Not a Victimless Crime
(Tithes and Offerings: Then and Now)

In the Old Testament we have a rich collection of verses and entire chapters devoted to directing us on not just the need to give Tithes and Offerings but the nitty gritty details and processes for accomplishing same in a Godly and orderly manner. In that time and in the socioeconomic structure of ancient Israel, Tithes, Offerings and other sacrificial injunctions, such as the seven and 50 yearly years of Sabbath and Jubilee respectively, played a critical role in maintaining socioeconomic harmony and ensuring that Israel wasn’t ossified into a society of haves and have-nots.

Good as God’s purpose was, His prophets often had to rail extensively against the failure of famously hard hearted Israelites to faithfully comply with the extensively reiterated and explicated rules on giving of our substance and forgiving debts owed to us. This they had to do not because there was drought or hunger in heaven but because the Levites had no stake, land, in Israel while the poor, widows, orphans, strangers etc, were always with them and these needed to be taken care of if a permanent underclass, a lower caste among God’s people, wasn’t to be established.

As it was in the time of Moses and the prophets so it was in the time of Jesus and the Apostles and so it is today. God has never needed to live in houses we build nor has He needed to eat food we provide. As Jesus made abundantly clear in Matthew 25:31-46 and in other parables and sermons; God can only be served by serving man. God is only fed, clothed, housed, cared for etc when we do these to our fellow men for we cannot claim to love God that we do not see when we fail to love his creatures that He has surrounded us with. It is thus devilishly disingenuous when we strive to separate ‘giving to God’ from the ways, means and purposes that were established consistently in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

How can we today pretend to be Bible believing and understanding Christians when we say it doesn’t matter what is done with the Tithes and Offerings we are constantly exhorted and extorted by ‘men of God’ to pay? How can we turn our eyes away from the jets and mansions procured by these copious flows of divinely provided substance entrusted to our care when the poor continue to abound not just in our societies but in the very pews next to us and in our homes? How can we divorce the purpose of these divine injunctions from the current practice yet deceive ourselves that we are carrying out God’s will and purpose on earth? Can God be pleased that some ‘men of God’ appropriate the vast majority of His material blessings provided through the laity while the average ‘Levite’ who has little stake among us, the widows, orphans, strangers within our gates and the poor all over remain unprovided for?

Matthew 25 and every other relevant chapter of the Bible, Old and New Testament, did not stipulate the Temple or the Priest as the sole places and persons through whom we can give to God (his people). As is all too common among men, some have inserted themselves into the space between us and God and turned themselves into the exclusive conduits though which we can give to God. I have actually watched a Nigerian televangelist, supposedly ‘radical’ and ‘progressive’, teach his congregation not to give to fellow parishioners and even family members while of course exerting themselves strenuously to prove their love to God by giving all to the (his) church!

How did we come to such a sorry pass in these last days when knowledge truly abounds? How did a small group of men and women deceive us all to practice our Christianity in ways so fundamentally different from what the Bible very clearly describes? How do we reconcile Paul’s collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem with the harsh abandonment of the saints in Borno, Yobe, Adamawa and every other part of Nigeria even while pastoral jets and miles long ‘houses of God’ continue to proliferate? If most ‘men of God’ have turned their stomachs to their God must the ‘well educated’ Nigerian Christians prove themselves so ignorant of the Bible they claim to have read as to so inexcusably live their lives by rules so totally at variance with what God teaches us through the same book and our consciences?

When and where in the Bible did Jesus or any Apostle ask that Offerings should be for a new building or a new chariot for the ‘man of God’ instead of the constant refrain of providing for the needy? What was the outcome of Solomon’s strenuous and taxing, pun intended, efforts to build a house for God? Wasn’t the pain inflicted on the people the main plank for Jeroboam’s rebellion? Was the rich young ruler in Mark 10 told to disperse his wealth through any temple or any priest? Did Matthew 25 say we would perform any of the benchmark acts of piety through the temple or the priest? Was Jesus wrong when he preferred the Samaritan who cared for the robbery victim to the priest and the Levite who chose to go about their ‘godly’ business instead? Why, like the Galatians, have we become so thoughtless that we ignore God’s stipulations while holding fast to the prescriptions of mere men yet hope to please Him?

If a church and its pastor choose not to use God’s blessings to lift the heads of orphans, widows and poor saints but instead heap up ever grander whited sepulchers called churches to their own vainglory in the name of serving God, then heaven minded Christians must jealously guard and disperse the treasure God has entrusted to them in Godly and biblical ways. We shall have no excuse on the Day of Judgment if we are counted as goats and not sheep despite giving multi billions to sundry church projects while on earth. Each of us must work out his own salvation with fear and trembling if these false prophets are not to make merchandise of us to our eternal damnation. This is not a victimless crime for God gave each of us talents and resources as mere trustees tasked with lifting the heads of the less blessed and we shall be held to account on what use we put them to while on this side of eternity. Shirking our responsibilities as trustees or cavalierly discharging them can be no less a sin than frittering away both talent and treasure on the most heinous profligacy.

Abraham Abiodun Ayodeji Idowu
March 20th 2016