, to keep it holy, and by this law sanctify the land of Zion unto
me, that my statutes and my judgments may be kept thereon, that it may be most
holy, behold, verily I say unto you, it shall not be a land of Zion unto you.
7 And this shall be an ensample unto all the
stakes of Zion. Even so. Amen.
Section 120
Revelation
given through Joseph Smith the Prophet, at Far West, Missouri, July 8, 1838,
making known the disposition of the properties tithed as named in the preceding
revelation, section 119.
1 Verily, thus saith the Lord, the time is
now come, that it shall be disposed of by a council, composed of the First
Presidency of my Church, and of the bishop and his council, and by my high
council; and by mine own voice unto them, saith the Lord. Even so. Amen.
First of all, if the
central church is going to claim to have the drastic right to receive 10% of
everyone's income in order for them to be a church member in good standing and
receive the higher ordinances, then they ought to have the highest possible
proof of that assertion, not some pieced-together jumble. In this case I
believe the concept of tithing is a great deal less mandatory and a great deal
less detailed in its definition than is the Word of Wisdom, which started out
as counsel and not commandment. The Word of Wisdom was counsel to everyone, and
it did not become a commandment until many decades later. The concept of
tithing as an absolute rule and a commandment did not become an absolute and
binding commandment until about 1960, nearly a century after the word of wisdom
was accepted as a commandment.
There are some
difficult and confusing events that the Saints suffered through in their first
few years, and it would make no practical sense to take any ambiguity or
confusion which comes out of those early decades as an absolute law to be
adopted much later. The leaders of today interpret these tithing statements as
absolute and binding commands, but it is very important to notice that the
church members of the times did not, nor did the leaders. By today's
interpretation of the terms of tithing, nearly every church member up until
1960 would have been ineligible to be a church member in good standing, and
attend the temple and receive its ordinances, and they were supposedly all subject
to being burned at His coming, since it was not required that they say any more
than that they thought tithing was a good idea, whether they actually lived it
or not. This should tell us that there is something fundamentally wrong with
our current interpretation of the words in the Doctrine and Covenants.
Sections 64 and 83 tell us that we need to be tithed to not
burn at His coming, but it does not define tithing to only be considered
correct and complete if every last penny of it is paid to the central church
headquarters. Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery administered their own tithing
before the church was organized, and that was the rule, in general, up until at
least 1899. I don't believe anyone would say that all the church members up
until 1899 would have deserved being burned at His coming because of the
supposedly faulty way in which they handled their tithing. They did enormous
amounts of good with that tithing, not the least of which was getting the
Saints established safely in the West.
Section 97 is a little more specific, in that it tells
the Saints that they should plan to focus their future contributions (referred
to as tithing) on building a temple in Jackson County, Missouri, much like they
had done earlier in Kirtland. But, apparently, that was not to be, and the next
focus was on the temple in Nauvoo.
Section 119 sounds very specific on first reading, but
in fact it does not completely define and support today's tithing policy. On
the "excess" issue, from what I can see of church history, there was
hardly a single person who made it to Jackson County who had anything that
would be considered "surplus property." Most of them had only the
barest amount of property that would sustain them and allow them to get to
Missouri. The idea of putting that property into a central pool for others to
use made no practical sense at all. In most cases, an inventory was kept, just
to go through the motions, but very little made it into the common fund.
My assumption is that the members
continued to do what they always did, which is to help each other as needed,
and even this suggested, limited, one-time, level of church government
tax-and-spend administration was pointless and ineffective.
There probably were a
few wise, careful, and industrious souls who made it to Jackson County with
some excess cash which could be put into the pool to pay off the very large
real estate loan negotiated by Joseph Smith.
But, as the leaders more
than once complained, too many people just pulled up stakes and left behind
whatever valuable property they might have had, taking little of that value
with them in their haste. Their responsiveness and eagerness is commendable,
but it was still impractical to conduct a large-scale migration with no
resources, simply because no one took the time to preserve and transfer those
resources to the new location. Quite sensibly, later arrangements were made to sell
land left behind, or to swap it for Missouri land.
With the short-term
need to pay off those real estate loans, contracted for the direct benefit of
the members, not the leaders, it made sense for the members to pay for the land
they occupied, if they could. But this does not suggest that the church leaders
had the permission of the members to spend money willy-nilly on their behalf or
for any random purpose without any consultation. The leaders were taking great
financial risks on behalf of the members, rather than the other way around, as
we typically see today.
It was important for Joseph Smith and
other administrators to be able to pay off the real estate loans they had taken
out on the land where the Saints were settled. That would make it important to
apply every dollar that was available and to avoid any kind of waste. Certainly
it would be wasteful to have land or goods that went unused when there were
people who needed them and could put them to good use. The Saints were all in
this together, and this was an extraordinary tribal kind of situation where all
of them working together was barely enough to allow them to survive.
Those extraordinary
measures were indeed unusual and it would be unreasonable to continue them
after the critical need was past. Ordinary self-reliance, perhaps along with
various individualized insurance programs should normally be adequate. It would
be like the pioneers who participated in essentially an army operation as they
crossed the plains, as a matter of necessity. But it would be foolishness to
then decide that was the ideal state for all of life and to continue those
military-style living arrangements for the rest of their lives for some
arbitrary religion-based reason.
There seems to still be
great confusion about the supposed "law of consecration." As vaguely
suggested in the headnotes, the United Order (or United Firm) was really
nothing more than a silent business partnership, requiring no specific government
authorization to operate, which was organized among a few of the leaders to
help take care of church business. It never applied to anyone else, and it was
never intended to.
Incidentally, an
entry in Joseph Smith's History of the Church indicates that the Kirtland
Temple was owned by the group of men who contributed to it and helped to build
it, indicating that there did not even exist a church formal business unit to
hold title, or that if there were, it would not be appropriate to put the title
there.
It is one thing for
church members to be expected to contribute 10% of their increase to gospel
purposes. It is quite a different thing to expect that all of that 10% would go
to church headquarters for their use, especially when anyone associated with
church headquarters was not in a position to do anything much more with it than
simply help pay off the general costs of lands that had been occupied by church
members. Again, the most convincing evidence of the correct interpretation is
the behavior of the members and leaders for the next 40+ years as each man used
his own good sense about where 10% of his income might be best allocated. In the
alternative, is anyone willing to charge all the early saints with apostasy? Since
we are now nearly 200 years from the restoration, it is more likely that they
were right than that we are, after a long period of doctrinal drift.
Those early Saints
were right on many things where we have it wrong. For example, the Mountain
Meadow Massacre incident appears to be a case where the early Saints had the
better sense and better morals, and it appears that we malign them today simply
because we are trying to defend our policies today, many of which are
indefensible, while the early saints had it right, such as on the tithing issue.
Our trying to make them seem foolish and evil perhaps is done to try to make us
today look more wise and righteous, but, by so doing, we are being unfair, and
we simply verify that we are indeed the more foolish and unethical ones.
A portion of Section
119:
4 And after that, those who have thus been
tithed shall pay one-tenth [to where or to whom?] of all their interest
annually; and this shall be a standing law unto them forever, for my holy
priesthood, saith the Lord.
I think we should more
closely consider the phrase that "this shall be a standing law… for my
holy priesthood." By that I believe is meant every man who holds the
priesthood, not just those who have special assignments such as the apostles or
the first presidency. I think there is a tendency to read it as though it said
"TO my holy priesthood [meaning only the top church leaders]," or
that the tithing is "FOR my holy priesthood," meaning that the
leaders should get all the tithing, but I don't believe either reading is what
is said or is meant in the situation.
Obviously, it would
be much better for the church today if there were an unequivocally clear statement about how much was to be
paid, exactly where it was supposed to go, perhaps some more regulations on
exactly how it was supposed to be used, etc. But since we don't have that sort
of thing, a Law of Moses level of detail, in today's "law" itself, it
is useful to go to the "legislative and administrative history," or,
in other words, how it was interpreted by the members and leaders at the time.
And I believe it is perfectly clear that no one interpreted these words that
way at that time.
Section 120 designates a management group to decide what
the central church should do with whatever tithing (member contributions in
general) the church might receive, given at member discretion, as required by
basic religious freedom, but it does not go beyond that to aggressively define
tithing and turn it into a precise religious law of a binding nature such as
aspects of the old and disavowed Law of Moses.
We might note as a
practical matter, that there really WAS no functioning church headquarters
which could do much more than print a few books and vaguely discuss and plan a
movement West, for most of the time up till 1896. In many cases it would have
been the height of foolishness to try to send one's tithing to the central
church headquarters, especially when that headquarters was about to be
dissolved and all its assets taken by the federal government. That was perhaps
the most striking situation, but there were many of those kinds of situations over
the 76 year period from 1820 up to 1896.
Certainly at the
beginning, and perhaps at all times, "tithing," that is, potential
member contributions, was better kept "on the hoof" (something like
the concept of a walking blood bank), that is, in member possession, up until
the time of actual need, rather than attempting to centrally gather great
stores of wealth in any one place, creating a great temptation to leaders and
outsiders, and creating a great risk that attempts would be made to rob it or
take it by crime or by legalized force.
It appears that this "on
the hoof" policy would be a good practice for all time. If the church
leaders actually had faith in the wisdom of the members, and truly sought to be
servants and not masters, they would not see any need to stockpile resources
for any such purposes as creating pensions for church leaders or employees, or
setting aside "rainy day" funds to keep the church operating at full
budget in difficult times, completely independent of what might be happening to
the members.
There are two great
risks associated with a political government -- a standing army, and government
access to a large amount of "standing" money. The federal
government-sponsored central bank, known as the Federal Reserve, constantly
debases our money for its own profit while giving the government borrowing and budgetary
powers it ought not to have without specific legislation. We also have a large
standing army and the associated military-industrial complex which spends our
money excessively and irresponsibly and constantly encourages war.
With the church, we
see the problem today from the centralizing of assets so that the church headquarters
is under constant political, legal, and criminal attack, and it must maintain a
huge army of very expensive lawyers and other staff to stave off the barbarians
attacking from every direction. If there were no centralized assets, but only
specific requests at specific times for specific, clearly justified needs, most
or all of those very expensive central preparations and fortifications would be
completely unnecessary, and the leaders would not need to constantly feel such
crippling fear of actually pushing the gospel message out into the world, and
possibly getting some unpleasant reactions, which they alone had to deal with.
The first century
A.D. Saints had no problem finding the best places for their
"tithing" or contributions or charity to be allocated, and they were
extremely successful in spreading the gospel. If we could do as well today, using
the same methods, then perhaps we ought to be using their methods.
We should remember
that the federal government attacked the church viciously in Brigham Young's day,
confiscating property where possible, including the church's money and even the
temple. Political attitudes and risks may have improved slightly since those
days, but it is hard to say whether things are really better or worse, simply
because the church is now so much wealthier. The LDS Church, which is widely
known to have many billions of dollars in property holdings and income
concentrated in one place, might reasonably be targeted by those who wish to
get money from the church's deep pockets or to hurt its progress, or both.
The persecutors of
Joseph Smith imagined that if they killed him, the entire movement would fall
apart. A little bit later the federal government hoped that if they dissolved
the church corporation and took all of its assets, it would also cease to
exist. The same impulse to supposedly cut off the head of the church and
therefore destroy it completely seems to keep recurring, but the essence of the
church is NOT found in one or a few men at the top, but no one seems to understand
that, including the leaders themselves, as they keep making themselves more important
and indispensable, continuously presenting a tempting target to the world. Many millions are spent each year to defend
the church leaders and the church itself from actual and potential outside
attacks, when most of that very expensive defensive structure would be
completely unnecessary if church headquarters collapsed back to a tiny shadow
of its form today. In other words, the very fact of having a large and wealthy central
headquarters sets up a feedback loop which causes further enormous unnecessary
expense, which accomplishes nothing except to keep presenting a target which
needs an expensive defense. This is the perfect world for bureaucrats, who
"earn" and justify their salaries merely by their superfluous
existence. This is bureaucracy self-created ex nihilo, like god creating
himself.
We might recall that
there was an attempt to declare a salary for the church leaders, just Joseph
Smith and Oliver Cowdery, I believe, which proposal was first passed and then specifically
defeated. That ought to clear up the question of what the church leaders and
members thought about that matter in the early days. That policy probably had
not changed until Wilford Woodruff decided that he was extremely committed to
making that policy change, even willing to basically excommunicate an apostle
for apostasy for not agreeing with him on the controversial and contentious
issue of using tithing for the personal support of church leaders -- basically giving
them an official salary for the first time. Not incidentally, such a salary
would likely serve as a means of controlling and disciplining leaders who ought
to be able to use their untrammeled judgement in all important matters
pertaining to the gospel. But now as employees, they would tend to be very
subservient to the church president who controlled their salary and other
perquisites of office. The pretense that apostles should be independent "prophets"
would be greatly weakened.
Analysis
of D&C sections for establishing today's church tithing policy
|
Today's tithing policy elements, in increments
|
D&C sections
|
Source: unwritten policy position
/comments
|
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64:23
|
85:3
|
97:10
|
119
|
120
|
|
It is a religious duty to make useful religious charitable
contributions to someone or for some good purpose
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
|
|
/ An unremarkable view of common religious charity.
|
It is a
religious duty to make charitable contributions to someone or for some good
purpose or be burned at his coming
|
X
|
X
|
|
|
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/ This is not an argument to pay all religious charitable
contributions to the central church. God will make this determination, not
the central church.
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It is a religious duty to pay 10% of income as charitable
contributions to someone or for some good purpose. (This sets only the level,
but not the disposition.)
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X
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X
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/ There is some contextual implication that all tithing (10%)
goes to the central church, but it was never done in practice until it
gradually and very slowly began in 1899 and ended in about 1960, indicating
that was not the original accepted meaning.
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It is a religious duty to pay all religious charitable
contributions to the central church
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X
/ Never commanded, and very contrary to Christ's actual
practices
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The central church is empowered to spend all the money received
through charitable contributions at their unrestrained and unreported
discretion
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X
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/ But this was never done legally or in practice until it began
in 1923 and became complete in about 1960, indicating that no one thought
that was the intended policy in the 1838 revelation, now D&C section 120.
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It is a religious duty to make useful charitable religious
contributions to someone or for some good purpose or be partially
disfellowshipped, as in losing temple attendance privileges.
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X
/ Not enforced consistently until about 1960, indicating that no
one thought that was the policy commanded in any of the Joseph Smith-era
revelations. And we have no written and approved and canonized revelations to
that effect yet.
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Explanation:
The main point here is that none of the D&C sections covers
all the elements of today's church policy on tithing in one place so that the
meanings and interrelationships of all the elements are clear. In fact, none
of the D&C sections include more than two of the elements. And all of the
sections together, even if overlaying them and making them cumulative were
legitimate (which it probably is not), that still does not clearly provide
all of the elements of today's tithing policy. Only by adding very
significant extra-scriptural administrative decisions can today's church
tithing policy be pieced together. On such a critical point as
"tithing" mere habit and tradition should not be acceptable as
complete and binding.
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More details and side issues
●Church historians and leaders have
done the church a great disservice by continually trying to keep alive an
attempt to insert socialism into the church teachings and organization where it
was always completely foreign to gospel freedom concepts. These continuing
attempts to insert political power doctrines into an ideology which explicitly
condemns the seeking of power over others are completely misguided and
self-serving.
●The higher ordinances were at times
administered in such places as the rooms of Joseph Smith's store in Nauvoo, or
in the endowment house in Salt Lake City. Although it is apparently preferred
that these ordinances be administered in a more formally specialized and
designated temple, especially while doing work for the dead, those ordinances have
been nonetheless perfectly valid when administered in other ways. A suggestion was
recently made by a junior general authority (obviously speaking out of turn) that
similar "endowment house" methods might be used even today, when the
Saints in a particular area might have great difficulty in building a proper
Temple because of lack of resources or perhaps because of political resistance,
but there is no obvious reason why they should be denied access to the higher
ordinances because of these local difficulties. The 33 A.D. saints seem to have
found easy solutions to this problem.
●In locations where civil marriages
are very difficult or expensive, bishops or missionaries should be able to
marry people for free (even at the risk of some conflict with the political
government), and sealings should also take place in local facilities. The
central church's stern insistence on being sealed only in temples which might
be far away, and could cause a family great difficulty to reach, appears to be
just a disguised, dishonest, and altogether unnecessary plea to extract more
money from members through a semi-extortionist process, part of which is
telling sob stories of families selling all they had to travel to a temple,
presumably damaging their livelihoods and their futures as a result, all
supposedly as a trial of their faith.
●The church does sometimes claim that
the contributions which go towards humanitarian assistance throughout the world
are delivered without any deduction for administration costs. That is
commendable, and should encourage more such contributions, but it should also
be remembered that is probably just a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, since
whatever administration costs there might be are simply borne by other kinds of
contributions to the church. It seems likely that the reason the church can
claim to deliver humanitarian assistance money without deducting for
administrative costs is simply because the bulk of that money is simply
transferred to some other humanitarian assistance organization which WILL then
spend a significant amount of that money on its administrative overhead. In
other words, there is a more than a little bit of imprecision and obfuscation
in presenting church policies and their practical consequences.
