The Plot Thickens....

So things are about to get more interesting in this experiment. I'm now, as opposed to a month ago when I started tithing, totally unable to afford it. Some huge expenses came down the pipeline and the coming paycheck is pretty much all accounted for before I've even recieved it. NOW comes the tough part, tithing when there is no money to tithe. Obeying even when it doesn't make a lick of sense. God, you asked me to trust you, and I do. I know that you have good plans for me an that you know my needs before I ask. Amen.

First Report

So I am now into several weeks of tithing. There hasn’t been any major transformations- but I do feel like I have been watching and waiting. And, for me, that’s a start.

And come to think of it, there is more to that. I’m not sure if it’s living in New York City, but since I’ve moved here I feel like I have been caught up in a vicious cycle- wanting, needing, not having, wanting more, spending, wanting again- and while in the last two weeks I haven’t left that cycle (at all, really), I feel like God has entered into it with me. Not necessarily commenting, just observing, just present with me in those thoughts. Previously, I think I specifically kept God out of any thoughts or conversations that had to do with my personal materialism (of course in more desperate financial jams, I would shoot up a plea “FIX THIS?!”) maybe because I thought I would feel judged or convicted. But I have to say that this subtle entrance of God into my previously “private sphere” has been accompanied by surprisingly little guilt. I honestly feel like He’s just checking it out, glad to have been invited in. While I am still in the vicious cycle I feel I have gained the slightest, almost imperceptible ability to see the cycle from the outside looking in. Is that possible? While God is checking out things from your perspective, does He allow you a glimpse from His?

Anyway, I feel like something is about to happen. Not sure what it is, but my first report from the trenches is- something’s brewing. And I like that.

ps. I know a few other people have also recently began their own resolutions to tithe. Any updates? Stories for your side of things?

Experimental Tithing

Theoretically, I have always been a huge fan of tithing. Granted my basis for approaching tithing came more from the economic “free rider problem” than the scriptures. Clearly, we could all agree, that every social movement requires input to sustain forward propulsion- time, energy, labor, money- from each of it’s members, and we could also concede that in every social movement their will be undoubtedly free riders who consume the movement without their fair share of input. I guess I have come to peace with my free rider status.

And as I’m beginning to find out, I’m not alone in my resignation. Maybe it’s our constant transitioning between places, maybe it’s that fact that we have student loans that need paying off, maybe it’s the fact that the tithing seems pretty Old Testament (10%? come on now, that’s a pretty steep “Membership Fee”), maybe (and this would be me) we’ve never really investigated the issue with full spiritual attention.

Through the haze of apathy there has always been a dim recollection of softly calling verses impressed in my mind, that gave the eerie feeling that God wasn’t talking about economics at all. In Deuteronomy 14, the standard requirement of, “Make an offering of ten percent, a tithe, of all the produce which grows in your fields year after year” is paired intriguingly with the declaration that….“in this way you will learn to live in deep reverence before your God, as long as you live.”

This of course is patiently explained every week as we are reminded that the basket passing through our hands is just another form of worship. But it hardly feels like any other form of worship, does it? Running through the list of classic worships I know, worships I can feel- prayer, music, meditation, fasting- I realize they have in common what I understand to be the point of worship: as they honor the object of worship, they transform the worshiper. Can a person be transformed through tithing? Well. And then there is the blessing part. Let’s be perfectly frank- no conversation about tithing can be totally sincere without acknowledging this little treasure of a verse: “ Bring your full tithe to the Temple Treasury so there will be ample provisions for my Temple. Test me in this and see if I don’t open up the heaven itself to you and pour out blessings beyond your wildest dreams.” (Mal 3) Ok. I’m convinced. I’ll at least try it. I am going to, for the first time in my life, tithe 10% of my first fruits (meaning before I take myself out to dinner with my paycheck, before I pay my bills) I tithe. Then I watch, and I wait. And I try to write.

I have to add, even as I make this yet theoretical and yet digital declaration, my mind runs to calculating the sum. And then thinking about the debts I owe, and the bills I have, and Christmas coming, and things I have been waiting ages to buy. Is this really practical? Possible? Ironic that I can’t do mental math to save my life and I am not anywhere near “good with money” but the moment I so much as contemplate tithing I am suddenly crunching the numbers rigorously in my mind and frowning discerningly that, “this just doesn’t make sound financial sense.” Ok. Well so be it, the lilies of the field and all that.