Lodge Hall of the Pharisees

Guest post by Paul Willingham

Last summer while on a pilgrimage to our daughter’s home in the northern suburbs, Bette and I pulled up behind a Prius, Toyota’s hybrid entry in the development and marketing of greener vehicles. (If it was last weekend, it probably would have been parked on the shoulder, now that Toyota’s recall problems are in the news.)

It wasn’t the hybrid that caught our eye, however. It was the vanity plate on the vehicle.

We often get a smile from some of the plates that we spy while others challenge us to try to figure out what the owner is trying to tell the world. I’m convinced that many times, the significance of the abbreviated, obtuse and hidden message is only obvious and important to the owner of the vanity plate. But the plate we saw was very plain and left no doubt as to the message.

It read I TITHE.

We spotted this plate in a heavily traveled, traffic-delaying intersection known locally as the Devil’s Triangle. I don’t believe that there is any spiritual significance in that but you never know (cue the Twilight Zone theme).

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Tithing is one of those areas of the Christian faith that gets kicked around a lot. There is a tension between a legalistic requirement imposed on Christians or the tithe as a starting point.

When I was in college back in the early 60s, an evangelist from Missouri became the focal point of many discussions, not only in our dorm but among many in the brotherhood of churches with which he was affiliated. His motto was MXIII, a Roman numeral acronym for Malachi 3:10.

“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.”( KJV)

Back in the 60s, the King James was the translation du jour. It was believed that using another translation was greasing the skids to perdition. I heard it said more than once by some in our brotherhood (and not totally tongue-in-cheek) that if the “King James was good enough for Paul and Silas it’s good enough for me.”  But the text of the NIV is a little clearer:

“Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby, put me to the test, says the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.”

A B, as he was fondly known, was not a proponent of the Prosperity Gospel, but he was a strong advocate of the tithe as an absolute minimum for Christians. The discussions centered around whether Christians were commanded and obligated to observe this particular element of the Old Covenant, or if it was done away with and supplanted by the New Covenant.

Sorry, I’m not here to resolve that issue today.

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As a CPA for over 25 years, I assisted in the preparation of thousands of income tax returns for clients. I saw the whole gamut of reported contributions by Christians from across the denominational spectrum as well as taxpayers who claimed little or no affiliation or interest in the things of God. (Our pastor recently cited statistics that Christians give somewhere between 2 and 3 percent.) Two of them stand out in my memory.

The first was a businessman in a small town in South Dakota. During the week between Christmas and New Years, he would drive the 35 miles from his home so we could review his contribution records and his detailed income for the year. We would total wages, interest income and other income items and determine as accurately as possible what his Adjusted Gross Income for income tax reporting purposes would be.

We would then total his giving to his church, parachurch missions, support for local community needs and other charitable giving. If it didn’t total at least 10 percent of his AGI, it was his practice to write a check before December 31, usually to his church, to bring it up to 10 percent.

He was not an outspoken advocate for tithing and he was not rich by any stretch of the imagination but for him tithing (ten percent) was one of the benchmarks for him and his family in their faith journey as followers of Jesus.

The second individual had retired from a management position in the financial services sector with a comfortable retirement benefit. He was also the beneficiary of a family trust that distributed to him a significant amount of income each year. He felt extremely blessed and his substantial charitable giving to his church and other causes well exceeded the so-called standard of the tithe. In fact, his annual giving exceeded the limits imposed by the IRS on deductibility of contributions in any given year. That is, he did not receive a tax benefit for some of his contributions each year and he didn’t care.

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For both of these individuals, giving was not governed by some legalistic check list promoted from the pulpit or imposed by congregational leadership. Rather, their thankful hearts made a sincere response to the blessings God had bestowed upon them.

And knowing them as I did over the many years of our professional relationship, neither of them would have ever considered driving around the Twin Cities with such a license plate.

In Luke 18, Jesus relates a parable, comparing a Pharisee and Tax Collector.

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” Luke 18:10-13 (NIV)

Had Caesar and the Roman government made them available, I suspect the Pharisee would have had one of tehse plates prominently displayed on his chariot. Or maybe even more than one so he could say “I’m not a sinner” in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin.

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Christians must ever be on guard against being drawn into the lodge hall of the Pharisees. We want the world to know that we are a redeemed people, revealed daily by how we live.

But we can’t do it by wearing a sign that says I TITHE nor by a fanfare that sounds as we drop our offerings into the plate.

We must ever be vigilant against the enticements of the one who would separate us from our Heavenly Father through pride, self-promotion and hypocrisy.

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One other observation: While I was not technically a tax collector during my working years as a CPA, I was a cog in the U S system of voluntary tax collection. And, although I was never vilified by my clients or neighbors, I feel a certain kinship with those the King James called Publicans. As a societal group they were despised, but the three that we know something about had many admirable qualities (Matthew, Zacchaeus and the tax collector in Luke 18) and we all would do well to emulate them.

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You can read more posts from my dad the sort-of publican here.