Re: Tough Love!

This was a very good article, Hunter. Thanks for posting.

I do believe that while a certain percentage of income that some give may be considered tipping by God from some who have the means, that the same percentage may be considered a large amount from a poorer person. A person who makes 100K per year and gives 20 percent still has 80K left before taxes to live on.

A person who makes 10K per year and gives 20 percent only has 8k left to live on before taxes. There's a vast difference between 80K and 8K. The guy who has the 8k is probably not going to be able to pay his rent or feed his family on that. I don't think God would expect this person to give the 20 percent or even the ten percent. One percent would even be a sacrifice and if he did it as a cheerful giver out of a servant's heart, I believe God would honor that.

At the same time the guy making the 100k may just be just tipping God by only giving him 20 percent. He has so much more he could give to the kingdom of God than 20 percent and still have plenty left to live on.

The important thing is to learn to hear God's voice and give what He wants out of obedience to Him and not give because of being humiliated, manipulated or intimidated into giving by false teaching.

Preachers will tell us that we should tithe because tithing was before the law. So was circumcision and the book of Galatians sure points out that we are not under that. So was animal sacrifice before the law, but we all know that would be an abomination to perform animal sacrifice as a new testament believer as Jesus was our sacrifice. Also, if people study their Bibles, they should see that all the stuff that was required before the law was rolled into the law.

I'm not against anybody who tithes, but don't humiliate people who can't and make them feel they are sinning by not doing so. That is called spiritual abuse!