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naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
(text post)
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Tithe, noticing, and superstitions
My church hangs no specific official detail of membership on tithing, giving 1/10 of my income, my “firstfruits,” to the church. I, however, submit my tithe online as soon as I remember it is deposited, so that nobody will quit my workplace.
Let me explain.
All my working life, I have tithed on the gross, not the net, so I wouldn’t have to tithe my tax refund. Around 2014, I had gotten into tax trouble because of inadequate withholdings. I went into IRS debt and had scheduled contributions which were so large I couldn’t afford to tithe.
I paid off the debt slowly but surely, and breathed a sigh of relief when it was paid off. A few months later I noticed the place I was working was hemorrhaging admins and producers with much experience and institutional knowledge. It was about that point I realized in horror I’d forgotten to resume paying my tithe.
I compiled a spreadsheet to learn what I owed God, and the sum was vast. I studied the Scriptures on tithing and discovered that if a Hebrew man could not afford to give up his firstfruits of harvest, he could buy them back from the Tabernacle at one-fifth of their value. I calculated 1/5 of my 10%, 2%, and started paying my back-tithe to the church on top of my tithe.
From the first time I did so, the quitting stopped, like a faucet being shut off.
From then on, if I spent money on lunch on payday before remembering to submit my tithe online, I could expect someone to quit without notice within the week. Occasionally people would quit on payday before I had remembered to pay my tithe, which reminded me to pay it.
I consider myself a rational Christian, and I don’t expect miracles or spooky happenings unless God has a purpose for them. Perhaps I was just seeing a pattern by coincidence. Or perhaps I was one of the few faithful paying tithe from that job, sanctifying the whole operation; since I was laid off after the merger, the place has gone downhill.
Whatever the pattern or not, I won’t be skipping tithe again.
How did you come to this level of faith? I admire that, but I have no idea how to find it. Every church I look at seems to be institutionally sick, or worse. For example: Catholicism is the (lapsed) faith of my family, but all I see of the Catholic Church is a deeply sick organization more interested in suppressing the one area of growth among young people (Latin Mass), deeply divided about how to worship. The Anglicans (or maybe only the English Anglicans?) are navel-gazing about whether God the Father is actually God the Non-Binary, and so on.
I'm also interested in hearing from Catholics (particular TLM Catholics) about how they reconcile belonging to a church that seems to hate its own faithful so much. I can't figure it out.
I grew up Catholic, attended mass regularly (though not every week), CCD, was a Eucharistic Minister when I got older, regularly got suckered in to volunteering for whatever events the church was having, and I ended up going to a Catholic college, not one like Georgetown or Notre Dame, but one where the majority of students were Catholic and there was an associated seminary and half the professors were monks and religion courses were required curriculum and multiple friends of mine ended up becoming priests. And during this time I hadn't really heard of Traditional Catholics. I think I first heard of them from an article I read online, which may have been around this time period, but it certainly wasn't anything that was discussed or even mentioned within the church or among fellow Catholics. To the contrary, Vatican II was celebrated by pretty much every priest I had known by that point, and the Latin Mass was viewed as a boring, impenetrable relic that had survived a couple hundred years past its sell-by date among pretty much everyone who had been around while it was still in use. No one, no matter how old or how devout, seemed to harbor any nostalgia for the Traditional Rite. At the most, there was curiosity about it among some younger people, but just that they wanted to participate in one on occasion, not that they wanted it to supplant normal mass. If you grew up in a household that was nominally Catholic but lapsed, and don't have any first-hand experience really living as a Catholic, it's easy to read new articles about Traditional Catholics or see them arguing online and think that this is some kind of deep division in the church, but most practicing Catholics probably have no idea what you're talking about.
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