I just finished the book, “This Bull Crap Called Tithing” by Nick Arandes. He had an interesting perspective on the issue of stewardship, money, and tithing. Some of the excerpts on the back of his book say, “How to attract unlimited wealth”, and Secrets of tithing that churches will not tell you.
Truthfully, I don’t remember the whole secrets of tithing that churches will not tell you part, but I do remember his attracting wealth section. in a general sense he talks about how we think its greedy to want more money. In a sense, he says so many tithers don’t have money and are broke all the time and struggling paying bills because they are always giving it away. He kind of goes off of common sense here by saying that if you give it, you won’t have it. In a sense that is true, and i agree. i have seen that first hand in my own life and in my family’s. As a child I remember my father being strict about giving our tithe to the church. Even if bills were not being paid, the tithe went to the church. The part i don’t understand about that is, he’s giving money so others can pay their bills, but that’s the logic of those who fail to see principles of stewardship because they are focused on task oriented christianity.
In this book, he tries to attract the attention of people who tithe and tithe and are always broke. I don’t really care about the title. I think some authors make up titles like that to attract people’s attention (obviously it attracted min). Anyways, I think what he’s saying in the title is for those who think tithing is a magical obligation that you can do to gain financial security. So what people are realizing is that if you do give it away then guess what that means you don’t have it. It’s not like the stock market where you get a financial return on your investment. If tithing was the answer to exponentially grow your wealth, then it would be more popular than the lottery. Think about it this way. According to statistics(links below), the Jews are the richest nationality/religion in the world, and yet they don’t believe that tithing is commanded for them. That’s odd, don’t you think? You may think it’s because they are God’s chosen people and so on, but really although they are wealthy they are not a fortunate people. Just Look at the turmoil that country is in.
I hope this book review could help you making a decision on a book you want to buy on stewardship. I give this book a 2.5 out of 5 stars overall. It had some good points but I had mixed feelings about it.
(Jewish wealth stats)
http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/07/wealthiest_reli.html
http://www.adam.com.au/bstett/JwSocioeconomic86.htm