Last week Janey did an excellent post on the prosperity gospel called Should God be a Vending Machine. In the comments a reader named Robert made reference to Pres Nelson’s latest conference address, and those darn footnotes. I did not want to derail the conversation, so I decided to explore more how the Church uses footnotes, in this case to complete contradict what was in the talk.
In President Nelson’s now oft quoted “Think Celestial” talk, he spoke of a time early in his professional life when he was an intern and making $15 a month. He was not paying tithing, and his wife asking about it quickly cause him to repent and pay the $1.50 a month tithing. He then said
As I became a full-tithe payer, the windows of heaven began to open for me. I attribute several subsequent professional opportunities to our faithful payment of tithes. (20)
GC Oct 2023, Pres Nelson
How do you read “professional opportunities”? I would say this is referring to temporal rewards like maybe a more prestigious job, and probably more pay. Ah, but there was a footnote, number 20 to be exact. According to Jana Riess in her blog, this footnote was not their initially, but was added within the first two weeks. Let’s read the footnote
This is not to imply a cause-and-effect relationship. Some who never pay tithing attain professional opportunities, while some who pay tithing do not. The promise is that the windows of heaven will be opened to the tithe payer. The nature of the blessings will vary.
Footnote #20, Think Celestial, GC talk by Pres Nelson, Oct 2023
OK, Sometimes you get rewarded for paying tithing like Pres Nelson did, and sometimes you don’t. So what did Pres Nelson mean when he “attributed” those opportunities to tithing? I’m so confused! The Church loves to walk both sides of this “prosperity gospel”. Pay tithing because you’ll get blessed, but you won’t always get blessed in earthly ways, but still pay your tithing. Jana Riess in her blog referenced above called this a “soft prosperity gospel”
I can’t help but wonder what the conversations were like in his office when somebody came to him:
Correlation Dept employee who drew the short straw: “Ah, Pres Nelson, we might have to change your talk”.
Pres Nelson: “What for, it was a perfect talk! People are saying its the best talk ever!”
Brother Correlation: “You said you attribute your professional opportunities to paying tithing. You can’t say that, because we have poor people in the church that have been paying tithing all their lives.”
Pres Nelson: “Well, what are we going to do about it. With this web thing and the internets, people have already recorded my talk, and they will know we changed it. We don’t want another mess like Boyd caused a few years ago”
Brother Correlation: How about we add a footnote. Nobody ever reads them. We got away with some doozies in the Gospel Topic Essays. The footnote can say you didn’t really mean to attribute your success to tithing, that it was just a coincidence. That should take care of it.
Pres Nelson: Is that a Swig drink in your hand? Can I have a sip?
From bug planted in Pres Nelson’s office
First of all, who would that person be? It obviously was not Pres Nelson himself who decided the footnote was needed, or he wouldn’t have said that in the first place. Was it one of the Q15? Do any of them have a guts to tell the Prophet that his talk was wrong? Another question is why didn’t the correlation Dept catch this before it was given? Are Pres Nelson’s talks exempt from “pre-publication review”, and if so will that change in the future?
What are your thoughts on the this particular footnote? It is disengnouse of the Church to add a footnote that completely changes the original and intended meaning of Pres Nelson’s words?
Wheat & Tares 
I don’t find this surprising, but par for the course. The imaginary employee in this scenario is correct. I doubt the average members reads the footnotes so, crisis averted. Bill, you are also correct because he absolutely implied a cause and effect relationship and that is the only message that was heard and will be frequently quoted for years to come in tithing messages. There are too many things like this in the church which are double speak, so the church is covered either way – win/win! A classic example is priesthood blessings. If you have one and have enough faith, then the prayer will be answered. This comes with the caveat: except when it’s not God’s will, then you don’t get the desired effect/result. I believe this contradiction is why healing blessings don’t really happen anymore: they didn’t do anything except create false hope (and perhaps disillusionment) for everyone whose loved one died anyway.
President Newsroom, meet Brother Footnote.
Apparently, the devil isn’t just in the details. He’s lurking in the footnotes, too.
Another trick we editor use is to put all the notes at the very end (in a book, after the last chapter where practically nobody will see them). And, of course, use a smaller type size to make them harder to read.
Love the tongue in cheek post! Adding the footnote “the nature of your blessings will vary” is such a corporate, legalistic thing to say. It materially changes the meaning of the talk and I’m astounded that a relatively junior employee could alter the prophet’s talk.
I just wish there would be footnotes on the fun destroying rules like the word of wisdom and the law of chastity.
Perhaps it was disingenuous of the Church, rather than disengnouse?
In either case, I can’t see RMN allowing his talks to be vetted by lesser beings prior to making them public, so I am guessing the vetting process only applies to folks below Q15 level.
My guess is that it had to be someone either at the Q15 level or in RMN’s family or friends that raised the concern. I can’t possibly see a regular church office person being authorized to meet with RMN to ask for a clarification.
I view correlation as rubber stampers so I’m not surprised the talk wasn’t edited before it was given. I see them as yes men. Good feedback is not the goal.
All changes in the church happen after the fact at the grass roots level. Complaints bubbled up sufficient to warrant a footnote.
This behavior seems right up their alley.
The legalistic sounding nature of the footnote suggests Oaks. Maybe a conversation like this:
Oaks: My most beloved and honorable prophet, there might be an itty bitty problem with your talk. There might be people in the church who think they are righteous and pay tithing, but are otherwise unworthy of blessings. If we promise them blessings for paying tithing, some disgruntled person may decide to sue the church because they paid tithing and didn’t get blessings like you did. We need to put a foot note on that talk to prevent more lawsuits against the church, like those who are demanding tithing money back because we are not giving it away to the undeserving poor, but saving it for mind boggling expensive temples.
Nelson: inspired idea my beloved apostle.
I am probably the odd one out but I always read the footnotes at the end of the talks. (Yes, I also read the long forwards in many classic novels too. Something in my brain just won’t let me skip them.) Sometimes the footnotes are long and add more context to a quote or story that was told.
My thought related to the topic, is how many members actually read conference talks vs. just listening live or online? My guess is that the most listen rather read so they are not even aware there are footnotes to skip over.
I know I would have counted listening to conference live as doing what is expected by the church and called it a day. At some point I just discovered I prefer reading on my own schedule vs listening. I focus better when reading, so it works for me.
Ah well, I guess prophet Russell was encouraging us to live in hope…thinking wryly and with forgiveness.
How would the dear man know about the real world and how we live with it and in it?! Were he to be able to do that I guess it would be impossible to be a prophet. Bit like it would be impossible to have missionaries much past the age of 18 and how it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get them that far with unblinkered belief.
I’m glad I had access to wishful thinking for at least part of my life, currently feeling a little exposed to the whims of the universe.
“It obviously was not Pres Nelson himself who decided the footnote was needed, or he wouldn’t have said that in the first place.”
I love complaining about bad doctrine in general conference talks as much as the next guy, but it’s far from obvious that the President Nelson can’t have changed his mind about whether his words delivered the meaning that he wanted to after the fact. I, for instance, will probably regret this comment within minutes of posting it. Perhaps I’ll add a footnote later.
Of course, with the footnote making such a dramatic change to the meaning of the phrase, it would have been far better to edit the text rather than bury it. If we want to be a church that truly believes in prophetic fallibility, we also need to allow for prophetic self correction, and even failed self correction.
It seems the footnote makes it much easier to call wrong right and right wrong.
Gospel Topics Essays footnotes: try them, you’ll like them.
Nelson preached the prosperity gospel through and through in Kenya in 2018 where he said: “We preach tithing to the poor people of the world because the poor people of the world have had cycles of poverty, generation after generation. That same poverty continues from generation to another, until people pay their tithing.”
One thing I’ve noticed too, is that the messages about tithing are always directed at the poor and middle class. What about the rich I ask. There are plenty of rich people in the Mormon corridor who are members of the church. Why not harry them and ask if they are paying an actual full tithe or just what may appear to be a full tithe but dishonestly claiming it is a full tithe? Why not get more specific about what exactly people are to pay on. Do stock dividends count? Do business earnings count? Also, I thought tithing was to be paid on the “increase” or “interest” of one’s income. If that’s the case, then the poor who live paycheck to paycheck and have little to no surplus, increase, or interest can justify paying very little in tithing to count as ten percent, right? The median household income in the US is $74,500. If by many interpretations that household is to pay $7,450 a year to really consider themselves full tithe payers, then that amount seems absolutely exorbitant and unbearable for the median household. That’s $143 in the collection plate for every week that you attend church, close to $600 a month. That’s a really expensive church.
My wife and I pay about 1% of our gross income to the church in tithing and justify it as a sufficient tithe. Why? Because after we calculate our necessary living expenses, that is what we can afford to give. Additionally, we do not attend tithing declaration (formally known as settlement, but with its name now changed to avoid giving off a shakedown vibe). I regard it as superfluous and invasive. At the temple recommend interviews, “are you a full tithe payer” is already asked. Second, I find the practice of insisting that families during the holiday season attend a closed-door meeting in the bishop’s office to be asked if they pay a full tithe before a printout of the family’s annual contributions to the church to be high pressure and intimidating. I’ve never heard of another voluntary/non-profit organization doing that. Additionally, what information does the church give its members about how it spends its money? There is little to no transparency. The church has faced problems with the SEC, for which it is has had to settle. It has well over $100 billion in total assets. I simply won’t be goaded into such a subtle shakedown meeting every year with the bishop to pressure me to pay thousands more than what I really need to.
Just a few thoughts to add to the discussion:
1. Although the Wayback Machine from Internet Archive indicates that there was in fact a footnote #20 embedded in the talk as early as Thursday, October 5th, I can’t determine if the actual footnote was the same as what we see now on the current general conference website. I only mention this because October 5th is less than a week after conference and most likely the footnote was there when the original talk was posted (typically the text of the talk is made public in a matter of a few days after conference weekend with the video usually coming first).
Jana Reiss mentions in her article “because at some point in the next two weeks, the Church added a footnote to clarify . . .” So to be fair to President Nelson, it may or may not have been due to outside pushback coming after the text of the talk was posted on the general conference site, but in fact may very well have been included from the beginning. We just don’t have enough evidence to really know.
2. On the other hand, with the need to counter the prosperity gospel tendencies in our religious culture, why not take on the issue in a straight-forward way within the talk itself rather than bury it in a footnote where so many members will never take the time to read?
3. Where I’m still a bit confused is how the first sentence of President Nelson’s footnote seems to contradict the very paragraph he is footnoting. In the body of the talk he states, “I attribute several subsequent professional opportunities to our faithful payment of tithes,” but in footnote #20 he observes, “This is not to imply a cause-and-effect relationship.” The two statements seem quite contradictory to each other. Either a cause-and-effect relationship is implied or it isn’t. Maybe I’m overthinking this a bit. And I totally agree with @Toad, there is a “corporate” sound to the footnote with the phrase “nature of the blessings will vary.”
I personally feel that most members won’t even notice the footnote. To quote my favorite Simon and Garfunkel song “The Boxer” “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” Members, depending on how TBM they are, will most likely not even question what has been said or printed by the brethren/the church because they unthinkingly rubber stamp whatever issues forth from their mouths.
This reminds me of the GC talk about having faith to NOT be healed. How many of you were raised hearing talks, testimonies and lessons about how Priesthood blessings will heal you of all of your physical and emotional infirmities if you just have faith? This was hammered home hard in my family and ward growing up. When my dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease my mom was shattered. (After the shock wore off Dad was much more philosophical about his diagnosis and chose to live his life to the fullest until the end which he did in a beautiful and inspiring manner.)
My mom would troll Priesthood bearers that she knew to give Dad a blessing to heal him. Interestingly enough, none of these men felt moved to bless Dad with a miraculous recovery but rather blessed him with the ability to cope well with his disease and to have the best possible life under the circumstances. Mom went ballistic every time because a miracle didn’t occur. The oldest of my brothers was the bishop of their ward and was at his wits end with my mom’s demands for a miracle and told his SP about this problem. The SP (a dear friend from HS and a very spiritual guy) volunteered to go give Dad a blessing. The same thing happened, Dad wasn’t healed and my mom very nearly had a meltdown after that experience. Because she’d been taught since her church nursery days that if she asked in faith, her blessings would be answered-and it had always been implied that the answer would absolutely happen if enough faith was involved.
I’ve seen this happen with other teachings and pronouncements from our leaders and the church. This is where that horrible “if-then” business messes everything up. The standard member who “follows the prophet” faithfully will apply what they’ve been taught in church and elsewhere to a problem. However, like my mom or like the poor people who pay tithing first and then don’t have enough money to feed their families and pay their bills when the “expected blessings” don’t happen they end up confused, hurt and often very angry. Let’s quit teaching things that set members up for failure and openly acknowledge that even in the church things often don’t go the way we want them to go.
Durned if they add a footnote and durned if they don’t.
The Book of Mormon promises that the people will prosper if they keep the commandments and, conversely, that they’ll be cut off from the presence of the Lord if they don’t. And so, if the opposite of being cutoff from the presence of the Lord is to be prospered–then to be prospered must mean more than making a better living. It also means to receive an increase of spiritual blessings. I think this is the way the Law of Tithing works. To have the windows of heaven open upon us doesn’t mean “pie in the sky.” It means to have the blessings that come from heaven shower upon us–which may or may not include temporal blessings. Though I would say–from personal experience–that there usually seems to be enough temporal blessings to at least help us meet our basic needs.
The problem with all of this is that unless there are blessings, no one would do it. I mean, that’s the whole stick and carrot of it – even the Lord knows this, or he wouldn’t have included blessings in the first place. Why else would I pay tithing, which is a not inconsiderable part of my income (to a church that financially no longer needs tithing money, no less) unless I am getting something in return?
What you get in return is the vague part though, kind of like the word of wisdom. Prosper vs cut off from the presence of the Lord. I personally don’t have a testimony of tithing – ie, I can’t directly connect to paying money to receiving something in return. I pay it because I have a testimony of other things. So I assume it works as stated.
I mean, of course, all of that is completely aside from the point that the verse in Malachi 3:10 is written to the priests (Mal 2:1 for context) and not to the general “church” population. In fact, I’d wager that Malachi was probably written as a way for people to know if their priests were actually doing the right thing with their tithes. Priests not paying tithing = destroy[ed] fruits of [the] ground [and] your vine[s] [not bearing] fruit [when you expect it] = riot at the temple.
Jack, there are a lot of causation fallacies invoked in common Mormon discourse on tithing and blessings. Something good happened in my life and I just paid tithing, therefore that good thing has to be because of tithing. As for spiritual blessings, it’s unclear what those are and they often seem like an explanation of a blessing for someone who hasn’t gotten a real blessing. The Book of Mormon promise also doesn’t work in real life. Many large powers and peoples that have prospered have done so through murder and enslavement. The Lamanites, mostly the bad guys in the Book of Mormon narrative with some exceptions, ended up taking over the Americas while the Nephites, mostly the good guys, died off. Of course I think Joseph Smith’s idea is that the good guys, the Christian Europeans, would eventually take the promised land of North America and that the so-called Lamanites deserved it because of their ancestors’ past wickedness. But how good were the English colonizers really? There are of course many good among them, but overall their taking of the Americas did involve a lot of murder and enslavement.
Why isn’t anyone talking about the law in Japan that threatens to shut down or fine churches that promise rewards in the afterlife in return for donations. That footnote seems like a direct response to that legislation.
I always read the footnotes when I do happen to read a conference talk. After all, I want to find out the name of “the Poet” who said that inspiring gospel-ly thing without knowing it. However, I have never seen – nor did I ever expect to see until now – an unambiguous “results may vary” disclaimer in the footnotes of a conference talk by the prophet. I am a little floored, to be honest. What this talk really needed was a footnote to the footnote which read something like, “tithing blessing are likely to be enhanced in the very near future if you happen to be a freaking surgeon.”
Atta boy, Jack. There must be a pony in here somewhere!
I love this wonderful dichotomy in 1Nephi 17:
Nephi:
2 And so great were the blessings of the Lord upon us, that while we did live upon raw meat in the wilderness, our women did give plenty of suck for their children, and were strong, yea, even like unto the men; and they began to bear their journeyings without murmurings.
3 And thus we see that the commandments of God must be fulfilled. And if it so be that the children of men keep the commandments of God he doth nourish them, and strengthen them, and provide means whereby they can accomplish the thing which he has commanded them; wherefore, he did provide means for us while we did sojourn in the wilderness.
Laman and Lemuel:
20 And thou art like unto our father, led away by the foolish imaginations of his heart; yea, he hath led us out of the land of Jerusalem, and we have wandered in the wilderness for these many years; and our women have toiled, being big with child; and they have borne children in the wilderness and suffered all things, save it were death; and it would have been better that they had died before they came out of Jerusalem than to have suffered these afflictions.
21 Behold, these many years we have suffered in the wilderness, which time we might have enjoyed our possessions and the land of our inheritance; yea, and we might have been happy.
Okay, now, you can’t share this with anyone, but the person in President Nelson’s office was none other than…King Solomon! I no lie. And the very same person who turned polygamy into an art form dropped by and quoted himself. Something like: “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, ‘There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless.'” (Ecclesiastes 8:14 NIV)
Some things are timeless.
“I would say–from personal experience–that there usually seems to be enough temporal blessings to at least help us meet our basic needs.”
Aw, Jack, there you go again. Does your “personal experience” actually not include the knowledge that 2.3 billion people live below their countries’ poverty lines and that extreme poverty – particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia – has led to countless deaths, particularly children? Do you think these people are really receiving adequate blessings from their Father, in your opinion?
There are times when I think that your remarks are a desire on your part to present a sincere apologetic view, but mostly now I think you are just jukin’ us to get attention.
Seeker,
Consecrating ourselves to the Lord and, by extension, to his Kingdom is how we bridge the moral gap between our abundance and the plight of the poor.
From Sea Urchin: Why else would I pay tithing, which is a not inconsiderable part of my income (to a church that financially no longer needs tithing money, no less) unless I am getting something in return?
Even without miracles, I am getting something in return. I like that we have a climate-controlled building to meet in, with hymnals and pianos. I understand that church administration has costs. As a user of such services, I feel I ought to contribute. I also acknowledge my financial surplus and I am fine with my donations helping others. That said, I really appreciate the financial transparency of other local denominations. If I could see that X% of my tithing went to the local building utilities/repair/landscaping/taxes fund, X% to local activity budgets, X% to local assistance, X% to our temple maintenance, X% to stake/church-wide funds for poorer units, X% to education, X% to missionary budgets etc., then it would be easier for me to give. That would require less faith, though…
There is a lot of magical thinking surrounding tithing in the church, some of which can be attributed to talks like this. I think in the top leadership of the church there are varying degrees of magical thinkers. Nelson is definitely on the magical thinking end of the spectrum and saw no problem with what he said. Pragmatists on the correlation committee saw the potential problems and recommended the footnote. I don’t think anyone involved in this decision sees the footnote as negating the message, just adding caveats and nuances. If the claim is that tithing always leads to financial blessings, then any exception disproves the rule. However, the magical thinkers will typically respond to exceptions by acknowledging it’s not an ironclad rule, but will continue to insist that their own personal attribution of good fortune to tithing is correct and justifiable. There is no winning such debates–people will believe what they want about their own life stories.
Jack,
In your last comment, I wish you were making the claim that a mission of the church (and a step on the covenant path) was the extension of material aid to the poor of our communities and the world-at-large.
Original Version: Temple garments offer you magical physical protection from harm…
Footnote: The protection is that you are reminded of your covenants and the harm is forgetting your covenants.
Original Version: The Word of Wisdom is the Lord’s health code and is why Mormons live longer and healthier than anyone else…
Footnote: I mean, eternal life, because tea drinking and most of these other things don’t actually harm you as the inhabitants of Okinawa know, but being a Mormon has health benefits like the Elders’ Quorum helping you to move and stuff, probably
Original Version: The Book of Mormon is the most correct book on the earth…
Footnote: Er, when understood with the right spiritual mindset that is, like horses, chariots, synagogues, etc. are really metaphorical. Adieu!
When it comes to the prosperity gospel, I suspect the logic is more like this:
Nelson: We want the Poors to keep paying tithing, even though we don’t need it, so I’ll tell about when I was a Poor and then I became a doctor and was a Rich.
Pres. Newsroom: Cool story, bro. Counterpoint: what if the Poors don’t become doctors? Or what if they just can’t pay rent and stuff?
Bro. Footnote: I’ll just caveat that the blessings might be temporal / career stuff, or they might be something else like good weather or someone smiling at you on the street. Or blessings after you are dead. That’s always a good one because they can’t bring the receipts.
Brad D makes a very interesting point about tithing and how it seems compliance always falls most heavily on low income and middle income members. One thing that I think is quite challenging in today’s environment is how much more of a financial burden paying tithing is for younger LDS members in the US vs. older members who purchased their primary residence in earlier times. And this is, quite simply, due to the housing affordability crisis. If you look in the past 10-40 years, you can see home price to median income ratios that are much lower in the past than today. If a young family paying tithing on gross or even net is purchasing a home that is 7x-8x the median household income, that is objectively much more difficult than in earlier times when housing was 2x-3x median household income. And this is because housing is not an optional, frivolous expense.
I think about this a lot because most members don’t pay tithing on the increased value of their home equity while living in their home or ever in my experience. They paid tithing on the income used to pay off a mortgage, but I don’t think most calculate a tithing basis and a capital gains/tithing basis. And yet this equity is real wealth to that household. Furthermore, a younger buyer would have to pay up in terms of their life’s energy to afford the same shelter benefits. Tithing as understood and often simplistically discussed in church today is a form of intergenerational inequity. I think it inadvertently works against the church’s interests’ in the sense that it may impoverish young families trying to raise children on tight budgets and perhaps lead them to curtail the number of children they choose to have (although they might simply just raise their children in more extreme poverty).
I guess what I’m saying is that I think tithing should be thought of in terms of wealth, not income. In fact, I would go so far as to assert the need for a “standard deduction” or minimal level of income that is needed for basic necessities upon which no tithing should be paid or expected to be paid. I think Brad has come to this figure for himself at the 1% level, but it would be helpful to explicitly spell out this more clearly so that the guilt and shame of struggling families just trying to make ends meet can be lifted.
Church administration is conducted through the prism of organizational behavior philosophies. But the phraseology is through the prism of miraculous anecdotes. The church doesn’t want to say the administrative philosophies out loud, even though that is what guiding its policies and teachings. It realizes that framing teachings in the miraculous is more sexy and gives members both more incentives and more guilt.
Administrative reasoning behind stressing tithing to the poor: It gives local branches and wards a sense of who’s the most committed and can be relied on for leadership callings.
Miraculous phraseology: tithing payment can bring miracles just like when I paid tithing on my $15 a month salary and I became a prestigious doctor.
Administrative reasoning behind garments: keep consistent with tradition. It helps make members feel distinct from the so-called “world” and it makes members feel like they are on a higher level up. Other members can subtly see who wears garments and who doesn’t letting them know who is more committed.
Miraculous phraseology: garments can stop bullets and save lives. There are many sacred stories about this, but some might be too sacred to share. Plus they’ll help you not fall into the temptation of masturbating (isn’t that what defiling really means?) or something worse. People who are endowed and don’t wear garments might have something bad happen to them or won’t be able to resist the temptations of Stan.
You are right, Brad, that the Church is run through the lens of organizational behavior as taught at BYU’s Marriott School of Business and at other business colleges across the country. I have no problem with a corporation, government agency, or charity folllowing these principles. I wonder, though, if this is the best model for the Lord’s church.
We are obsessed with hierarchy. Bishops must outrank EQ presidents, even though a bishop’s keys are Aaronic, not Melchizedek. I do not think that EQPs outrank bishops; they are different. We now say that the bishop holds the keys for all of the work of salvation in the ward, and accordingly the bishop, not the stake president, directs the work the EQP just as he directs the RSP and YWP. This is hierarchal, and is considered necessary under organizational behavior principles.
Is a business school organizational behavior textbook the best text for church government? I am not convinced.
On the footnote question, I would have preferred that the “Your results may differ” disclaimer, like we hear in pharmaceutical commercials on TV, be placed in the text. The Lord makes his rain to fall on the just and on the unjust. Bad/good things happen to good/bad people. Are we not almost the same as Job’s three friends. I would never tell someone in an inner city slum that the key to his future financial success is tithing: pay tithing and you’ll be rich. What about paying for trade school for a skill (electrician, plumber, medical technician…) or paying for vocational education? I have faith, but BYoung said that we still needed to plant crops and harvest, or we would be hungry irrespective of our faith or obedience. We need to sow.
“There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated— And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.”
A friend and I were talking about this scripture and hypothesizing who the most obedient person must be based on our perception of the blessings they received.
My guess: Toto Wolfe. Handsome former F1 driver, billionaire, famous (but not too famous), owner of one of the most successful F1 teams in the world.
Jesse, this scripture is oft quoted, and perhaps oft misunderstood. I have not seriously studied it, but I do not understand it. If I do 2a, 4b, and 1c, and get blessing x, will my neighbor who also does 2a, 4b, and 1c also get blessing x? I do not think that this always happens. The blind man who was healed was healed not because he had done something right. Maybe that healing was not a blessing, although it was a miracle. A righteous farmer considers rain a blessing, but a wicked farmer also gets the blessing. Maybe we need to find out what “blessing” means in this verse. I do not understand this verse. I like your analysis re Mr Wolffe! 🙂
Georgis, yeah I was sort of joking since I don’t understand it either. A study guide on LDS.org includes this quote from Pres Nelson: “If you really want a certain blessing, you’d better find out what the laws are that govern that blessing and then work on becoming obedient to those laws.” Maybe money is only a blessing when when LDS people get it? Idk.
Just for fun, who would you nominate as most blessed under my tongue in cheek formulation?
Perhaps the footnote was put in there because of the inevitable criticism of the message. Just like anything in this world, people just need a reason to whine and moan. If it wasn’t in there, you would get the inevitable “I paid my tithing and never saw a job promotion!”, and all the naysayers would join in.
It’s not complicated. Just like any other rule/law/commandment/directive or whatever you call it, the choice is yours to follow and blessings may come in the form of a job, or a gift, or a green light getting you to work faster. We don’t know for certain. For me, I started back up paying tithing after years of not and since then, I’ve had more prosperity at work and better “luck” outside of it. Is it related to tithing? Seems that way but I’m not certain. But I can say I’ve been a happier and better person since I started and that’s good enough for me.
Jesse, I might be the most blessed person in the world, because only I have my sweet wife at my side! She might not think that she is most blessed person, however.
Legal, I tithe faithfully and I have been blessed financially, and maybe there has been a cause-effect relationship for you and for me. But is that universally true? Do not some people tithe and receive no financial blessing? Do not many people not tithe and receive great financial blessings? Here’s part of what I don’t understand: if every blessing is predicated on a law, and very specific behavior always results in a specific blessing, then why would we ask God for anything? If, in order to get blessing x, I must first do a and then b, then why ask God? Why not just do a and then b? Yet we are commanded to ask God. I do not believe that God is so bound to law that He cannot act independently. If God cannot give me a little blessing or show me a little mercy, then why pray to Him? I think that God can give blessings and He can show mercies, and he does hear the widow’s cry and the victim’s lament. I will not limit or constrain God as you suggest. Under your rationale, prayer and supplication serve no purpose, unless the law for blessing z says that one must pray for 20 minutes twice daily, and one must supplicate on Thursdays. I don’t see things in such a transactional nature. God can bless a person who keeps the word of wisdom with long life and good health, but that person’s neighbor can also keep the word of wisdom and die at age 30 from cancer. You seem to embrace the prosperity gospel, and I do not. I have been blessed, but not like a vending machine.
You might be a little inconsistent. Pres. Nelson and Oaks have taught that if you want the blessing, you better study to learn what behavior unlocks that specific blessing. You write “blessings may come in the form of a job, or a gift, or a green light getting you to work faster. We don’t know for certain.” I agree with you that God may bless two people who act identically in different ways, but is that what the leaders are teaching? Are they not teaching, for specific blessing x, learn what specific laws unlock that blessing, and only that blessing? So two people who act identically should receive the identically same blessing. I haven’t observed that happening in my lifetime. As I said, I don’t understand the scripture verse in question.
On another subject about some news from the Vatican today, we read:
“When people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it,” the declaration, authored by Cardinal Fernandez and another official, states. “The grace of God works in the lives of those who do not claim to be righteous but who acknowledge themselves humbly as sinners, like everyone else.” (cnn.com)
I agree with this. God can bless the just and the unjust. I am not sure that blessings only follow an exhaustive moral analysis. If I do a and b and receive blessing x, then can I not say that I earned that blessing, and that it is mine by right, by operation of law? No, I am a sinner, and God blesses me nonetheless. I never deserve any blessing, and I am grateful for the blessings that I do receive.
Legal Nonsense,
“It’s not complicated. Just like any other rule/law/commandment/directive or whatever you call it, the choice is yours to follow and blessings may come in the form of a job, or a gift, or a green light getting you to work faster. We don’t know for certain.”
In your last line, you’re clearly angling at how we don’t know for certain what blessings might come from obedience. But it also could be construed that we don’t know for certain that blessings even exist, in other words rewards by the divine for good behavior.
In the real work environment I can get raises for good performance. This is well known. It is an incentive for people to work harder. In society, if I break a law, I risk getting caught and punished. A disincentive to break the law. The incentives and disincentives for obedience to church teachings, such as tithing, are not entirely clear, and you admit so. Members seem to thrive on confirmation bias and other sorts of causation biases as incentives and disincentives to pay tithing. They think they’ll get blessed for so doing, but don’t know how. So they pay their tithing and interpret the next good thing that happens to them as the blessing for paying that tithing. Yet most of the examples of good things happening to people because of tithing payment don’t appear to be at all connected to tithing and probably would have happened whether they paid their tithing or not.
When I point out to members the extreme messiness of church history they reply that God had to make joining the church really difficult otherwise mortality wouldn’t be much of a test if seeing the truthfulness of the church were that easy.
Then they turn around and say that the blessings of tithing are so obvious it’s amazing some people aren’t interested.
I know this has been a recurring theme lately on this blog, but the LDS God is really hard to manage.
Most of my coworkers and clients are not members of this church. Most of them have great jobs with great pay and can meet all their financial obligations and vaca in Hawaii. FWIW.
I have said many times in discussions here, that I believe a lot of these problems begin from our doctrinal ideas and positions beginning from a faulty premise.
All of Christianity, including the LDS church, frames the story through the lens of “original sin”, where mankind became a giant thorn in God’s side. I’m kinda bad and God is kinda mad, and now he has to move to plan B, the cleanup job.
Most preaching today is framed as an invitation to God to come into our story, but the biblical invitation is radically different. We are being invited into God’s story. The problem with RMN’s original teaching of tithing (in his talk) and the post-script, nefarious “footnote” is they both begin from the same faulty premise, and when one doesn’t work, he then has to provide some explanation for the utter randomness and unpredictability of mortality. We actively teach that God’s proposed commandments are a way to make us acceptable to God again, and knowing we will fail at keeping all his rules, which, according to original sin, he’s already pretty upset about, he invokes the retributive sacrifice of the innocent as the difference maker to get us over the finish line. (This is our core doctrinal position on The Atonement, penal substitution). This is all backwards though. Tithing is NOT an invitation or negotiation technique to convince God to open up the proverbial “windows of heaven” for my own personal benefit. This is a blatant misunderstanding and misreading of Malachi and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Tithing is our participation in God’s communal governing structure. Tithing was never meant to bring an individual blessing back to the one, it was to open the windows of heaven, which they believed were literal windows in the firmament, that would be opened and provide lifesaving “rain”. Rain did not fall on a single tithe payor, it fell on ALL, the wicked and the righteous, the just and the unjust. Rain was a communal blessing.
Tithing, for it to make any sense at all, is not about securing blessings for myself at all, it’s recognizing whatever blessings I have received, not earned or deserved, and reflecting that grace and mercy back into the world. Jesus, on a few occasions’ quotes Hosea 6:6, saying, “I desired mercy, not sacrifice”. In other words, I hoped grace would produce grace in you, but instead you have created religious systems that attempt to extract Grace by your personal merits.
In the sermon on the mount, Jesus gives a lot of new, updated and radical advice, including, turning the other cheek, giving away your coat, and walking an extra mile. This all sounds like the gospel, according to Jesus, is going to make my face hurt, my body cold, and my feet tired. What’s his point? The first mile is familiar, it’s what’s required to maintain your own safety, status, and comfort. It’s all ME focused. But the law is not what saves, it only preserves, it’s the finger pointing at the moon, but if we confuse the finger with the moon, we will never come to know the moon. Salvation, and the life Jesus calls Eternal, is beyond the law. Nothing really happens until the second mile, where we act beyond obligation and legality, where goodness flows from Grace instead of a way to get it.
Tithing, if continued to be taught as a way to get God’s blessings will only take us the first mile, As Dave Brisbin simply and brilliantly states, “The quality of the means we use, ALWAYS matches the quality of the ends we produce.” You cannot lead people to the highest level of motivation by teaching them the lowest.
Thank you toddsmithson. Your comments are truly beautiful and really resonate with both my feelings about reality and spirituality.
I second lws’ thanks to toddsmithson. Obedience is a natural fruit of proper faith, not an objective in and of itself. I particularly appreciated: “Tithing, for it to make any sense at all, is not about securing blessings for myself at all, it’s recognizing whatever blessings I have received, not earned or deserved, and reflecting that grace and mercy back into the world.” One can replace tithing with any commandment.
As with so much, the benefits are often psychological. If you expect blessings from paying tithing, every blessing you see can be attributed to tithing. If you believe that you will prosper if you pay tithing, any prospering you do will be because you paid tithing. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is how supernatural quid pro quos work.
From HokieKate:
“Even without miracles, I am getting something in return. I like that we have a climate-controlled building to meet in, with hymnals and pianos.”
Oh sure, I understand that the ward building costs money etc, but there is a substantial difference between “contribute to support administrative costs” and “10% for the rest of your life or you can’t go to the temple”. And while we have nice buildings, other churches without such a heavy financial/spiritual imposition have nice buildings too (although I am glad we’re not a rock-band mega-church like in the US).
I don’t agree that having a transparent financial report would lessen the faith involved. I still have to pay, regardless of where the money is going. I am not even sure that financial transparency would make any difference to those who have issues with the church, it would just change the arguments.
HokieKate,
I think financial transparency would increase trust in the leadership of the church for those of us who aren’t magical thinkers. Since they betrayed our trust by hiding the church’s assets, and incurring a 5 million dollar fine, yes financial transparency would be the very least in amends the church owes to it’s tithe paying members.
The first presidency is compromised of mortal men. So yes, they make mistakes. Yes, they should repent as an organization for those mistakes. Yes, they should be accountable to members for what they do with tithing. Demanding blind faith and continued payment of exactly 10 percent into a nearly infinite “rainy day fund” while hiding exactly what they do with the money, doesn’t build trust or real informed faith. Instead it feels more like a scam.
My heart aches about this. I loved that clean feeling of paying my tithing and being part of something bigger than myself. I paid out of gratitude to the Lord for the general blessings of sunlight, rain and beauty we are all given. It wasn’t prosperity gospel for me. I trusted my community and leaders.
However, I understand now that they weren’t worthy of my trust and don’t necessarily represent the Lord in every action and they haven’t been accountable or acted with integrity about mistakes they have made. I have waited and prayed and hoped for their accountability and transparency. But they remain silent. They have betrayed members like me. Still, I hope and wait.
I can’t count on leaders to act with compassion when my disabled children seek help. I have friends who struggled with homelessness and couldn’t get help from the church. Instead they spend the money I donated on temples that my children will likely never attend, or may even be actively excluded from attendance, if they turn out to be LGBTQ.
I would rather tithing be spent on improving the world in this life. And yes, don’t just say nice things. Show me how you will spend it so I can actively use my agency and choice in doing what the Spirit tells me personally is the right thing to do. Just telling me to blindly submit isn’t right.
Oops. Probably my comment was meant for Sea Urchin
Brad D, I too have never liked the Christmas time behind the door push for tithing settlement. I found an alternate way of dealing with it. I just walk by the bishop sometime either on Sunday between meetings or on Wednesday night during Mutual when I’m waiting for the kiddos and I just quietly tell him, “oh, by the way, we’re full tithe payers this year”. He always smiles, thanks me, and tells me that he’s there if I need him. I always acknowledge such and we move on. I have done this with different bishops and they never seem to mind. Afterall, it’s one less person they have to track down. I will admit that when my kiddos were little I did go along with the formal tithing settlement interview and brought the kiddos along so they would see how important paying tithing was. Mission accomplished so I don’t need to do that anymore.