Dissappointment

About a year ago my pastor called me in to see him. I went to his house and we talked about the things going on in the church while asking me questions about my committment along the way. Then we came to the subject truly on his mind: tithing. A friend and I had been debating the subject, me being against it, and now he wanted to hear it from me.

I explained myself thoughtfully. I had written my own study, which was fairly short considering I did my best to answer every critic I had talked to. Eventually he agreed with me because he couldn't counter my arguments. We compromised; I would give to the church in order to pay the bills and cover operating costs. We had gone broke months earlier while I was still paying my tithes, but now we were doing better. My wife had gotten a job so it eased our finances quite a bit and we had something left to give at the end of the month.

However, I did what shouldn't be done. I didn't write a check or fill out those little envelopes they give you. When I noticed something that needed to be purchased, I did. I spent more time at the church working. Also, I don't ask anything of the pastor. If something goes wrong I call one of my friends at the church. Most of the Bible study I get does not come from the pastor and frankly it seems like he's been preaching the same sermon for a 5 years. None of these items show up in the financial logs so it looked like I only gave a couple of hundred bucks for the year.

This was unacceptable. Another meeting was called. I explained how I had been giving. It was deemed unacceptable. So I caved. I love the church and people. All my friends are there and I would miss them were I to leave.

So I give what I call my membership fee. At the end of the day that's all it is. It covers the preacher, the bills, and everything else. It equals roughly ten percent and shows up on the books.

However, I quit working up at the church as much. Why should I? It actually costs me to work. And no, I don't believe I should be paid for working at the church, but if I've got to pay to play, then I'll do it my way.

Inspired, but only 600 years ago

A friend and I have been debating back and forth about whether or not the story of Lazarus and Rich man is a parable. He stands upon the foundation of modern theology, but I have taken a different route. I think there are major problems with the King James translation as well as many of the newer ones.

It started with a single verse. I noticed that the verse disagreed with other similar verses in the Bible. So I went to other translations as well as the Greek and Hebrew and found that because our modern English has changed since the King James English, the meaning had been turned to read the opposite of what it was meant to say.

The modern Christian movement believes that the Bible is inspired, but also maintain that many of the newer translations are in error. Why were the KJV translators inspired, but our modern translators simply wrong for even trying to do better? The men of 1611 were no more inpired than our own modern translators.

This means that we can't trust any translations on it's own merit. If there is a question of meaning then research must be done, documents consulted, researchers discussed, prayer must be had and only then can we reach a conclusion.

The truth is that no matter how highly we think of the men of the past or of the present, even those people were esteem highly in our life, we must study scripture ourselves so that we know what is true.