It seems to me that the hand of their god could tell them to budget without tithing. The hand might not get so much cash that way, though.
Matthew 6:19-21 seems appropriate here, particularly the last bit.
Prosperity theology is to Christianity what My Name is Earl is to Karma.
I do not recall Jesus doing anything for the poor. When the woman used precious oil on Him and some complained that the money could be used for the poor,Jesus is quoted as saying,“You will always have the poor with you”. He could have abolished poverty by making money for them, as He did for Himself and Peter when they needed money for taxes. His mission apparently was not to help the poor, but to help people to love one another.
I just scanned myself for omniscience and came back negative.* I have more than once been surprised by responses to such questions. For example, I didn’t really expect anyone to be willing to submit DNA in a voluntary dragnet, but more than a few posters were willing to.
*Actually it came back wanker, but that’s another story.
Amen!
This is two consecutive posts in one morning in which I have agreed with bShodan. Is this a sign of the immient End of All Things? 
To borrow a line: They’re not just lies, they’re damned lies.
I cannot watch five minutes of those guys on TV without clenching my teeth and raising my blood pressure. In all literal seriousness, my sinful nature would like to torture them to death. It’s a problem for me.
I’m an ex-Christian, and still religious.
Prosperity theology sickens me, even more than the sight of the partially devoured dead mouse the cats bestowed on me this morning did.
Anne and furt, are you so vexed by prosperity theology because you think the ministers who propound it are, ah, untrustworthy, or for other reasons?
No, I’m sickened by it because it seems to me to be saying God must not love people who are not rich, or that they must necessarily be doing something that displeases God (if they weren’t, they’d be rich). Saying God loves the wealthy but not people who are not wealthy. I find it disgusting enough when a person bases whether or not they like people on the amount of money those people have, and I find it extra disgusting when someone says God does it too.
ETA: There is an element of disgust at the ministers who propound it, too. They look to me like they are preying on the weak, which I think is a disgusting thing to do.
It kind of sickens me in that I see people who are doing really well, good looking, nice family and their attitude seems to be “look at how God has blessed me [he must really like me!]”. A very convenient and attractive thing to believe. I’d probably go to church a lot too.
Anyway, didn’t Jesus say it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven? So it would seem that being prosperous is not good unless you give all your money away.
Quoth Der Trihs:
Yes, but God controls everything, not just wealth. It’s perfectly fine for a church to urge its members to help the church by whatever means they have available (which would also include things like volunteering to work in a soup kitchen), and it’s perfectly fine for a wealthy family to consider their wealth to be a blessing from God (among many other blessings, such as health or children). The problem with prosperity gospel is that it focuses on wealth to the exclusion of all else.
Quoth monavis:
He miraculously fed the multitudes with the loaves and fishes, and he urged his followers to help the poor (saying, in fact, that the set of people who enter Heaven will be precisely those who helped them, and that the set of people who go to Hell are precisely those who did not help).
Did you read the rest? Those people had been told to budget without linking it to tithing; the friend who took me there, specifically, had been told to budget many times. But it didn’t “catch.” The tithing gave them a specific objective that they could visualize; things like “being able to own a house” or “being able to send your children to college” were too ethereal for them. These were the kind of people who are afraid to get paid monthly because it’s too much time to budget for, who can’t get a bank account because their credit is so poor, who cash their cheques at a corner store and spend the money on their way home without remembering that the phone bill is due. They weren’t smart, or logical.
The tithes were their economic Dumbo’s feather. Oh, and the pastor didn’t request a specific tithe (they used that word but it wasn’t “10% of your income”); he did ask people to give, and worked with them to create a budget and stick to it. And as he knew the intellectual level he was working with and had the patience for it, the budgets they’d prepared together actually worked.
My own church doesn’t require tithes, but then, most people from my culture can work a budget and the notion of being paid by cheque went out the window decades ago. My brother was completely stunned when he saw the lines of people waiting to cash in cheques, in Philadelphia. The notion of “being unable to open a bank account” kept him awake for hours until he was able to digest it.
My sister is born again (the non-judgmental kind, I am happy to say), and she tithes to her church. She explained to me one time that it is intended as a recognition of God’s hand in all the blessings in her life, and failing to tithe regularly runs the risk of losing some or all of those blessings. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but that’s kind of messed up (and not just because I’m a stone atheist and don’t believe in any of it). It sounds to me kind of like paying your dues to the blessings club, and if you don’t pay your dues you don’t get your blessings. Makes me wonder how come I’ve had such a lucky life. Oh yes, her answer to that was that God is giving me time to change and to recognize His role in that luck. Heh, there’s an answer for everything.
Roddy
Sure but I’m skeptical. If the pastor could get them to budget so well that they not only had money for the tithe but for other things, then I’m having trouble believing he couldn’t also have educated them to budget for something for themselves without him getting cash. Further, you may say that what was required to motivate these people was for them to be told that their deity wanted them to put money aside for something. The pastor could have said that their god wanted them to put 10% aside for their children’s education (or something else worthy). But he said their god wanted them to put aside money for a tithe for him.
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[Huckster Voice]
“Now folks, we’re selling hope for just a $5 donation”
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“You can tell a lot about what God thinks of money by looking at the people he gives it to.”
ex-Christian here. I grew up in a devout home, never really watched Copeland but had the impression that he was a diabolic figure. My people didn’t consider him quite a real Xtian.
What’s the difference?
Really, this is important. When the New Testament talks about love, that’s agape, better translated “charity.” Jesus & Paul weren’t telling you to just love your family & friends.
In related news, we at the SDMB failed to mark the passing of one of the originators of Prosperity Christianity, Reverend Ike.
I remember him, he had a big “thing” going in New York back in the sixties I think. His schtick was something like “send me money and God will make you rich”. I wonder how many millions he stole from people who couldn’t afford it.
Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought; saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of prayer; but ye have made it the den of thieves.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth.