Pay Your Tithing!

And I see this all the time. Oh, that’s situational. That’s Jesus giving specific guidance to one individual person. That’s not generalizable. That’s not universalizable. It’s like, I, I kind of think it is.

Why would it be in there if it weren’t?

Yeah, Jesus didn’t, like, watch him walk away and then, then was like, that wasn’t for any of y’all. That was just for him.

And Jesus said unto him, this is just for you. Everybody else can go turn away for a second.

Hey, everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

Things are good. Things are good. I, I have decided to donate 10% of this podcast to something storehouse.

Well, 10% of zero is, is not a lot, so.

I know. Well, ones and zeros. Really? What is a podcast, really? How do you, how does one even quantify?

Yeah, I, I, I don’t know. I certainly don’t know. I just got back from Dragon Con.

Yes, sir.

Some folks saw me there, which was, it’s always a, a fun experience when people recognize me out.

Some of our listeners. And I just got back from a, a podcasting convention where I met some of our listeners. So we are, we are, we are both inundated with meeting some of y’all out there in the world.

It’s been, it’s been lovely. I appreciate getting to hear from y’all and hearing about how much you prefer Dan’s witty banter to my own. Although I saw, I don’t think a

single person said that.

I saw a funny, somebody was commenting like, “Oh, what do you think, Dan? Well, Dan, this is what I think, Dan.” And kind of making fun of that. And it stung a little bit, but that was on, like, YouTube or something like that.

Listen, we didn’t name ourselves, you guys. Yeah, it’s not our fault.

And we, when we were talking about names for the podcast, we were like, D and D. Dan and Dan.

We were coming—Data Over Dogma with Dan and Dan. Dan. Dan does Data and Dan does…

So we were trying to make fun of ourselves a little bit too, but yeah, that’s entirely beside the point.

Yes, exactly.

We’ve got a show to do, evidently.

Oh, yeah, we do. And, and I hinted earlier at what we’re going to be talking about because we’re finally going to do… and a bunch of our listeners have written in to talk, to ask us to talk about this. Yes, we’re going to talk about tithing. Okay, so that’s going to be our first segment. And then, and then we’re gonna keep it in the financial realm and, and, and get into the story in Acts of Ananias and a name that you and I had quite a bit of discussion and both looked up how we think it’s normally pronounced because you, you’re, you know, you’re there.

We’re both.

I, I’ve only read it. You’ve only read it, but you’ve read it in multiple languages.

So Sapphira. Oh no, Ananias.

Ananias. And, and in the Greek it is Sappheira.

Or Sapphira. But we, we have found Sapphira and Sapphira as alternative pronunciations.

Yeah, I’m going with Sapphira. I like—so much nicer in my, to my ear.

But that comes from an Aramaic name, Shappira, where the P is definitely a hard P because it’s doubled.

So, so anyway, anyway, however you pronounce it, it’s, it’s both right and wrong. Whatever you say, it’s both right. Anyway, yeah, let’s get to our first segment. What’s that?

Okay, so for What’s That, we’re talking about tithing, as we said before. And you know, tithing is a thing that seems on its surface like an obvious, if you are a church-going Christian especially, it feels like you know what tithing is. I did look it up just because I wanted to see like what. Because, you know, my, my upbringing is in the LDS faith and so my experience with tithing was I was told 10% of my gross income was to go to the church.

Right.

And other, I’ve seen other churches make the same claim. 10% of gross, I’ve heard some say 10% of a net income. So it’s all, you know, these are all interesting questions. Although somehow I’m going to guess, and I haven’t done a lot of research, I’ve poked around in the Bible, but you know more about it than I do.

We’re actually going to find a few different things. Okay. Because it’s not consistent. And attempts to render it consistent end up getting into trouble in a variety of different ways. And so a big question has to do with the fact that this practice kind of develops when there are certain conventions and frameworks in operation within a society, and those conventions and frameworks are no longer in operation. And so how do you reconfigure this practice to fit these later frameworks? And there’s also an argument to make based on the New Testament that this is something that doesn’t apply to Christians. And that’s certainly an argument that has been made by an awful lot of people.

There’s a lot of Christians who will be very surprised to hear that.

Yeah, there are. That’s one thing about Christians is they’re always surprised to hear that there are people who think other things. So.

All right, well, let’s dig into what it is we’re talking about. What is tithing?

So tithing comes from a word that just means tenth. And this goes back to. We have references to this in Mesopotamia. We even have the use of this word all the way back in the Ugaritic literature from between 1500 and 1200 BCE so it goes back pretty far, but it’s found in a lot of different contexts and it seems to be pretty flexible. It can be used to refer to basically any kind of 10% tax that might be imposed on a group. And that tax can take a lot of different forms, but it seems originally to have something to do with a kind of royal tax. The earliest, if we take. If we take the Pentateuch as historical, which you shouldn’t, but if you do, the earliest reference that we have to this is going to be with Abraham. So we’ve talked about Abraham and Melchizedek, king of Salem, where they, the kings have absconded with a bunch of people and a bunch of goods.

And Abraham goes after him and gets back the goods. And it says he, he paid the. The. They paid Melchizedek, king of Salem, a tenth of everything. And this has to do with enslaved people, money, any money that would have been among the. The stolen goods, as well as animals, livestock, grain, stuff like that, depending on what was stolen. And you do have references to this being a tax on any kind of property. Now, once you get into the actual legislation that requires tithing in the Hebrew Bible, there are three different books where we find references to tithing. Leviticus, primarily in chapter 27, we have a prescription of a tithe. Deuteronomy, chapters 12 and 14 talk about tithe. And then we also have the idea of a tithe in Numbers 18 . And they’re all a little different because they all have to do with different payees.

So, and, and some scholars have pointed out that there seems to be a trajectory here that it starts off being a, a temple tax, basically, that goes to the priests and the temple. There are folks who think the Holiness Code in Leviticus is probably the earliest legislation related to the tithe, and it’s supposed to support the temple and all the priests. Then you go into the Book of Numbers and there you have the Priestly layer. And here it seems to be for the Levites in particular, not just remind.

Us who those are.

The Levites would be a priestly family or lineage. And so it was a particular line within the, the priesthood. And then when you get to Deuteronomy, it seems to be something that you, you didn’t pay the tithe to others. You gathered the tithe and then you went to the temple and you ate the tithe at the temple. Oh, so it was something that you were actually consuming yourself. And anything else would go towards supporting the laity or the, the people around you. And so it seems that the tithe is something that is being allocated to different groups in different time periods based on the particular literary layer. And interestingly, and, and also there are somewhere it says you do the tithe on the third year or the sixth year. It’s not an every year kind of thing. Okay. And once we get into later Rabbinic literature, in order to try to harmonize what’s going on, they.

They seem to stack some of these tithes. And so there’s, there’s a way to read this literature that actually requires people pay up to 30%. Oh, oh.

Because you got to do your one year and your six year and your whatever year.

Yeah, you’ve got to do multiple different tithes.

And most scholars are like, yeah, that didn’t happen. But there’s also an interesting reference to the redemption of your tithe, because the tithe here is—it doesn’t really talk about money. And most of the prescriptions about the tithe, you have tithe on livestock, you have tithe on different kinds of agricultural products, primarily new wine and olive oil and stuff like that. And then there’s this option to redeem it, which means you pay money instead of the tithe. And in one of the literary layers, it says, yeah, you can redeem it, but then you’ve got to pay one-fifth more.

So if you’re like, look, I want my wine. Why don’t you just take this money instead? They’re like, fine, but another 20%.

Interesting.

And then in one of the other literary layers, it’s like, yeah, just go ahead and redeem it. And there’s no 20% charge. So it looks like the tithe could take the shape of actual money, but fundamentally it was supposed to be on goods—grain, agricultural products, livestock, things.

Yeah, I’ve got, I’ve got the Deuteronomy. What is this? This is Deuteronomy 14:22-23 . And, yeah, yeah, so it says. So 22 and 23, it says, set apart a tithe of all the yield of your seed that is brought in yearly from the field. So there’s that yearly. And then in the presence of the Lord your God, in the place that he will choose as a dwelling for his name, you shall—and that, I didn’t catch this until you just said it—you shall eat the tithe of your grain, your wine and your oil, as well as the firstlings of your herd and flock, so that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always. Wow. So like, that’s, yeah, that’s confusing. You’re, you’re, you’re bringing it in, but then it’s like you’re eating it. Is that, is that what I’m to understand?

Yeah, so it’s that.

That’s a lot less onerous.

Yeah, yeah.

I’m fine with that.

Yeah, it’s a, it’s a BYO situation.

Right.

Where you just got to show up at the party with your own grains and, and livestock and stuff. So, yeah, it—and a lot of people think that this is, this is being written later in a time when—because initially the idea that it goes to the, the sanctuary or to the priest might have been taking place. It might have been a, a vestige of a pre-exilic situation where you had multiple temples and you had all kinds of priesthoods and they needed support. And so you would go to your local shrine and you would offer the tithes. But then by the time of Deuteronomy, and particularly the later Deuteronomy layers, it’s all been concentrated, it’s been centralized. It’s just the temple at Jerusalem and the priesthood there. And at that point, they didn’t really need the help. And so it’s like, yeah, come bring the tithes and then eat the tithes and then have a potluck.

It’s going to be fun. Yeah, we’ll have a good time.

Yeah. So you are invited to the cookout. So, yeah, there’s not really a way to harmonize everything very clearly. What we’ve got is different choice takes from different times and situations on how to implement this 10% something tax. And, and so then we get into Greco-Roman period Judaism and we get down into the New Testament and we don’t have a bunch of references to the New Testament, but we do have a pretty interesting one in Matthew, in Matthew chapter 23.

Where we have—and let me pull up the, the text so I can read it—23:23. And here we have Jesus talking to the Jewish folks. He says, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint, dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. And so it’s, it’s an interesting verse because it’s kind of, it’s hierarchizing the law, right? It’s saying, you know, you’re doing this one thing and, and Jesus explicitly says, keep doing that. Yeah, but you’re neglecting dill.

You can’t neglect the dill.

But we, we can’t do, we can’t get our, our Mexican seasoning, our taco seasoning without that cumin. But, but then says you’ve neglected the weightier matters of the law. And this gets into the, the prophetic critique that we’ve talked about before where it’s saying, hey, you’re performing the outward praying on the street corner to be seen of other people, but you’re neglecting the part where you’re not supposed to grind the faces of the poor.

In other words, everything goes away except for whatever law Jesus said you’re still required to follow. So if, if you take that approach, then Jesus says, hey, you’re still supposed to tithe. And so there are a lot of folks who, a lot of, particularly leaders of churches who will point to that and say, see, you’re still supposed to tithe. But then there are others who will point to Paul and in Romans and Galatians and elsewhere and say, Paul says, we’re not under the law anymore. So the tithe is, is a part of that. So we don’t have to do that anymore. So it, you know, you’ve got a choice because everybody’s got to negotiate with this. And so the question then becomes, Jesus seems to recognize that this tithe is still related to produce goods, not necessarily money. And so does that mean that’s. People who tithe today are just supposed to like, here are some tomatoes from my garden. That’s the only thing I’m growing right now. You know, here’s a chicken.

I got 10 chickens. You get one of them. Like, if, if it’s just livestock and grain and stuff, it’s, it’s a pretty, it’s not a tall order for most folks, but.

Right.

If it translates into monetary income, which it didn’t seem to in the earliest periods when most everybody was sustaining themselves on whatever they could grow, then that makes things pretty easy. But these days, most people get an income, a monetary income. And so is that translatable? Well, that’s debatable. That’s another thing that you’ve got to negotiate.

Yeah, it seems like, I mean, you know, as I was reading through all of this, it kept saying things like bring food to the storehouse and you know, and so I was thinking about it in terms of like, what, what is the modern day, what would the modern day equivalent be? Because almost nobody makes their money growing or, or you know, feeds themselves by growing their own food and raising their own livestock and whatever. And it does seem like, you know, I’m, I’m sitting here imagining like, dude, what if I were trying to be honest about replicating that? Would I just say 10% of my food budget? You know what I mean? Like, if I have a yearly food budget.

Throw 10 of that to the church. I don’t know. Like, that’s. That it seems closer to the mark.

Yeah. And when you consider the way the tithe changed throughout the Hebrew Bible, it’s like once we get to Deuteronomy, it’s like the, the priests don’t really need it as much, but we’re still going to require you bring it to the temple. We’re just going to say, hey, eat it right there. And so it’s still applicable. And so there’s, you know, that’s something that people have got to, got to negotiate. And so it’s, and, you know, unrealized capital gains.

Highly tithable.

Non-tithable. You know what? Because it’s like, hey, I just, I just borrowed a bunch of money to start up a business using my unrealized capital gains as my collateral. So I’m making money off of them. Doesn’t that mean they should be tithable?

I think Warren Buffett and, you know, the other Jeff Bezos would rail against this. You’re ruining everything here.

You’ve entirely missed the spirit of the law in Leviticus 27 . But, but it does point out, it raises the arbitrariness of, of a lot of what’s going on here. And yeah, it makes you wonder what, what is the, what is the description for it? And within most Christian communities today, the. It’s clear the people who are running the church need a livelihood too. And, you know, the church needs money to, to keep the lights on and stuff like that. So there are those who would point out that when you look at the New Testament, there does not seem to be a concern for compulsory money giving. And we’re going to talk about that a little bit later. But a lot of people say it’s entirely voluntary. You give whatever you want.

Right.

Nobody’s required to give. But then there, there are ways that they guilt you and there are ways that they pressure you in certain ways.

I came across many different things on the Internet that were like, your God commands—God commands you to do this. And, and it shows your love for God and all. And it is like, it’s just a bunch of guilt trips. And then I stumble on other things that basically say there’s not one passage of scripture telling anyone to give 10% of their money to a religious institution. And that was an interesting thing. When I read that, I was like, wow, that’s interesting. That is a new take that I think, I think guys like Joel Osteen would not like anyone to be reading.

Yeah. And, and the rhetoric there is, is usually—and this gets into Malachi 3 —you know, “you’ve robbed God,” and “wherein have we robbed God?” “In your tithes and offerings. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse and see if I will not open up the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing so much that you can’t even bear it.” And so a lot of prosperity gospel folks will try to convince people that paying tithing is how you, you know, it’s your—some people call it your flood insurance, some people call it your fire insurance—but that this is how you gain blessings. And, and you know, there are, there are ludicrous examples of prosperity preachers getting up there saying they need a new plane, yeah. And so God wants you to scratch a check to me so I can. I’m thinking of the jerk when the, when the guy comes in to ask for money and he’s like, “when I took my friends to the Super Bowl on my, on my private plane, they had to sit,” or, you know, “the, the, the leather was cracked on the seats and I had to put towels down on the seats.”

And musty, not towels. That’s. That’s what I think of when I think of the, the prosperity gospel preachers.

But I just think, you know, these, when you think about the prosperity gospel, it’s the, the, the pitch is almost always, you pay me, you. You pay the church however much, and it’s never just 10%. That seems to be like the floor. Right. And then it’s like. And go up from there. And the more you give me, the more, you know, the more blessings will pour down on you.

Your wealth will be increased tenfold or blah, blah, blah. And when you look at it, the wealth of the congregation never seems to be going up, but the wealth of one person in the room always seems to be going up a lot.

Yeah, absolutely. And the idea is that scratching that check or handing over that money is a way to signal your sacrifice and your faithfulness to God so that God will then more greatly bless you.

And the reality is that’s something that’s not really quantifiable or observable, but the person on the other end is certainly appreciating. They can quantify.

What. Yeah, what. What you’re doing. So.

And then not. Not pay any taxes on it. So that’s, That’s.

Yeah, yeah.

Speaking just, just like that. That unrealized capital gain. So, so what. I, I mean, I guess I. The question here for this segment is what is the modern equivalent or what. What should. What, what should a modern Christian or a modern Jew, how should they be thinking of their giving and, you know, they’re giving to their church or they’re giving to. Because I think, I also think that there’s a question of, like, there’s the tithe and then there’s offerings. Right. Somehow there’s a difference in that. And, and it. I don’t. I. You know, most churches have very set ideas about what, how to think about this stuff, but.

Is there a. Is there a way to distill down a biblical idea of this or is it just like you say? You know, it’s different in Numbers and Deuteronomy and Leviticus, so, like, how could it be? How can you distill that down?

I mean, the common denominator is, Is in the name, a tenth. That’s, that’s really the most, the most consistent thing you can extract from all of this. Whether it’s applicable to what is it applicable to, what does it go to—all of that is, is debatable. That’s up for negotiation. And so, yeah, I, in terms of what should a Christian or a Jewish person do? That’s not my place to say.

Right.

But I think people ought to be aware of just how much variability there is.

And ought to be aware of these data so that if they are in a position where they’re trying to figure this out, they can make a data-based decision. They can make a decision based on information. Because far too many folks are making decisions based on either authority that is being lorded over them or based on the siren call of the prosperity preacher who is going to tell you that they’re going to rain down them blessings upon you. Even though Malachi 3 is a threat, it’s God saying, hey, this famine and this drought and everything, it’s. And, you know, the, the social unrest and upheaval, it’s because you’re not paying your tithe. And so when it talks about the windows of heaven and the blessings, literally it’s referring to rain.

Oh, wow.

God is saying, pay me my money and, and, and you’ll get rain. And that way you’ll be able to grow more crops and grow more crops.

Pay me my more money. Yeah, I, I remember my, My grandpa used to, used to have a thing where if we, you know, driving to church, if he pulled, if he got hit a lot of red lights, he would turn around in the car and say, who didn’t pay their tithing? So maybe that’s it was that. What is that? What Malachi was referring to is slow drives.

I don’t know what kind of traffic light situation was going on in, in ancient Judah.

But I recall the traffic lights being pretty quick in modern Israel and Palestine, although there were other kinds of things that could slow things down, mainly traffic. But, yeah, I think the. There is translation that has to take place. There is negotiation that has to take place. There’s no way that you can transfer wholesale the principle of tithing into the modern world without making decisions and without having preferences.

And so I love, I know that this isn’t how you were using the word negotiation, but I do kind of love the idea of like joining a church and then just sort of sitting down with the, with the pastor or the priest or whatever and saying okay, let’s get down to brass tacks here. I’m not going to give you the full 10. Let’s. Where, what’s, what’s the, what’s the wiggle room on this?

It’s just the, the Pawn Stars guys.

Yeah, man.

Best I can do is seven.

I think, I think we’ve, we’ve discovered a new tactic, a new church tactic.

Well, it reminds me of Godfather. Is it the second or the third one where he’s negotiating with, with the father about the money that, that they’re gonna give to the. I think that might be the third one. But yeah, that’s, that would be an interesting way to, to go about joining the church.

It’s a new approach. It’s a new approach. Play this episode for them if they balk, and we’ll move, we’ll go from there. All right, well let’s, let’s get, let’s get deeper into the, into the money thing and, and dive into our chapter and verse in this week’s chapter and verse. Looking at Acts, we’re starting in four.

Yeah, we’re starting in four, verse 32. And we’re going to go to, to chapter five, I think verse 11. Yeah, verse 11. So we don’t have to read every, every word of this. But basically chapter four is introducing this concept of, of a brand of communalism. Says now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul. And no one claimed private ownership of any possessions. But everything they owned was held in common with great power. The apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them. For as many as owned lands or houses, sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet and it was distributed to each as any had need. And then they have and, and they give two examples. The first example is the, the good example, a dude named Barnabas, he sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

And then we’ve got the, the antithesis, the bad example and it’s a couple, a man named Ananias and his wife Sapphira, probably Sapphira.

We’re gonna, yeah, we’re gonna go with Sapphira.

We’re gonna go with Sapphira. Sold a piece of property and the two of them conspired to keep back some of the proceeds. And so what they laid at the apostles’ feet was only let’s say 90%. Let’s be generous. They, they held back their tithe.

They, they cut, they kept a finder’s fee.

Yeah, yeah. And they bring it to the apostles. And then Peter is able to tell that something is going on here.

Peter, who definitely has, like he’s, he’s, he’s got spies in all of the places he knows. He’s got to log into the, to the MLS website. He knows how much everything sold for.

He says, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? And, and there are for, for readers of the Hebrew Bible, there’s an echo here because there’s a story in Joshua chapter seven about a dude named Achan. A-C-H-A-N. And what happened there was, there was a, there was a raid. They destroyed a town. They kept all the goods. They were supposed to commit them to destruction. It’s the devoted to destruction requirement. But Achan decided he was going to keep some for himself. And as you would, you want to.

Keep a little bit of it. That’s, that’s natural.

Yeah. Little for you, little for me. And this five-finger discount does not go unnoticed by the Lord who then there’s this famous story about lining up everybody by families and clans and tribes and everything. And then they whittle it down to Achan’s family and he goes, yep, yeah, I, I kept the stuff. And they kill him and his family. Wow. Yeah. So there’s a, there are echoes of this and some of the language is the same too. These, the ancient Greek translation of this story from Judges or Joshua—excuse me—is some of the Greek there is used in this story. So, so Peter accuses Ananias of, of this and says, you did not lie to us, but to God. And so here’s where somebody who’s being told they should scratch a check so the, the pastor can, can bring his friends to the Super Bowl on, on, on good private airplane seats are thinking, okay, I, I can’t be stingy.

I’ve gotta, I’ve got to give everything that I can.

Right.

So you did not lie to us, but to God. Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died.

Oh wow.

Yeah, that’s extreme. Yeah. And, and it’s using some no-fault language here. It’s not saying how exactly he died. There are scholars who would say, hey, Peter might have pulled out his sword, which was his wont from time to time if the Gospels are—

Are grumpy.

Yeah. So there. There. Some people argue that. That the apostles might have put him to death, but the text just says he fell down and died. And. And great fear seized all who heard of it. And so.

Which. It would.

Yeah, you would think that would be a weird thing to see happen.

I think that. I think fear is a reasonable response to that particular moment, for sure.

And then young men came and wrapped up his body, and they carried him out to bury him. About three hours later, his wife comes and. Anybody seen my husband? He didn’t come back, not knowing what happened. And Peter said to her, hey, tell me whether you and your husband sold the land for such and such a price? And she said, yeah, yeah, that was. That was. That was the price. And then he accuses her of the same thing. You have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test. Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out, which is kind of ominous. Yeah, yeah, that’s.

That’s. Yeah, that’s. That’s pretty scary.

Immediately, she fell down at his feet and died. When the young men came in, they found her dead. So they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things. So. Yeah, yeah, there. And. And there’s some. An interesting question that has been asked of this story is, okay, so everybody was of one heart and one mind. Does that mean they were required to. Were they compelled? Were they forced to sell everything they owned? And the story makes it sound like they just did it because they were all of one heart and one mind. So, technically, no, they weren’t required. But anyone who objected probably would have been said to have been not part of the one heart and one mind.

And if you just reverse the order of those paragraphs so that the one heart and one mind, everyone’s doing it is. Comes after the story of Ananias and Sapphira, it starts to feel a lot like it was compelled. I’m just gonna say, like all. It just. It really matters in what order you tell the story.

Yeah. And then because there are a lot of folks who would look at this and say, well, why aren’t we doing this today? And then there are the people like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Right.

And so.

But it does seem like that’s an important question to ask. Right. Because this is. If this is set up as kind of the correct way to to be if everyone is good, if everyone is doing their good Christian best. It seems like this is set up as like the preferred economic model.

Am I wrong about that or does that seem like a fair assessment?

I. There are an awful lot of people who think this is how it was supposed to be. And so during restorationist movements, particularly in the 19th century, there were an awful lot of folks who set up co-ops and things like that based on this idea. In fact, I was born into a commune.

Oh wow.

In West Virginia that was based on this idea that they had all things in common. And so that, that, that kind of interpretation of this passage is still ongoing. Now there’s a lot of baggage with contemporary ideas about communalism too. Yes, indeed. And so history has, has left its fingerprints on, on these frameworks and these models. And so you know, the, and even within, within the LDS tradition, you can go back to the 1930s and you can find priesthood manuals that are like, yeah, we should increase taxes so that the wealthy can pay more money. And that way the, the people who don’t have as much can have health care and they can have education and they can have all the things that they want. And then Red Scare happens and, and now we have John Birch Society leadership that are still scattered around. So.

Even within the LDS tradition, it all depends on the. The interpretive lenses and the experiences.

Well, you go back far enough and. And the LDS were trying to do.

Communitarianism or there’s a. There’s a story of a place called Orderville that was supposed to be basically that everybody gave all of their. Like the church owned everything and then everybody got as per their need.

Yeah. The United Order was. Which didn’t work out in the long run and had to be replaced to some degree with this, this Law of Consecration, which is. It’s basically an unrealized Law of Consecration.

Right.

But yeah, it’s.

It turns out that the Ananiases and Sapphiras of the world are plentiful.

And. And you’re never going to. You’re never going to make your commune happen without them. Like they will. They will. The. The selfish ones will appear.

And oddly enough, God doesn’t seem to strike them down.

No, no, they never seem to. They never seem to just fall down and die out of either shame or Peter pulling a gun.

And, and this, I think this demonstrates one of the ways that this story is intended to function. It’s intended to function as. This is what is going to happen because God is watching. God is going to punish you. And in my book, Yhwh’s Divine Images, I talk quite a bit about how deity concepts develop out of this. Need to have some kind of watcher, some kind of way to monitor social behavior and prosocial behavior so that free-riding can be punished, to discourage it and to disincentivize it. And a story like this is an example of a way to try to do that, to show that God is watching and will punish those who try to free ride. Of course, in real life that kind of thing doesn’t happen. So you got to tell stories to, to scare people. Unfortunately, what usually ends up happening is the only people who get scared by these stories are children. Yes, these stories get shared in order to hammer these ideas into the psyches of children so that they grow up with trauma.

And, and it turns out also that the people, only people who are really free riding, freeloading, whatever, are the mega wealthy of our society. Those are the ones who are just, who just have it easy and never have to do anything. And the rest of us, you know, can often use a little bit of help. It does seem like one of the takeaways of all of this. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong about this because it seemed when I was reading about. And I’m gonna go back to the tithing thing, when I was reading about the tithing thing, I, I kept seeing, you know, the storehouse. The storehouse. Bring your grains, your food to the storehouse.

And it seemed like that wasn’t. Maybe I’m wrong about this. You can clarify this. Was that just for the use and, and pleasure of the priests in the temple? Or was that given to the poor or, or whatever. Do we have any idea about that?

I think it was probably some kind of combination of the two because certainly there would have been a time where the temple would have reached out and tried to aid the poor. And there would have been other times when that was less.

So that makes sense to me. That’s just, I mean, these are the cycles of all of humanity. Right. You get, you get administrations of anything that are like more generous and then less generous and then more, and then less. And that’s just sort of how humans are.

And I think the temple also in ancient Israel shifted some because there was certainly a time in the earliest periods the temple was probably subordinate to the palace.

And then there was probably a time when there was a, a disconnect. And particularly when they went into exile and, and no longer had the autonomy to have a palace. And then when they came back and they were under the hegemony of, of Persia and things like that, the priesthood probably had a little bit more of their own autonomy. And so there’s. The relationship between palace and temple was also shifting. And so, you know, there, the temple on its own probably would have been like, hey, not my job to, to do all this stuff. Whereas if the, if the palace is more in control, maybe they, maybe they want to do, you know, hand out bread and water and stuff like that. So, yeah, I think it depends on a lot of the personalities that are involved and the social structures. And this raises the objection that a lot of people today have of the notion that, that the poor should be taken care of.

The notion that. And I’m sure you’ve heard this in discussions about taxation where they. One, it’s the compulsion. If it’s compulsory, then it’s not of God, which is, you know, going back to what’s going on in Acts. It sounds pretty compulsory. Yeah, because they’re saying, hey, we’re all of one heart and mind about this. We’re all doing it. So like, you know, I think of pieces of flair. It’s like, right, that’s the minimum. But we’d love to see you do more. Like we’ll just raise the minimum. Ah, no, we can’t do that.

You’re really not, you’re not getting into the spirit of this at all.

Right. So they, you can use that sense of belonging as pressure. Yeah. Which, which makes clear we. You’re going to need to do this. And then the other, the other objection is always, well, it can’t be a government framework. It has to be the church doing it, which is a. That’s. Well, I suppose it’s a discussion for another day.

I suppose so, though. I mean, when you think about it in terms of like, if you’re using ancient Judah as your model. Sure, sure, that works. When everybody agrees on what the religion is. Or if you’re, you know, if you’re looking at early Christianity and you’re looking at the, you know, Peter and, and Ananias and Sapphira’s time and whatever, you’ve got a small group of people who all agree on the same thing. Yeah, but you know, that doesn’t work in, under modern structures where not everybody has that group. You know what I mean? Everybody in Judah was supposed to believe the same things. And therefore we. They all agreed to what was. I mean, basically the church could levy a tax, right? Like the religion could levy the tax.

Well, yeah, they were like the palace and the temple, when the, when they are combined, the government is the church, to use contemporary terms. And so there was no entity beyond the church. We have such an entity today. And so again, as with the concept of tithing, translation has to take place. There’s a negotiation that has to take place. And what I think I see in an awful lot of folks is the negotiations always seem to go the way of whatever keeps the most money in my pocket.

Right.

And I think if when you’re talking about justice in the, in the prophetic critique sense of the word, the sense that is used by Jesus in the Gospels, the sense that is used by Micah and Isaiah and Amos and the others, to neglect the weightier matters of the law just to serve your own interests is a. Is a violation. But for an awful lot of people, they don’t care.

So. Yeah. And I think part of the deal that I, that, that has always irked me. And I’m looking at like Matthew.

You know, in, in Matthew 19 , verse 21, Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go and sell what you possess and give it to the poor.”

Right.

“And you will have treasure in heaven.” Like, I think the problem with the idea of tithing is that people give 10% of their income to their church, and then they feel that their obligation is done.

Has been met. Yeah. Yeah.

And they, and they feel like there’s no more. They don’t have to do anything more charitable. And I, you know, I personally have a feeling, like, my feeling is that tithing to a church is membership dues. It’s not charity. I don’t feel that that’s what charity is. So when people, you know, I see, I see statistics that talk about like, who gives the most to charity. And if you include tithing, yeah, it’s going to be the religious people, but that’s not actually charitable giving. Yeah.

Paying salaries and keeping the lights on in church buildings.

And I don’t object to that. You know, I, that’s not, but it’s, it’s not the same as doing charity. And when Jesus said to take care of the people, I, you know, I tend to think, and I just think we people are not reliable in terms of, like, we need organizations to take care of our poor and our, and our hungry and our unhoused and…

And churches can’t do it on their own. They’re trying and they don’t even do, they don’t even do a fraction of a percent of, of the, the spending that is required every year.

Right. And the thing is that, like, the most, the, the places in the world that do the best at this are the ones that, you know, entirely ceded to government agencies that will, that will take care of people and reenfranchise them into society and all this other stuff. So. Yeah, I just think it’s very, I think the stinginess of people is very weird. It’s understandable. I get it. We’re all kind of stingy. We all like money and want to have as much of it as we can have.

But it does seem to me like it’s not enough to pay your tithes if, if, if you want to feel like you’re obeying as a… Like that. I guess that’s what I’m getting at is like, you know, in 1 John chapter 3, it says, “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” I think if you’re, you know, if, if you want to show your Christianity, it’s, it’s not by doing the tithing thing. It’s, you know, that’s, that’s, it’s, it’s by opening your heart in, in other, bigger, broader ways.

And, and I think that reveals the motivations as well, because that’s something that you find all over the, the Bible is that, for instance, in Deuteronomy 15 , you have this idea that, that you’re, you’re going to forgive debts in the Jubilee year and you’re going to do all this, and it says, “And you have to do it with a happy heart.” So it’s not just saying this is required behavior. It’s also saying these are required motivations for the behavior as well. And if, yeah, if, if you see this, if you try to reinterpret Matthew 19 , and I see this all the time. “Oh, that’s situational. That’s Jesus giving specific guidance to one individual person. That’s not generalizable. That’s not universalizable.” I kind of think it is.

Why would it be in there if it weren’t?

Yeah. Jesus didn’t, like, watch him walk away and then was like, “That wasn’t for any of y’all. That was just for him.”

And Jesus said unto him, “This is just for, for you.”

“Everybody else can turn away for a second.”

But the, this young man would have been paying a tithe. That would have been part of him faithfully fulfilling the law.

And what Jesus said was, “Sell it all. Give it to the poor.” And the idea that you see over and over again in the prophetic critique in the Gospels is that the goal is not just for you to check off a box. The goal is to actually affect the change. And so when people talk about, “Oh, but that’s not the right mechanism for helping the poor because it’s governments,” like, that’s the, that’s one of the dumbest attempts to try to sidestep what the Christian gospel demands. Because if you’re just saying, “Well, the person doesn’t get helped because you think the mechanism for helping them is an inappropriate mechanism, just as a matter of principle,” then you don’t care if the person gets helped. And that’s the problem.

What you care about is the mechanism and not the actual help part.

Yeah. Which means it’s not about helping other people. It’s not about loving your neighbor. It’s just about getting the credit and otherwise looking out for yourself. And I think if there’s something that’s consistent throughout the Gospels, it’s selflessness is something that I think is fairly consistent across all four gospels. And it’s something that when you look in the Bible, there’s advocacy for systems and for rulers and for powerful men, and then there’s advocacy for justice. And, and there are an awful lot of people who want to pay attention to one side of that equation, to the neglect of the other side of that equation. Even though the other side of that equation is saying when you pay attention to the other and neglect this side, that’s precisely what God doesn’t want you.

To do, that’s even worse.

Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s so much worse, which is you’re going to neglect.

Anything, maybe neglect the, the dill.

Yeah. And although Jesus would prefer you did not neglect the dill, Jesus will prefer.

You did all the things that. Right.

So if, if you’ve got some jalapenos growing in the garden, if you got some, some tomatoes, if you’ve got some mint, if you’ve got a chicken or two, you know, maybe, maybe just a leg off the chicken.

Take them into.

The priests, that’s, that’s what Jesus wants. But yeah, as. As we are are wont to. To say it’s all negotiable. There’s no clear answer here. But I think when you boil it down to the negotiation tactics, some of them are motivated by selfishness and some of them are motivated by an honest desire to try to fulfill what is expected of them. And, and I think there’s a clear. I think the folks that are motivated by selfishness are gathered on one side.

And the folks that are motivated by loving their neighbor are, are gathered on the other side. And I don’t think I have to tell you which sides those are.

All right, well, this is as close to like honest to goodness moralizing as we are as we get. We, we have, we have actually tipped into that, that part of, of, of this thing. That’s okay.

It is the official position of the Data Over Dogma podcast that people should help the poor.

Yep, yep, yep. And, and do it the best way for the poor, not the best way for your feelings. So there you go. All right. Hey, thanks so much for joining us. Listen, the way that we make this show go, the main way that we do it is through the support of our listeners.

We need lots of dill.

We got to get that dill. We’re making the grown sweet, sweet, sweet coriander or whatever it is anyway, so if you would like to become a patron of the show, you can do so. The show will always be free. It’s always free for you. But if you would like to become a patron, you can go to patreon.com and there, at a certain level, you can receive the ad free version of every episode a little bit earlier than everybody else gets it. So that’s kind of fun too. And you can get a, you can also at another level, you can receive extra added content that we do bonus content every week. We answer our patrons questions. We, you know, we have a lot of fun. So please, if you, if you can maybe, maybe part with. Not. Not. We’re not asking 10%. You can do, you can do less than 10% of your, of your gross income income. You can go net 10 of your net income. That’s fine.

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Pay Your Tithing!

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The Transcript

Scripture Index

Terminology