Chapter 14

 The use of "increase" vs. "interest" in tithing scriptures and history

There are a host of issues potentially raised in the following quotes, which relate to contributions and "tithing," which ought to be fully explored for the lessons that are in them about church administration, but

what caught my eye and began this analysis is simply the unexpected appearance of the word "interest" where one might expect to see the word "increase."

There is a strange and unexplained disconnect between the latter-day printed revelations on the topic of tithing, and the historical practices and rhetoric associated with that topic of tithing. It has to do with the inconsistent use of the terms "increase" and "interest." Since the inconsistent use of these terms is unintelligible, and unresolvable based on the information that is available, I am going to take this opportunity to supply meanings which I consider more consistent with the long-term history of the gospel of Christ.

The following three extracts from the history of the church are presented in order of their appearance in the history of the church. The sequence begins with the July 8, 1838 revelation on tithing now published as section 119 in the Doctrine and Covenants. The term "interest" is used for apparently the only time in the history of scriptures on the topic of tithing. The revelation is followed by an epistle by the Twelve Apostles dated December 13, 1841 on the topic of baptism for the dead, where the term "increase" is used, and then by an October, 1844 address by John Taylor on the same topic as the earlier epistle, where the term "increase" is also used. (We might wonder if John Taylor was actually the person who wrote the earlier 1841 epistle.)

One point to be made here is that even though several years elapsed between the date of the revelation and the following two important entries in the history, it is as though the text of the revelation had very little effect on how church leaders spoke concerning this policy. In both cases, the leadership language follows the overwhelmingly predominant theme in the Scriptures concerning the (Old Testament) definition of tithing (undefined and unused in the New Testament version of the gospel since tithing had no meaning in that religious system), which is that one is to pay tithing on one-tenth of a person's "increase." The supposedly new and thus potentially important term "interest" is simply never used in any later public discourse. Perhaps either the language they read in the revelation was different from what we read today, or the words of the revelation were so imprecise and confusing that they simply ignored them and used the standard Old Testament formulation.

D&C 119

History of the Church p.525 of 3032

The three revelations which I received January 12, 1838, the day I left Kirtland, were read in the public congregation at Far West; and the same day I inquired of the Lord, "O Lord! Show unto thy servant how much thou requirest of the properties of thy people for a tithing," and received the following answer, which was also read in public:

[Obviously here "tithing" clearly doesn't mean exactly one-tenth, as the word itself implies, or why would there even be a question to be asked here? To make logical sense, the term "contributions" or "financial responsibility" probably should be used to replace the term "tithing." As the headnote below suggests, any free-will offerings or contributions were often referred to as "tithing."]

Revelation, Given at Far West, July 8, 1838.

[Headnotes added later: 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 [a very questionable interpretation of church history], 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 [more questionable historical interpretation]. 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.]

Comments on headnotes: There are at least two interpretation errors or unjustified assertions concerning D&C 119 as presented in the headnotes. They seem to want us to accept 10% as a baseline and then add other church contributions on top of that. But that is not at all what I read in the revelations or in the history. That seems to be nothing more than current leadership wishful thinking. The current church leadership wants to assert that the law of consecration and stewardship was a marvelous invention that gave church leaders massive control over the economics of the Saints. But it was nothing of the sort. It was nothing more than a version of the corporation of the president for that time period which was really just a standard silent business partnership put together for a short time to handle certain specific aspects of central church administration. I wrote two books on that and related topics. This narrative about withdrawing the supposedly comprehensive law of consecration and stewardship and replacing it with the more "limited" tithing is a complete fabrication. It has nothing to do with the gospel of Christ or with actual church history from any known time period.

1. Verily, thus saith the Lord, I require all their surplus property to be put into the hands of the Bishop of my Church of Zion,

["Surplus property" is a very vague definition – obviously to be determined by the property owner. Who else can wisely determine what is "surplus" in each of the cases of thousands of busy members without arbitrarily causing economic damage and loss of religious freedom?]

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;

[To be paid to whom? It is not clear – free will charity is the gospel answer, and property owners make that determination, not central bureaucracies.]

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 [be asked to make contributions from] their surplus properties, and shall observe this law, or they shall not be found worthy to abide among you.

[Were any thrown out from among them? None that I know of.]

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.

The use of the word "interest" here is somewhat obscure or nonsensical, so I shall attempt to define it in a way that could make some practical sense. I am going to slightly rewrite verse 6: "by this law (of member individually administered contributions made to improve society) sanctify the land of Zion unto me, that my statutes and my judgments may be kept thereon, that it may be most holy, [and] behold, verily I say unto you, it shall ... be a land of Zion unto you;"

The key thought is that members should maintain an "interest" in performing charitable deeds and an "interest" in improving society and establishing Zion by using their own resources, their own charity, and acting accordingly.

I argue that it is only idealistic Christian charity that can make a degenerate worldly society into a Zion. We can be certain with any kind of bureaucracy, civil or religious, will not do it -- they are the problem, not the solution. Solving that problem is the assignment of individual church members. As we have proven over the past 120 years, it is quite pointless to expect church leaders to take all of those necessary steps on their own. They will just spend the money on themselves and essentially waste it. We see that although "tithing" is nearly perfectly enforced today according to Old Testament ways of thinking, there has been no measurable improvement to our society through its use, especially since the leaders have been holding all the money for their own use and have applied not a dime of it to major improvements to our society. In other words, since the centrally-collected tithing is essentially all wasted or hoarded, the payment of a formal 10% actually leads to far less improvement to the society than if the members had kept that money and used it as they saw fit.

Following another line of logic, I consider it plausible (but fairly unimportant) that the normal business use of the term "interest" could make sense here. In our current tax code "interest" is considered unearned income. Perhaps one member's version of "paying tithing" could be to pay 1/10 of whatever he receives as a passive return on investment which would be called "interest" under today's accounting rules. As I see it, under the rules which Christ set out, no one is legally bound to pay a single penny in mandatory "tithing" to be eligible for salvation here or to maintain good standing in the church. So, paying 1/10 of a person's unearned income is just as good a measure as any other. Perhaps the flexibility in today's individualized tithing calculation (gross versus net, etc.) exists because of the lack of precision in the scriptural computation methods plus the lack of confidence in the whole concept of making salvation contingent on paying tithing.

Nauvoo temple and baptism for the dead

I hate to be critical of the Nauvoo Saints and all their efforts and the many exhortations they received from their leaders to do even more, but I believe there may be another way to look at this whole situation. A review of all aspects of church history at this point would be helpful to reach a balanced view, but it appears to me that the strategic thinking of the Saints was very lacking here and it caused them many difficulties. If these people had followed Joseph Smith and his suggestion that they go West as soon as possible, they could have saved that onerous and largely wasted effort devoted to the Nauvoo Temple and used it to build a temple after they reached a safer place such as Salt Lake City (if a temple is needed at all).

It strikes me that here we have the Twelve trying to whip the saints into building a temple to save their dead, which is an all-too-familiar bit of rhetoric and excuse and guilt trip to get more out of the saints than they may otherwise be prepared to give (and to have church administrators advance themselves to become administrators of members' resources, which is normally none of their business.) It is only in crisis "wagon train" mode that it makes sense to have church leaders be temporal administrators. We left the wagon train phase long ago, but we have kept the redundant and destructive temporal administration aspects.).

Perhaps this is essentially a partial return to law of Moses concepts, involving rules and physical structures and ritual sacrifices, since the Saints refuse to understand and live the actual gospel concepts. Maybe, in our case, we had to repeat an old cycle, we had to go back to the law of Moses and then break away again from that mechanical thinking when we can finally comprehend what the gospel actually teaches. Perhaps as a result of our ignorance, we can only move forward if we see Christ crucified again, so to speak, or have our current leader, in this case Joseph Smith, die, before we can finally make the mental leap to the true higher law. As it turned out, we almost made it and then we fell back again and have not recovered.

To summarize, in my opinion, we would need much more voluminous and explicit and authoritative instruction than this one ambiguous and incoherent revelation containing a critical word which is unintelligible on its own to prompt us to switch to a full-blown law of Moses religious society, complete with the mandatory paid ministry and mandatory tithing to pay for it. Even if this revelation represented proper wisdom for that moment in time, it has now simply been stretched beyond what it can bear.

The ears perk up of every would-be professional priest looking for a free lunch when the subject of a potential increase of contributed money arises. That appears to include the Twelve themselves in the next two quotations:

History of the Church p.1564 of 3032

BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD.

An Epistle of the Twelve Apostles to the Saints of the Last Days.

The building of the Temple of the Lord in the city of Nauvoo, is occupying the first place in the exertions and prayers of many of the Saints at the present time, knowing, as they do, that if this building is not completed speedily, "we shall be rejected as a Church with our dead;" for the Lord our God hath spoken it.

But while many are thus engaged in laboring and watching and praying for this all important object, there are many, very many more, who do not thus come up to their privilege and their duty in this thing, and in many instances we are confident that their neglect arises from a want of proper understanding of the principles upon which this building is founded, and by which it must be completed. [Under the law of Moses?]

The children of Israel were commanded to build a house in the land of promise [under the law of Moses, not Christ's gospel]; and so are the Saints of the last days, as you will see in the Revelation given to Joseph the Seer, January 19, 1841, wherein those ordinances may be revealed which have been hid for ages, even their anointings and washings, and baptisms for the dead; wherein they may meet in solemn assemblies for their memorials, sacrifices, and oracles in their most holy places; and wherein they may receive conversations and statutes, and judgments, for the beginning of the revelations and foundations of Zion, and the glory and honor and adornment of all her municipals through the medium which God has ordained. [Temples are not required. God needs no place of stone to lay his head.]

In the same revelation the command is to "all the Saints from afar " as well as those already gathered to this place' to arise with one consent and build the Temple; to prepare a place where the Most High may manifest Himself to His people. No one is excepted who hath aught in his possession, for what have ye that ye have not received? And I will require mine own with usury, saith the Lord; so that those who live thousands of miles from this place, come under the same law, and are entitled to the same blessings and privileges as those who have already gathered. But some may say, how can this be, I am not there, therefore I cannot meet in the Temple, cannot be baptized in the font? The command of heaven is to you, to all, gather; and when you arrive here, if it is found that you have previously sent of your gold, or your silver, or your substance, the tithing and consecrations which are required of you for this building, you will find your names, tithings and consecrations written in the Book of the Law of the Lord, to be kept in the Temple, as a witness in your favor, showing that you are a proprietor in that building, and are entitled to your share of the privileges thereunto belonging.

One of those privileges which is particularly attracting the notice of the Saints at the present moment, is baptism for the dead, in the font which is so far completed as to be dedicated, and several have already attended to this ordinance by which the sick have been made whole, and the prisoner set free; but while we have been called to administer this ordinance, we have been led to inquire into the propriety of baptizing those who have not been obedient, and assisted to build the place for baptism; and it seems to us unreasonable to expect that the Great Jehovah will approbate such administration; for if the Church must be brought under condemnation, and rejected with her dead, if she fail to build the house and its appurtenances, why should not individuals of the Church, who thus neglect, come under the same condemnation? For if they are to be rejected, they may as well be rejected without baptism as with it; for their baptism can be of no avail before God, and the time to baptize them may be appropriated to building the walls of the house, and this is according to the understanding which we have received from him who is our spokesman.  [Perhaps the real purpose of building the Nauvoo Temple was to encourage more gathering -- something which was certainly needed. Recall that 90,000 members from England and Europe were needed to bolster the Saints in Utah enough to survive there.]

Let it not be supposed that the sick and the destitute are to be denied the blessings of the Lord's house; God forbid; His eye is ever over them for good. He that hath not, and cannot obtain, but saith in his heart, if I had, I would give freely, is accepted as freely as he that gives of his abundance. The Temple is to be built by tithing and consecration, and every one is at liberty to consecrate all they find in their hearts so to do; but the tithings required, is one-tenth of all anyone possessed at the commencement of the building, and one-tenth part of all his increase from that time until the completion of the same, whether it be money, or whatever he may be blessed with.

Many in this place are laboring every tenth day for the house, and this is the tithing of their income, for they have nothing else; others would labor the same, but they are sick, therefore excusable; when they get well, let them begin; while there are others who appear to think their own business of more importance than the Lord's. Of such we would ask, who gave you your time, health, strength, and put you into business? And will you not begin quickly to return with usury that which you have received? Our God will not wait always. [More guilt trips.]

We would remind some two or three hundred Elders, who offered to go on missions, some six months, others one year, and some two years, and had their missions assigned them at the general conference to labor on the Temple, that most of their names are still with us, and we wish them to call and take their names away, and give them up to the building committee.

Brethren, you have as great an interest at stake in this thing as we have, but as our Master, even the Master-builder of the Temple, whose throne is on high, has seen fit to constitute us stewards in some parts of His household; we feel it important for us to see to it that our Master is not defrauded, and especially by those who have pledged their word, their time, their talents, to His services; and we hope this gentle hint will suffice, that we may not be compelled to publish the names of those referred to. [More guilt trips.]

Probably some may think they could have gone on a mission, but cannot labor, as they have no means of boarding themselves, but let such remember that several score of brethren and sisters in this city, offered at the general conference, to board one or more laborers on the Temple till the same should be completed, and but few of those as yet have had the opportunity of boarding any one. To all such we would say, you are not forgotten, we have your names also, and we expect soon to send someone to your table, therefore put your houses in order and never be ready to refuse the first offer of a guest.

Large stores of provisions will be required to complete the work, and now is the time for securing it, while meat is plenty and can be had for one half the value that it can at other seasons of the year, and the weather is cool and suitable for packing. Let the brethren for two hundred miles around drive their fat cattle and hogs to this place, where they may be preserved, and there will be a supply till another favorable season rolls around, or till the end of the labor. [This image of hundreds of food animals being collected at the Temple to keep processes underway at the Temple sounds more than a little bit like what went on at the Temple of Herod in Jerusalem with its constant stream of sacrificial animals. That makes this whole process sound very much like a law of Moses operation.]

Now is the time to secure food, now is the time that the trustee is ready to receive your droves. Not the maimed, the lean, the halt, and the blind, and such that you cannot use; it is for the Lord, and He wants no such offering; but if you want His blessing, give Him the best, give Him as good as He has given you. Beds and bedding, socks, mittens, shoes, clothing of every description, and store goods are needed for the comfort of the laborers this winter; journeymen, stone cutters, quarrymen, teams and teamsters for drawing stone and all kinds of provision for men and beast, are needed in abundance.

There are individuals who have given nothing as yet, either as tithing or consecration, thinking that they shall be able to do a great deal some time hence if they continue their present income to their own use, but this is a mistaken idea. Suppose that all should act upon this principle, no one would do ought at present, consequently the building must cease, and this generation remain without a house, and the Church be rejected; then suppose the next generation labor upon the same principle, and the same in all succeeding generations, the Son of God would never have a place on the earth to lay His head. [He doesn't need one.]

Let every individual remember that their tithings and consecrations are required from what they have, and not what they expect to have some time hence, and are wanted for immediate use. All money and other property designed for tithing and consecrations to the building of the Temple must hereafter be presented to the Trustee in Trust, President Joseph Smith, and entered at the recorder's office, in the book before referred to; and all receipts now holden by individuals, which they have received of the building committee for property delivered to them, must also be forwarded to the recorder's office for entry, to secure the appropriation of said property according to the original design.

The Elders everywhere will instruct the brethren both in public and in private, in the principles and doctrines set forth in this Epistle, so that every individual in the Church may have a perfect understanding of his duty and privileges.

BRIGHAM YOUNG, HEBER C. KIMBALL, ORSON PRATT, WILLIAM SMITH, LYMAN WIGHT, WILFORD WOODRUFF, JOHN TAYLOR, GEO. A. SMITH, WILLARD RICHARDS. Nauvoo, Illinois, December 13, 1841.

In this epistle the Twelve seem already were pressing to reach a semi-law-of-Moses condition. Perhaps this epistle is the genesis of the LDS priestcraft movement which started small, with nothing more than some typical human inclinations and frustrations, but has now blossomed into the desired full-blown law of Moses operation.

Paying a huge amount of money to save your dead is a familiar religious theme which apparently started in 1841 and has now gone about as far as it can go. One might wonder how those early Christians in the Mediterranean area managed to fulfill their duty to the dead inexpensively with no temples and no computers and presumably few records. Why can't we do the same today?

At a conference in 1844, John Taylor once again advocates for doing work for the dead and completing a temple for that purpose:

History of the Church p.1863 of 3032

CHAPTER XXIII.

MINUTES OF THE IMPORTANT CONFERENCE OF OCTOBER 6TH TO 8TH, 1844----THE CHURCH SET IN ORDER ----DUTIES OF THE PRIESTHOOD EXPOUNDED----ECONOMICS CONSIDERED

...

1867/3032

He [Elder Taylor] exhorted the saints to be virtuous, humble and faithful, and concluded by blessing the saints.

He said further, in relation to the baptisms for the dead, that it would be better for the saints to go on and build the Temple before we urge our baptisms too much. [Is Elder Taylor implying that the Temple is optional for doing work for the dead?] There are cases which require being attended to, and there are provisions made for them; but as a general thing he would advise them not to be in too great a hurry [Is he perhaps saying that our duty to the dead is real, but that our duty to the living is more real?]. He said one of the clerks had asked whether any should be baptized who had not paid their tithing; it is our duty to pay our tithing, one-tenth of all we possess, and then one-tenth of our increase, and a man who has not paid his tithing is unfit to be baptized for his dead. It is as easy for a man who has ten thousand dollars to pay one thousand, as it is for a man who has but a little to pay one-tenth. It is our duty to pay our tithing. If a man has not faith enough to attend to these little things, he has not faith enough to save himself and his friends. It is a man's duty to attend to these things. The poor are not going to be deprived of these blessings because they are poor; no, God never reaps where he has not sown. This command is harder for the rich than the poor; a man who has one million dollars, if he should give one hundred thousand, he would think he was beggared forever. The Savior said, how hardly do they that have riches enter the kingdom of heaven.

The irony here is that the (confused) underlying theological logic seems to be that a person has to be fully in conformance with the old law of Moses, including the mandatory payment of tithing which was to be used to support a mandatory paid ministry, the Levites (the Twelve seem to be informally nominating themselves for that role), before that person can actually do any work for the dead, a New Testament concept. But we should notice that the law of Moses had no power to do anything about work for the dead since no one had the proper priesthood powers to do that work, and had no procedures in place for any such ordinances (and Christ had yet done the preparatory work in the spirit world so that work for the dead could proceed). Something does not compute, as they say.

Word use statistics

There is some subjectivity involved in making some of these word-use counts, but I don't think that affects the outcome in any way. On the scriptural use of the word "increase," in the LDS Topical Guide we find 27 instances, with 7 of them obviously relating to issues relating to tithing. Concerning the word "interest" as found in the LDS Topical Guide, we find 0 instances, since the topical guide does not even have an entry for the word "interest."

In the Index to the Triple Combination, we find 8 entries for the word "increase," with none of them clearly having anything to do with tithing topics. For the word "interest" we have 4 entries, with only one of them obviously relating to tithing issues, D&C 119.

The use of a complete concordance gives us some larger numbers, with 173 entries found in the LDS Scriptures for "increase", and 15 entries found in LDS Scriptures for "interest." As far as I can tell, this extended list of words in each case has no effect on the final conclusion, which is that the use of the word "interest" only occurs once when discussing topics related to tithing, in D&C 119, and indeed appears to be an anomaly in that single case.

Other detailed comments

The use of the word "interest" seems to be an anomaly here, perhaps a typographical error made at the time it was first printed. It appears to be the only place in the entire body of Scripture where this thought is expressed using that word. In every other case I can find, the term "increase" is used, and that implies a very different meaning and answer.

The use of this word is such an anomaly, that it is even possible that it was an intentional change made much later by the advocates of a paid ministry. The word "interest" is very confusing, but the word "increase" is not confusing. I'm going to guess that the Lord originally gave the least confusing answer to the question, not inserting something which is basically incomprehensible.