Practical Questions on Tithing – Part 2

This post is in a series called Practical Questions on Tithing. To see all my articles on tithing, click the link: Articles on Tithing.

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In Practical Questions on Tithing – Part 1, I addressed the major objection to tithing and the one major question: Should Christians tithe?
Today, I want to address two more objections to tithing as a principle for Christians.

Objection: Shouldn’t we Just Teach Generosity?

I have pastor friends who tell me that they don’t teach tithing, they focus on generosity. I have another friend who tells me that he knows a pastor who stopped preaching on tithing and started preaching on gratitude and their giving went up.
I honestly don’t care about the end result of this teaching and whether our church income goes up or not. I mostly care about what the Bible has to say on the topic, and my friends would point out something true, “We don’t see tithing as a practice of the New Testament church, but we do see teaching on generosity and generous giving.”

“The New Testament Church didn’t Practice Tithing”

Hold on there. Don’t make that conclusion just yet. I agree that we don’t see the New Testament church practice tithing, but the truth is that we also don’t see the Old Testament Israelites practice tithing. We see it commanded, and we sometimes see it promised, but we never see it done. In other words, the practice of tithing was either NEVER done or considered so commonplace that it wasn’t worth talking about.
I think the same could be true of the New Testament church. I have no evidence that this is the case, but my assumption is that Peter, James, John, many others, and especially Paul were committed to tithing before they became followers of Jesus, and if that were true, what would they have done after becoming followers of Jesus? I imagine that some of them for a time were giving their tithe to the Temple and the local Levites as before, but I also imagine that at some point they stopped giving their tithe to the Temple. I know I would have stopped tithing to the Temple as soon as the high priests killed Stephen!
However, if the early church stopped tithing altogether as an archaic principle to be tossed out, I can’t imagine Paul would have remained silent on the matter. Paul talks about leaving circumcision, dietary laws, and holy days behind, but he never specifically mentions abandoning the tithe. I have to conclude that Paul was still paying a tithe and the only question left is where he sent his tithe!
Again, this is pure speculation, but I personally feel that Paul was referring to the tithe when he talked about providing salaries to the teachers in the church and caring for the poor.
So there is no proof for this scenario I just laid out, but there is also no proof to the contrary. Did the New Testament church practice tithing? We simply don’t know.

“The New Testament Church Practiced Generosity”

This much is obviously true. In Acts 2, we are told of the immense generosity of the early church after the massive influx of the people at Pentecost. Everyone was willing to sell everything they had and give it to the apostles for the sake of the church. However, if you keep reading, that phase only existed until the death of Stephen. It was a honeymoon phase in the life of the church and one that no other church ever attempted to replicate. Paul never taught that it was something to be replicated. In fact, we have reason to believe that their behavior during the honeymoon period is what contributed to their extreme poverty later on in the first century. A great deal of Paul’s later ministry was devoted to a special fundraising campaign to raise money to help out the impoverished Jerusalem church.
That brings me to the second point about this. Nearly all the teaching in the New Testament regarding generosity and giving centers on this special offering Paul collected for the Jerusalem church. Paul talks about providing salaries for preachers and teachers, he speaks of providing hospitality to traveling ministers, and he speaks of his own need for material provisions, but he never speaks about how those provisions are to be collected or distributed. There is some underlying principle in their society that he assumed would handle it (tithing perhaps?).
Therefore, the only time Paul actually teaches about giving or generosity is related to the collection for Jerusalem and this makes sense in three ways: (1) throughout the Bible, special offerings are given special attention (the collections for the Tabernacle, for the Temple, or for the Jerusalem church); (2) throughout the Bible, special offerings are connected to special projects; and (3) Paul was writing to Gentiles who had no emotional connection to the church in Jerusalem and needed some convincing.
As a result, Paul speaks about mutual sacrifice and principles of generosity because he is talking about a special offering for a special project that is big on his heart and should be big on the hearts of his audience.
I’m always bothered when people use the teaching of Paul on generosity to talk about the way Christians should give money, because Paul’s collection was all about a one-time special project. It’s fine to read Paul’s teaching about generosity when you are in the middle of a special project, but those principles were not given by Paul to support the standard operations of the church (salaries for teachers and caring for the poor).
I can’t be clear enough on this. Nothing Paul teaches on money addresses how salaries for pastors should be collected or distributed, but he does say it should happen nonetheless. There must have been some principle of financial giving that Paul felt was too obvious to need talking about.

So Can’t We Just Teach Generosity?

I think it’s entirely appropriate to teach generosity if you want to. The problem only shows up if you ever want to teach one of the passages in the Bible on tithing. Of course, if you are okay avoiding those passages, by all means just keep on avoiding them, but if you are interested in what the whole Bible says on the topic of finances, perhaps you should pay attention to them too.
I don’t teach tithing because it is a law.
I don’t teach tithing because it is an effective fundraising strategy.
I teach tithing because it’s in the Bible, and I care about what the Bible says.

Objection: Tithing is Too Limiting

I am actually surprised at how many times I run across the argument that churches shouldn’t teach tithing because it is too limiting. People who feel this way say that Christians who live free from the law should give generously, sacrificially, and frequently (see above) but not in any kind of regular or systematic way. According to them, teaching any kind of systematic giving allows a person to develop a legalistic and fake sense of generosity: “I give my 10%, so I don’t have to give any more.” According to them, a New Testament Christian should be giving way beyond the tithe.
My response to that?
Well, okay then, how much of your income do you give away to the work of God’s Kingdom in this world?
If the person is giving more than 10%; then I thank them and drop the subject, or if I’m feeling snarky, I might point out to them that giving more than 10% means they are giving at least 10% which means they are actually tithing.
However, if the person is giving less than 10% of their income to the work of God’s Kingdom, I lightly point out the hypocritical convenience of their position. By saying we should teach generosity, they give themselves permission to not believe the principle of the tithe, and by giving themselves permission to not believe it, they give themselves permission to not live by it either.
If you want to say tithing is too limiting, you should be willing to ask people to give at least 10% of their income to the work of God’s Kingdom in this world, and you should be doing the same yourself. If you do those two things, I won’t argue with you at all!