“Offering To Help”

Thursday, June 20, 2019

     I had a preacher to explain to me that it is more important to pay your association dues than to help elderly people in need at the church.  Is this what tithing and offering is all about?  I looked in my Bible, but I can’t seem to locate what tithing and offering is and what GOD said it was for.  Help me, please.

Sincerely,
Writing The Check

Dear Writing The Check,

That preacher is wrong on so many accounts.  First of all, there are no such things as “association dues” in the Lord’s church.  In the New Testament, christians are supposed to give cheerfully and voluntarily (2 Cor 9:7).  There is no set amount that we are supposed to give; we are simply told to give as we have prospered every first day of the week (1 Cor 16:1-2).  Tithing (‘tithe’ means ‘ten percent’) is an Old Testament command that Jews had to follow, not a New Testament one for christians.  Jews were required to give ten percent, but christians are never given specifics.

As for saying that it is more important to pay your association dues than to help elderly people in need – that is the sort of thing Jesus said that a greedy, false teacher would say (Lk 20:47).

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