And
[Jesus] said to them, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God
in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, “Honour your father and
your mother”; and, “Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die”. But you
say, “If a man tells his father or his mother, Whatever you would have gained
from me is Corban (that is, given to God) then you no longer permit him to do
anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your
tradition that you have handed down.
But
if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his
household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Mark 7:9-13
& 1 Timothy 5:8
Tithing (giving
10% of income) is a good place for Christians to start thinking about giving. If, therefore, you are a Christian with
sufficient income for a healthy lifestyle for you and your family, and you give
less than 10% of your income, please think about this. If the present grace of
God is not achieving more than the Torah did in the past, is something wrong
with our perception of God or our experience of his grace or both? Is it likely
that the Holy Spirit will lead us to be less generous than faithful Israelites
obeying the Torah?
Not everyone,
however, has a sufficient income to fund a healthy lifestyle. Jesus of Nazareth
criticised the Pharisees for devoting to God money that should have been used
to look after their families; Paul wrote that Christians who failed to take
care of their families behave worse than unbelievers do! What, then, should
Christians on a persistent low income do? Give 10% of their income to their
church or ensure that their families have good food and warm clothing?
Throughout
the Bible, there is a binding duty to pay taxes and to repay debt. So, should
Christians refrain from paying what they owe in order to give to their
churches?
I have some even more difficult questions. Should a
self-employed person give from their entire income or only from their profit?
- Should a self-employed builder give a proportion from the entire amount he is paid to build a wall or should he deduct the cost of the bricks, cement and other materials he used and the cost of transporting them to the building site? In my experience, most Christians would say that he should deduct the cost of materials and transport.
- Should an employed person deduct the cost of his or her fares to and from his workplace? In my experience, again, it seems that most Christians would say that he should not make the deduction.
Do you think that is right, consistent and fair? What is fair?
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Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans
2013.
Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright
© 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
Handling
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