From: dlhpfm!dlh@ncoast.org (daniel lance herrick)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: money and mouths
Date: 9 Sep 92 07:30:17 GMT
Organization: dlh Performance Marketing

madhav@cs.albany.edu (MadHav Vishnu Marathe) writes:

> In article <Sep.4.03.04.54.1992.29961@athos.rutgers.edu> dlhpfm!dlh@ncoast.or
> 
> >   There is no requirement to pay a tithe on that portion of the crop that
> >   was destroyed by a plague of locusts.  I think after tax is a suitable
> >   base for tithe calculations.  Your question about where to draw the
> >   line mixes things that you control and things that are forced on you.
> 
> It is interesting to know that there is someone who considers the
> purchase of food to be something that is not forced upon us.  I'll
> remember that as I begin my next fast.  Mind over stomach I always say.

The purchase of food is not forced on you.  It is an economic decision. 
It does not take a very large garden to feed a family of four.  You
choose to take advantage of the division of labor and pay someone else
to do that particular work, but it is a choice.

> If it isn't obvious already, I'll state it plainly for the record.
> I have to agree with Richard on this one.  Tithing on the gross is 
> the only reasonable way to calculate it.  To me the only question
> is what did I earn for my services.  It is my gross salary and that is 
> what I tithe on.

What you earned for your services includes the "employer contribution"
to FICA, it includes hospitalization and major medical insurance
premiums, it includes your and your employer's contributions to your
retirement fund, it includes any educational reimbursement your
employer made if you are a student, it includes premiums for some life
insurance, it includes the workman's compensation coverage, it includes
any matching contributions your employer makes to charities chosen by
you.

What you earned for your services is somewhere near 150% of your gross
salary.

> This is not directed at Daniel in particular (I don't know him at 
> all. Odds are he's a better person than I.), 

No, dan is that unfeeling curmudgeon who suggested that anyone who
reads Ronald Sider's book, "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger" would
profit from also reading David Chilton's "Productive Christians in an
Age of Guilt Manipulators".

>but people who 
> calculate their tithe on their net income strike me as being
> somewhat miserly. As Christians, I believe we can't afford to 
> withhold our money from the Church or our chosen charity organizations.

It is not very long in our past that the income tax topped out at 90%. 
Let's see, 90% for the feds and 10% for God.  Maybe it is time to
reconsider that decision to buy food instead of growing it.  And when
it comes time for the first fruits contribution or a tithe on the
produce of the ground, we will have to pay it in kind, because if we
sell some of what we grew then the feds will take their share of that.

Don't tell me my example is absurd, it is a real piece of American
history from about the beginning of my working lifetime.  If you
concede that the person who is subject to a 90% tax rate is not
expected by God to pay his tithe based on his gross taxable income,
then where between 28% and 90% do you switch over from one exegesis to
the other?

I did not present my exegesis for my position but I did suggest what it
is when I likened the depredations of our current tyrranical government
(according to the standards of I Samuel 8) to a plague of locusts.  You
offered not even a suggestion of exegesis to support your declared
position.

> Living in the most affluent and wasteful country in the world
> frustrates and embarrasses me.  

So move!

Your ancestors did, at least your name sounds anglo-saxon, not
aboriginal American.  Why did they leave their homeland and go to a
strange country thousands of miles away from home?

There are many places you could go where you would not be similarly
embarrassed.

>Especially when there are Christians
> in this country nitpicking about whether to tithe on the net or
> gross.  I could rant and rave about it for longer than anyone 
> would care to read.  I will restrain myself to a few book references
> though there are many others I could add.

I was not nit-picking.  I was stating a position that seems easily
defended from scripture.  You are using emotional language to talk
about things that are irrelevant to the question of what God requires
of me, in an attempt to make me feel guilty.

> Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger
>    Ronald Sider, InterVarsity Press

Sider does not care a whole lot about what scripture actually says. 
Read his book.  Then read one that holds his strange doctrine up to the
light of scripture, Chilton's "Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt
Manipulators".

> (Posting against school and department policy from a friend's account.)

Does this mean violation of a contract that you signed?  Seems like a
strange thing to tack on to an attempt to make me feel guilty about the
Lord's rich blessings.  Use scripture to specify my guilt.  It talks a
lot about it.  But don't use the name of Christ and feed me a line of
warmed over socialism.

I posted a recommendation a few days ago to read Chilton after reading
(or while reading) Sider.  In that posting I made reference to the
Lord's bounteous blessing.  There was one e-mail response containing
the same kind of humanist clap-trap as fills Sider's books.  This note
should make it obvious to that correspondent that I am unrepentant.

To make an impression on me, you must show me on Christian principles
(that means scripture) that either

   These are not blessings.

      or
 
   They come from some other source than the Lord.