Tag: church

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Is Tithing Still Enforceable?

nontither.jpgFor various reasons, CareerMom and I don’t attend church as often as we’d like (or perhaps more truthfully, as often as we “should”). For one, most church services start around 10 a.m., which is also the time our youngest likes his first nap of the day. Another reason, and the one that is probably closer to the truth, is that we like to go to the gym in the morning and have the day to spend with the family, or to do whatever else we like. Although, on these days, we make sure and have Bible story time with the kids.

I was raised a Pentecostal and am therefore used to church services that last as long as two hours. CareerMom, having been brought up a Catholic, starts getting antsy at the 45-minute mark, a time when most Pentecostal pastors are just getting warmed up. What we’ve found though, is that by attending the early service at most churches, when the clock turns near “naptime,” the service is usually cut a bit shorter to accommodate the longer normal service that follows immediately after. All that being said, when we do go to church, we hope to get the most out of it.

This past Sunday, we got up, got the kids ready and off we went to church. After making it through the cry-fest that ensues upon dropping the boys off at their various rooms, we found our way towards the back of the sanctuary just in time to miss most of the music, which is probably our favorite part of whole shebang. C’est la vie!

As the special singers got up to sing and I prepared my “offering” envelope, CareerMom opened the church bulletin and pointed to the sermon title, “Whose Stuff is it Anyway.”

Now, if you’re not a church-goer, you won’t recognize that this title is actually code for, “Why you should give God 10%,” a title that strikes fear into non-regular church-goers everywhere. And it also prompted CareerMom to lean over and whispered, “I better not have to sit here and listen to a service on tithing.” Sure enough, when the pastor got up to preach, it became obvious that we would be treated to a guilt-fest of epic Biblical proportions Old Testament mandates on giving God his 10%.

Being a Pentecostal, I am naturally more forgiving of these little yearly requirement sermons; realizing that the Pastor probably hates giving them as much as we hate hearing them, and so when she said that, I just patted her hand and smiled. But interestingly, as the sermon went on, I found myself fascinated because though it was probably NOT the pastor’s intent, the sermon revealed to me that nowhere in the Bible, does Tithing appear as a commandment from God, or Jesus. It actually came out of law dating back to the days of the Israelites.

Now I understand that the church does many good things with tithes, but I also understand that tithes today differ greatly from tithes in the Biblical days:

  • Biblical Tithes included not only money, which is mostly what we ascribe tithes to, but also agriculture, land, whatever the person had to give (remember Cain?)
  • They weren’t supporting multi-million dollar church buildings, acres of land, HVAC costs in the tens of thousands and all the other overhead that goes into running a church corporation

So while Sunday’s service was NOT really what I had expected, or hoped for, it was also an eye opener. At this point in my life, after hearing literally thousands of sermons covering most every conceivable subject, I thought I’d heard it all—but I hadn’t. Like a lot of things I’d been taught growing up, I’m convinced that not giving Tithes will not see me burning in Hell for eternity.

So you know…I’ve got that going for me.

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Take ye this bread and…try not to crunch too loudly

After nearly two months of church-skipping, I made a command decision this weekend and announced that we would be going to church. Now, I’m not thrilled with our current church, but it does have its “up” side. For one, it has an early service, which lets us get in and get out quickly. It also has a good childcare department and it’s the right size (not too small, not too big). And lastly, it’s uncomplicated. From the parking, to the quick-exit, I know where everything is; I know where I’m going; it’s just…comfortable, for lack of a better word.

My wife (hereafter to be known as “Career-mom”) doesn’t really like our church that much and holds onto the irrational belief that the perfect church is out there somewhere and all we have to do is visit enough of them to find it. She’s playing with statistics here. I, hating little more than being the new guy in a new church, try and avoid this as much as possible and I got lucky this week because the two churches she was interested in, didn’t appear to have much for the kids. So new scary church out…old comfortable church in. Yah me…I win!

Now, our oldest son doesn’t like going to the kids’ church, so after dropping off the baby, my wife brought him into the big church with us. To his credit, he did very well, only whispering overly-loud one or two times and certainly not reaching the volume that two children did about five pews ahead of us, which prompted one of the bouncers (AKA: elders of the church) to get up and politely ask them to take their child elsewhere.

But wouldn’t you know it…this Sunday was Communion Sunday. Unlike Catholics, we Pentecostals take communion at our pews. Consisting of little unleavened wafers (think tiny oyster crackers w/out salt) and an itty-bitty cup of juice, Communion for us is a complicated affair of holding onto your micro-wafer while simultaneously trying to pass the juice-laden tray to the next person without causing a complete disaster. My son was sitting next to Career-mom and I noted, quite amusedly, that she got sacraments for him too.

The whole sacrament distribution process takes about five minutes (we’re very efficient), and after everything was passed around and the Pastor had reverently recited the proper passage from the Bible about how the bread represented Jesus’ body and the juice his blood, we all partook…it was all very holy and quiet.

But just as I was putting my now-empty plastic cup of juice in the holder, my son looks over at Career-mom and me and says, “But I’m still hungry.”

You know you can’t get mad at that!

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Dad Blogs Family Marriage

That Heathen Family Down the Road (part 1 of 2)

Sistine Chapel As with so many things pre-kids, I’ve mentioned before that my wife and I don’t attend church as often as we used to before we had children. Did I also mention that I feel really bad about this? Or, at least I try to feel bad, but most of the time I just feel guilty. There is a difference.

I feel guilty because I know that if I don’t make an effort to introduce my children to God, when they get older, they’ll inevitably fall victim to whatever view of God society has most successfully been able to foist on them rather than coming to their own view of God after having been given as much data as possible from a variety of sources.

So, I want to take my children to church, but taking children to church on the weekend is work! After getting up at 5:30 am for five days during the week, on Saturdays and Sundays I just want to get up, enjoy some coffee, maybe sit outside on the porch for a while, and just generally not be rushed to do anything. And taking kids to church is anything but relaxing. It’s basically like taking them to another daycare at this age (my oldest is 3 and my youngest is 7 months), which we don’t like doing since they’re in daycare the rest of the week anyway. We’ve also tried reading Bible stories to our oldest son but right now, unless the story involves danger (“Daddy, did the lions eat Daniel?“) or I can read the story using some heavily accented speech, he’s just not interested. And I’m sorry, but three years old is a little too young be dropping the whole, “Jesus died so you could be saved” thing on him. So right now, I just don’t see that it’s a big deal.

Looking back though, I’ve realized that this drift from church started before the kids were born; they just make a good excuse for behavior that we were already leaning towards anyway.

When my wife and I first met, we were both going to church heavily. I had fairly recently come off of a bad break-up (involving a wedding ring) and had turned to the church for stability since I had no family local. My wife had recently moved to town after finishing her B.A. degree at the U. of Texas and was living with her family while she worked on her MBA. Her family was strict Catholic, but has since embraced the lighter side of church–the Pentecostals.

After we got married, we continued to attend church, but with less frequency. A large part of that I believe is because of the difference in Catholic churches that my wife was used to attending, versus what I was used to growing up under the Pentecostal label.

See, Catholic church rarely lasts more than an hour. Catholics long ago realized, “Hey, we’re all sinners. Let’s get together for an hour on the weekend, break some bread, drink some wine, and then go and sin no more. E- Pluribus Unum…I missed the bus, you missed the bus…”

Pentecostals (Baptists, Church of God, Assembly of God, etc.), on the other hand, still labor under the belief that most of us are perfect and that to remain in a state of perfection, we should meet on Wednesday night and also on Sundays, and attend a church service lasting a minimum of an hour and a half and involving several uncomfortable situations for both the body and the mind.

So while my wife and I both began to drift away from regular church attendance before we had children, I believe it was for different reasons.

In my case, I got a heavy dose of God as a child. Then, as I grew up, studied texts outside of the strict Biblical tombs the Catholic church deemed acceptable several hundred years ago, and was able to decide for myself what I believed in given all that I had seen and heard, I came up with my own beliefs, which still include the basics of what I learned as a child…only more tempered with what I consider a healthy dose of skepticism.

Growing up also opened my eyes to the world of the church. The church today, while certainly offering those who need it, a sanctuary and a place of refuge, is also a business. It’s a business with a CEO (the Pastor) a board of directors (the deacons and elders) and worker-bees (the flock) without whom the church could not and would not exist. And while I believe many (possibly most) churches start out with the best of intentions, I also believe that a great many of them become self-perpetuating businesses with the same desire to succeed as cam be found in any corporate boardroom.

Am I jaded? A bit. Skeptical of “the church” as a whole-absolutely. Do I want my children to endure what I went through as a child only to watch my own parent’s marriage fall apart despite all of the holiness and platitudes they espoused throughout the week in their everyday life-a resounding NO!

Whoa! Where’d that come from? We went from talking about the church, to delving into my personal past. Hmm, maybe we should explore this some more.

(After this commercial break…like tomorrow maybe).
Part 2 on it’s way.