[Reporting for News Team One]

I begin this Memorial Day Monday after Collection Sunday with a disclaimer: “All churches do not have ginormous free-flowing budgets.” So please don’t get it twisted…this is not “church-bashing.”

However, when the Lord says “speak,” and the only reply is “But Lord, how can I connect this topic to something newsworthy?” and only a few hours later, I get a reminder that Black churches receive in excess of $250 Million a WEEK in tithes and offerings, apparently the Lord has a problem–not with the money, but with what Black churches are doing with those tithes and offerings.

Many people pontificate on their varying belief systems, but the bottom line for me is that anyone who didn’t create a world and populate it, nor furnish it with flora and fauna let alone anything else, has no real cause to question God’s existence. When all is done, those who choose not to believe in God waste their short time on earth discussing something that doesn’t exist.

For the rest of us, $250 Million dollars a week smack in the middle of broken busted well-fleeced communities, jobless Black men, homeless and hungry children, seniors and disabled people, under-employed Black women — most of whom are continually “begging at the gates of strangers” looking for work is a sin. And a shame.

The arm-twisting scripture that is used the most to get these tithes out of church members is “Will a man rob God?” Malachi 3:8-10…

“Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings. “You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation of you! “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,” says the LORD of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.…

Though often used to apply to the people who are paying the tithes, Malachi 3:10 actually addressed certain members of the Levitical priesthood who were stealing from the storehouse. The people were paying their tithes and offerings; but the priests who were allotted a portion, a tenth of the tenth, were actually ripping off the people’s offerings.

The problem wasn’t the collection of tithes, the problem was the use of the tithes after they were collected.

The storehouse was not meant for “king bling” or “priestly overkill” but for upkeep and maintenance, and not “high” maintenance. It was also a place for the people to come to when they needed help and assistance in their own households.

One thing is certain above all else … Black people, especially those who go to Black churches, have long been past and done with the ability to cry “broke.”

Broken, maybe; broke–not.

Long gone are the days when we can rightfully give white America the absolute control (about 98-percent of it to date) over the job market by not creating jobs ourselves for our own people, and then decry racism when it does happen. Those of us who choose to ride on the front of somebody else’s bus do not get to decide what kind of bus, where it goes, what time, or which way it turns. If we don’t like it, we can always get off and get our own.

The conclusion of the matter is that the “great salvation” of Black people in America will not come through assimilation or integration, and definitely not by degradation; but by separation and restoration–even if it is so extremely left-handed as to become sovereign justice and a righteous demand for reparations.

It is more than obvious that we are separated unto our churches, and that segregation still permeates throughout the mainstream neighborhoods, schools, politics, courtrooms, workplaces, the few places of business that we do have, and even our cemeteries.

With that kind of money going into the bank depository from a Black church every single Monday the Sunday after they are collected, the responsibility remains with the ‘churched’ to restore the Black community, and not just by way of charitable missions. The churches are all tax-exempt by states laws, and the government frees them from taxation for the purpose of missions and service, yet the government carries more than its fair share of social justice missions for which is was not designed–but has to do what it has to do to keep America from falling over the edge of the Third World Country it is quickly becoming.

America has turned itself into a situational ‘Third World’ country, just one with enough money to cover it up and hide it.

In the long term, the solid truth about tithing is that God does not “owe” anyone any return on the investment just because they do tithe. Financial blessings may come, they may not–but rest assured, financial blessings may or may not come whether you tithe or not.

There is nothing wrong with tithing if that is what you want to do, but the Lord God is not a holy Vegas or Atlantic City slot machine who is obligated to pay, or “bless” anyone, for doing the right thing. That kind of guarantee doesn’t even come with a slot machine.

Therefore, if the Lord tells YOU to tithe, don’t expect to be paid for obedience any more than you would pay your own children to do what you tell them to do.

The Black church does now possess the finances, the people power, and the sanctified ability to save and redeem the ‘Lost Tribes’ of America from the sin of greed and the evil vice grip of racism’s prolonged power over us.

References

The Tithing Shakedown

Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary on Tithe/Tithing

Black Churches: In the ‘hood