Memories with a smile..

When I first read this, I had to stifle a chuckle. A smile crept across my face as I quietly gave a knowing nod concerning Corey’s thought process. I have no clue as to who Corey is, but his thoughts on what he heard resonated with me. You see, about 20 some odd years ago, this was me saying the EXACT same thing when I first heard we didn’t tithe anymore. Corey watched this presentation:

 

After watching this presentation, Corey had this to say about what he heard:

“So since we are not under the Mosaic Law, I guess I can start telling lies, stealing, and dishonoring my parents? After all, I’m not under the Law. Obviously, these men have not run a church and paid the bills there. ….Unbelievable”

I hear you, Corey. Once upon a time, that was me. It was many, MANY moons ago, and “New Covenant” or “Old Covenant” was nothing more than a time line of the Bible. “Old Covenant” was the Old Testament, “before” Jesus was born to a virgin, then we had the Synoptic Gospels–that was the part of the Bible “during” the time Jesus was here in Earth form, and then we had the Epistles which were the letters that Paul and Peter and a couple of others wrote “after” Jesus ascended back to heaven. Before, during and after. Nothing more, nothing less. At that time of my life, I frequented the halls of Yahoo! Chat room to engage in “Christian conversation”. (HA!) It was there that another chatter started sharing the New Covenant message–the Good News with me.

There were many, many issues I had with him, and at the bottom of the list was tithing. Corey could have been quoting me verbatim. Somehow, we’d gotten on the subject of tithing, and he freely acknowledge that he and his family didn’t tithe. I was mortified. At this point, I was very active in the local congregation, and wondered how on EARTH people expected to keep the doors open. Sure, the message was the main thing, but in order to enable to the hearing impaired to hear, we needed a sound system that ran with electricity. In order to let the seeing impaired see where they were going, lights were needed–that ran on electricity. You get the idea. There were light bills to pay, cleaning people to pay, etc. Not pay tithes?? He clearly didn’t know the ins and outs of keeping church doors open. After much conversation, it was finally realized that he and his family “gave”, as in, they put $$ in the offering  in the plate as it passed their way. He just chose to call it an “offering”, instead of  “tithes”. That was different. As part of the leadership in our congregation, it really didn’t matter WHAT you called it. Call it a fruit bowl for all the leadership cared. Just please continue to put $$ in the plate so that we can keep the electricity on for one more month…. so we could pay a cleaning crew for one more month… Tomato–tomahto. Made no difference to me.

Of course, years later, I realized that the mindset I had was a clue as to my ignorance of the New Covenant, which is another adventure in itself.

I pray the Corey’s of the world keep on questioning, keep on accusing, and keep on learning this awesome relaxing (not lazy–just relaxing) life Jesus has for us. It’s HIS life. Rock on, Corey. You are in for an exciting journey as your continue to “prove” New Covenant ministers wrong. Your life will never be the same.