Sonofone,
Thanks for your comments;
I used to attend Worldwide Church of God.
I used to TRY to tithe and recommended that others try.
Even at the first I had problems concerning how to compute the tithe.
On my gross income or on the net income after all expenses. The IRS was no help at all.
I didn't realize that it was strictly agricultural although we did teach tithing on the increase.
Over time I found excuses to reduce the tithe. 1. half was my wife's to use as she saw fit and she was not a member, so I only had to tithe on my half of my earnings. All of her earnings from her job were separate and she didn't tithe on that either. So now I was down to about 3% which seemed manageable, but my conscience was not clear.
Next we spent quite a bit of money traveling 100 miles round trip to services and even more to basketball games or other sport functions at other church areas. Should that be deductible or not? Now I'm down to about 2%.
Through all of this turmoil we had two visits from a pastor to counsel us, but no surprise since both my wife and I served in several areas such as assisting deacons, worship/song leader, transportation driver and most of the other folks, some of whom were tithing, didn't ask us if we tithed or not.
So we didn't really suffer from first tithe and second tithe was spent on the family vacation or on needy locals attending festivals, who appreciated it very much.
I guess my point is that by accident or by design, we didn't really tithe 10%. In reality we gave regular offerings as we were able and no one complained as long as we didn't brag about our situation. The other expenses such as travel were under our control, so I suppose that I cannot say that I suffered from the tithing teaching all that much. But, I felt that God was disappointed in me.
It is still wrong to teach tithing and there are many victims of the system who did suffer so that WCG could build large buildings, fly private jets and send tracts and magazines around the world in a manner that seemed right to the human understanding that we all had.
I am glad that Bible Truths explains this so well and that we can discuss the error in a friendly manner and without any remaining guilty feelings.
There is so much of what we are coming to understand that seems plain and logical now, but we didn't see it that way in the past. So, we need to be patient with new folks who are receiving their freedom for the first time as participants of B T or of the forum. Pray that God will provide this freedom to more enlightened truth seekers every day.
indianabob