The Terrible Truth About Tithing

I used to work at a pretty cool laboratory.

It was a fairly small company that did extremely well in it's market and was a serious competitor to other, larger companies. One such competitor eventually bought out the small lab and welcomed [most of] us, the employees, into their corporate family and we retained our jobs. Not too long after that, an even larger competitor bought out the second company and decided it had too many laboratories in operation around the country and needed to shut some down.

My branch was one that was closed, thus leaving me and about 100 other people suddenly unemployed.

As referenced in my previous post: shit happens, eh?

Getting laid off is pretty big news and family members are undoubtedly going to catch wind of it. When I broke the news to my TBM father, one of the very first questions he asked me was "are you paying your tithing?"

At the time, I don't think I'd paid said tithing for several months. I'd already begun having doubts about the church and had just started my research. For me, one of the first stepping stones on the road to apostacy was to stop paying tithing. Things had always been tight anyway, and it didn't make sense to me that a loving god would demand my 10% when I really needed it to help provide necessities for my family.

I don't remember now if I gave my father a straight answer or not. I probably did my best to dodge the question. I wasn't ready then to come out of the doubter's closet and face the judgements of my TBM family members.

Looking back now though, I have to wonder what the hell is the actual point of tithing anyway? Mormons are promised (PROMISED!) by their leaders that if they are faithful in obeying the LAW of tithing, then "the windows of heaven will pour out blessings upon them".

Had I been forthcoming with dear old dad and admitted to ignoring the church-mandated "law", it would have been so easy for him to think that perhaps I was responsible for my own unemployment.

Nevermind the fact that a large number of employees affected by the lay off were temple-recommend holding, garment wearing, tithing paying LDS folks. They were doing everything they thought they needed to do to earn god's great and wonderful blessings, so why were they being punished in the same fashion as I?

I'm only speculating here, of course. I don't know for certain that my father would think such a thing, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

Now, fast forward a year and a half or so. I'm back to work for a new company (I was only unemployed for two weeks). My father tells me that the company he drives truck for is being forced to cut on of his runs. This directly affects his monthy income, cutting it almost in half.

As far as I know, my dad is still Mr. Gung-Ho Mormon Man. He's always talking about his trips to the temple, so I can only assume he's been a faithful tithe payer in order to qualify for the highly prestigous Temple recommend.

So where are his blessings? Where's his financial security? It should be very well safeguarded by the Lord who has promised to provide both spiritual and temporal blessings to those who abide by the law of tithing.

Let's cut through the many (oh, so many) layers of bullshit heaped upon us by the "inspired" LDS leadership and come to a much more likely conclusion: paying tithing to the Corporation of the President of TCOJCOLDS does absolutely nothing to ensure any kind of financial security or guarantee any kind of "blessings". Of course, some will argue that point, saying that something good happened because they paid tithing. There's simply no way to prove that such is the case.

If bad things can happen for no quantifiable reason, than so can good things.