1st World Comfort versus 3rd World Suffering

Learn_To_Know wrote:

Tripp Borz wrote: No edit huh? Lol

Haha...nope. Only get an hour to make your changes!

I get what you're saying in the previous posts. I will respectfully not derail this thread any longer, haha. I don't want to find myself in a narrative of Sapadu's like ren and Desolous found themselves, haha.

MTFBWY,
LTK

no more need fall beneath Sapadu's word-blade.

I don't want to find myself in a narrative of Sapadu's like ren and Desolous found themselves

People will kill for matters close to their hearts, I think a derailed thread an meeting sapadu's wrath aren't such a big deal

As you wish lol

In answer to Mace, and again this is all from my experiences and perspective. And I am not the best example of a "mormon" in the first place lol however,

The law of tithing is as old as the bible itself. And has been reaffirmed with modern scripture. (If you want references let me know.) The word tithe denotes a tenth so that is how we come up with the 10% but I'm sure you all know that. One of the greatest parts of tithing from my view is that yes, it is encouraged and even expected but at no time does the church look at my yearly earnings to determine if I am a "full" tithe payer. It's up to me to decide if it's 10%. Make sense?? And the reason I give 10% like I said is that I believe in the mission of the church which is to spread the gospel as well as for maintenance and building of church related edifices as well as projects. Now take in to account that I am a very libertarian person at heart. So all this does not come "easy" for me. And I don't believe myself to be a naive person as well. To get to the meat and potatoes I have confidence that my tithing is used for the betterment of humankind. Not that I don't believe that every cent is being spent the way I would, humans are humans after all, but like I said previously if I didn't agree collectively I wouldn't do it.

Now what Mace stated his friend does is a very noble and generous thing to do. And members are encouraged to do this as well. For instance I mentioned I lived in Brazil for two years. I was a missionary for my church. As I've also stated before that I in no means lived in luxury, I did pay my own way with help from my parents. I worked in Alaska to save up enough money to go. I have a nephew that is doing the same thing. I realize that I had my "motives" for going and doing this but I did it because I wanted to, not that I was forced in any way. In a sense giving two years of my life in the service of something I felt strongly about and wanted to share with others. I would say 95% of my time was spent with people of other faiths and beliefs. I hope this helps. Even though it's a bit of a novel it really only scrapes the surface lol.

Okay.. I'm ready for the rebuttal lol

Tripp Borz wrote: Okay.. I'm ready for the rebuttal lol

I was just going to PM Mace, but now that you responded, I feel it's my duty to present a different perspective for the Temple crowd (and with an anecdotal story to boot, yeah!)

Haha...

But not now...it's Friday night!

I've got things to see and people to do.

Or is it people to see and things to do?

Oh well...

Just FYI here at TOTJO you are encouraged, when you donate money, to donate it to the charity of your choice instead of donating it to us and then the Temple donates that to a specific choice

If you want to donate to the Temple then donate to the Temple but if you want to do charitable giving then do charitable giving

Source: A post I remember Br John making ages ago lol

Mace Feibel wrote: out of interest, how comes you have to give it to the church? In Judaism (and I think maybe in Islam as well) you are supposed to give 10% but to any sort of charity, not the church itself. A good pal of mine gives 20% of what he earns to help people in Israel who have been effected by war / terrorist attacks, it seems pretty swell to me as well because he gets to meet the people he helps and see where his money goes.

It's 4:40 in the morning. My new, days old, infant daughter is staring at me wide-eyed. Now's as good a time as any to take advantage of this sleep deprivation and respond to this post, haha.

The reason you are instructed to give the money to the church is because that's what the Mormon scriptures say to do. Current Mormon leaders say donations to other charities is good and Christ-like, but it won't count as tithing.

The problem with tithing in the Mormon church is that they make what should be a heart-felt gift into an obligation. (And this problem isn't exclusive to Mormons I might add.) And what's worse, the consequences for not paying your tithing to the Mormon church are far-reaching.

For example: Mormons have been taught (and fairly recently) that tithing is like fire insurance when Jesus comes again. Their scripture teaches that "he that is tithed shall not be burned at the Lord's coming." In other words, if you pay them money, God won't strike you down.

The worst control-factor of tithing in my opinion is how it relates to their temples. Mormons believe in 3 different heavens. In order to get to the highest heaven, you have to pay your tithing. So, in essence, one of the conditions to getting into heaven is paying 10% of your income. I know other churches teach tithing, too, but I'm not sure others are as firm as the Mormons about it being a condition of making it to heaven.

There are lots of other issues with Mormon tithing and different consequences the Mormon church will mete out on their members for not paying tithing, but if you'd like to know more, Google is your friend or you can PM me.

And now for the promised anecdotal story:

About 7 years ago, a good friend of ours (an active Mormon) was struggling financially. She didn't have the money to pay her rent and buy food for her two kids (she was also a single parent). She had been getting support from her local Mormon congregation but she had faltered on paying her tithing that month due to buying groceries instead. Her windfall from her local church wasn't coming in and now she didn't have enough money for rent and groceries. I wrote a $700 check for her rent.

I thought about counting that as tithing, but I was told by a local Mormon leader that although my gift to her was generous, it didn't count as tithing and god knows how best to handle the sacred funds as he directs the Mormon leadership.

All right, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Haha.

I know this is quickly becoming an old topic, but a friend of mine sent me this link and I thought it might be interesting reading for some as it relates to Mormonism and money.

Enjoy!

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-10/how-the-mormons-make-money#p1

Injustice should never be viewed as an old topic if it is still occurring.

I skimmed the article earlier today, crazy stuff. How the LDS church can keep their tax-exempt status baffles me. I'm not a lawyer, but I feel like with all their secular business ventures there must be some kind of law that demands financial transparency. But again, maybe not. I hope with Romney running for presidency more people look into the church, and more pressure is put on the church to reveal their financial dealings, especially in secular ventures.

I totally agree with you that they should be more transparent. They used to be, but I think once they started getting filthy rich they closed the books (this happened in the 1960s).

I don't have a dog in this fight (well, my wife is still technically Mormon, but I've been very pleased with some of her choices in the last few weeks regarding her devotion to Mormonism), but just to play devil's advocate let me throw this out there:

Based on the parable of the Talents I think it could be argued (not by me, of course; I don't care, haha) that Jesus would be okay with capitalism.

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Learn_To_Know has just created a Force shield to protect him from a storm of controversy that comment might generate about Jesus being ok with capitalism

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Learn_To_Know just added more strength to the Force shield

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Catholic churches invest their money into for-profit organizations as well, not just LDS churches. And the money that was spend on the shopping complex is supposedly from the real estate company PRI that the church has invested in as opposed to tithing.
I have very little interest in these things anymore, so that was a brief summary of a few things I've skimmed through.