“Blood atonement”?
Blood atonement, an explanation thereof. Much more smoke than fire, more rumor than reality. Read and enjoy!
Don’t you have to pay your tithe to be a member in good standing of the church?
Well, what do you mean by “member in good standing?” You should be a full tithe-payer in order to have a temple recommend, but that’s about it. No one talks about it or anything; I have no idea how much tithing, if any, the various members of my ward pay. The only people who know anything about tithing are the bishop and the guy who keeps the financial records.
Tithing funds go to build and maintain temples and meetinghouses, pay for materials (books, ingredients for activities, etc.), and stuff like that. Quite boring really.
What do you mean “that’s about it”? Isn’t the temple where the important rituals such as marriages are performed? How does a person get into the highest level of heaven without being a member in good standing?
Well, what’s the point of going to the temple if you aren’t willing to pay tithing? In the temple, one makes promises that are considerably more demanding than just 10% of one’s income (if any). If a person is not willing to give 10% to the Lord, he is not ready to make those promises, which are far more serious.
If the goal is to get to the highest level of heaven, that’s going to demand everything you’ve got. 10% is the easy part.
That’s really besides the point isn’t it? The Church of LDS is essentially saying give us money or you don’t get into (the best) heaven and participate in important rituals. That fits any definition of demand you can come up with. Therefore Monty is either being very disingenuous, or is mistaken on Mormon theology.
Or neither.
One is either a member of the church or one is not a member of the church. Membership requires baptism and confirmation. If one is a member but does not pay tithing then one is still a member.
To assert that the LDS Church demands tithing is the same error as to assert that the Roman Catholic Church demands one be male as females cannot be Pope.
No, that’s exactly the point. The temple is the place where you go if you’re trying to become the sort of person who lives in the Celestial Kingdom. Giving 10% of what the Lord gave you in the first place, in order to maintain the facilities you use yourself, isn’t a high price for that–it’s the lower law. In the temple you promise to be willing to live the higher law, which asks everything. Why anyone would want to go to the temple if they don’t believe in its principles is beyond me. It would be like going to an amusement park when you don’t like rides.
No one has to pay tithing. It’s completely private, no one knows if you pay tithing or not. (If you want to, you can lie to the Bishop’s face about it and he’ll probably give you a recommend; if you’re really looking to lie to God he won’t stop you.) But if you actually want to go to the Celestial Kingdom and do all that, then you have to try to be the sort of person who lives there, and that means acknowledging how the Lord blesses you and giving some back to Him.
And then there are specific blessings that go along with that; Malachi 3: 10 reads: “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” IME that works.
Paying tithing is a privilege, not a burden. It’s what you do first. I can understand that you think that’s crazy, but it has worked very well indeed for us.
What a ridiculous comparison. One does not need to be Pope to be a full member of the Catholic Church, nor does one need to be Pope to go to heaven. There isn’t one heaven for those that pay and one for those that don’t. The LDS Church says you can either pay us and go to the good heaven and be a full member, or you can not pay us and go to the bad heaven while being a 2nd class member. It’s extortion and a demand for money.
Of course you are not giving it back to God but rather to the LDS church. I would have no problem if the tenet was “give away 10% of your income to charity”, but that’s not what it is. It’s “give 10% of your income to us”. No one has any objection to a religion asking it’s adherents for donations simply because it’s a fact of life that religions need money to operate. When that request changes to a demand alarm bells start ringing everywhere in my head and I see little more than a scam to make money.
Very well indeed. It’s not every religion that has a billion dollars laying around to spend on shopping malls.
Lived in Salt Lake City for a year, not an expert on the subject but would like to chime in. In most of the rest of the country, Mormons are as described above. Leave them alone, tell them no and they will respect your wishes. In SLC, if you don’t go to their ward house, then you will not be invited into their home, into their conversations at work, into anything they are doing. And then there are the SLC “Jack Mormons”, those who drink heavily and go home to kick the dog and beat the wife.
So generally speaking, most of the country does not see anything to get down on when it comes to the Church of LDS. But try living in their midst, when you are the minority, and you might come up with some other conclusions.
All that stuff isn’t being built with tithing money; it’s from the businesses owned by the LDS Church, such as the radio stations and farms. It’s different money entirely.
A good chunk of tithing does go to charity work of various sorts. One can also donate directly to different charity branches like Humanitarian Aid, the Perpetual Education Fund, etc. The LDS Church also runs a bunch of welfare farms (there are a whole lot of farms, some welfare, some plain business–I live near a business one). And then there’s Deseret Industries, some schools and vocational training programs, a hospital or so, and so on.
Oh, fast offerings are another one again. When you fast, part of it is to donate at least the amount of money you didn’t eat, which then goes to a sort of food bank that we call the Bishop’s storehouse. People who can’t buy groceries go there to get food, and the food nearly all comes from Deseret Industries.
There’s not much profit in tithing; it all goes right back into running things. We have a lay ministry and hardly anyone gets paid; only the full-time ones who don’t have enough to live on get a stipend. Nobody ever got rich working for the LDS Church. I fully realize that to you, it looks just the same as a widow handing over her life savings to Peter Popoff or something, but I happen to disagree.
I think the question is, are Mormons expected to donate 10% of their income to the Church, or are they not? (And what is a “temple recommend”?)
[reverend lovejoy]
And tithing means ten percent of gross, not net! Don’t make me start auditing you!
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All this from the fundamentalists who insist on Biblical literalism in every other endeavor. :rolleyes:
It got to the point where I would hyper my dog Luke into a barking frenzy at the thought of getting to go outside and hurl open the door yelling ‘kill’ when ever I saw the JW drive into my yard. Kept them away like a charm. Of course Luke was happily barking because he got to go outside and romp around the yard and had no idea he was threatening, though he was hopeful at the possibility of being taken to the local McDonalds for a naked burger.
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Actually? And no offense to the JWs–I have some relatives who are that faith. But I went thru a period when I was kid and they’d come by. Always this one lady, who was very sweet. And I’d seen her at the corner store–she was about as scary as a ladybug.
But she ended up knocking on her door and giving me literature. And I was too nice to just tell her to go away.
My Momster: Tell her you’re Catholic.
Me: Mom! We aren’t!
Her: She’ll never come back. Trust me.
I’m the world’s worst liar. I couldn’t. She was a nice lady. (I’d been to lots of different Christian services–and we had the relatives…)
My non-Catholic grandmother had bought us a St. Francis statue that we had in the back yard. (She liked his story. She was Unitarian)
My mom put it by the door. I never saw that lady again.
I seriously doubt that the money didn’t originate primarily from tithing. It may have gone through different businesses or what not, but that doesn’t change anything. That money came from tithing, or at best other donations that were freed up by tithing. The funny thing is that you say where the tithing money goes as if it’s a fact you know. The church has, as far as I know, never disclosed anything to do with it’s finances. Compare that with the Vatican that gives detailed financial reports. As do, I believe, all of the dioceses. Why the secrecy?
Besides, that still doesn’t change the fact that the tithing is essentially being extorted, which is the main issue.
What do you get when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with a Unitarian?
Something that knocks on your door for no particular reason! 
I’d love to continue this discussion with you in another thread, treis. But first you’ll have to admit that you don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t see that happening.
Too polite. Which, in light of Church history and how the nuns and priests tried to raise those people, says a lot about how well their parents did it. I mean, c’mon! Members of my Lutheran congregation were being given an explanation of Muslim beliefs at the local mosque and I, being well raised but too old to remember it, muttered to our pastor, “Well, they’re closer than the Mormons.” And it’s true and no reason to not find Mormons to be nice, if a little boring. They’re just not Christians unless you stretch the definition far beyond the breaking point.
As for the lack of success Jehovah’s Witnesses may have converting Catholics, I realized long ago, like when I was still a Catholic, that no other NORMAL faith could provide the [del]sheer wackiness[/del] beauty and mystery Catholics had come to expect. Scientology has [del]wackiness[/del] the [del]beauty and[/del] mystery in spades so I expect lapsed Catholics to be easy pickings. The Witnesses, as Millerites, have the necessary theological underpinnings but, being nice, if more than a little boring, there isn’t the FLASH! needed to seal the deal.
What have I said that is factually incorrect or incomplete?