Hey everyone, it's that time of the year lol. I purposely "forgot" to go to out tithing settlement interview. Then last week I received a text from the secretary asking if we could reschedule. I didn't know what to do so I just ignored him. I'm HOPING he doesn't chase me down during church. Not that I care but my wife would feel embarrassed if I said I don't want to go.

I never realized all these years how strange it is that they have tithing settlement every year and they try to track everyone down. Is this the mafia now? Lol, anyway, I'm going to keep on avoiding it as much as possible. If I'm really confronted head-on, I'm going to say that I won't pay tithing until the church has transparent public records of how it is used.

I'm curious, did the bishop tape a sign-up sheet to his office door for people to write their name at which time they would attend? This is how every bishop I knew did it, and it was a peer pressure ploy to make sure your name was posted as soon as possible for the other members to see how righteous and loyal you were.

If you don't attend, then the bishop will have to declare your status for you. Every member of every ward has to be declared either by them or the bishop. If your tithing amount appears to be too low for full, he will declare you a part tithe or non tithe status. It's no big deal, but this record will follow you all of the way to the celestial/telestial/terrestrial kingdom.

When you stand at the pearly gates, the man with the white clipboard will know and will give you "the look" as you wait to be let in.

I remember the last few Christmases, when we were still TBM. We always displayed our Christmas cards, and included in that display were nice cards from various businesses, our dentist, veterinarian, my CPA, the Red Cross, The American Cancer Society, etc. From our church, at Christmas time, I would receive a form letter, without My name even on it, that read, "Dear Ward Member, It's that time of year...." Yes. It gave a pre-determined mandatory date and time, and a demand to call the bishop's secretary if I couldn't attend the meeting, along with the underscore that "The Bishop is very busy this time of year with other tithing settlements."

Yes, no "Merry Christmas" no "We appreciate your donations" from our own church.

This letter would stand out, among the beautiful, brightly-colored Christmas cards, and would attract attention. A display is worth a thousand words.

I used to hate the tithing settlement thing. And right around Christmas when you already broke getting ready for that. It used to be sort of like a dark cloud over my favorite holiday. I feel for you having to deal with this.

I hate that they intrusively know about what your salary must be if you pay 10%. It's none of their goshdarn business.

I'd be tempted to mess with them:

"I selected another charity this year for tithing. I wanted it to directly help people I know are in need instead of being used to maintain buildings this year. I'm just as inspired as church leadership when it comes to that sort of thing. Oh, don't worry about giving me a receipt."


At some point you are going to decide just how much you are going to pay to spare your wife embarrassment. You will be the less active husband. She won't be able to get her recommend until she pays her share. This will mean more intrusiveness from the bishop into your relationship with your wife which is infuriating. It will be hard when she can't go to weddings - they can sniff out who isn't going to the temple. It's all so stupid. Your wife is going to have to toughen up against their petty guilt tactics.

I hope you can just keep ditching them until they get the hint that you won't be discussing it with them.

I never understood having it. I sent my checks into the bishop. Doesn't that mean I pay tithing? I don't send my checks into the bishop. Doesn't that mean I don't pay? Let the GD bishop put down in his records whatever he wants. Unless you feel some need to own a tithing, ooops, temple recommend, what's the big woop? I never went and the bishop always marked me down a full tithe payer. A bishop who wouldn't do that is not much of a spiritual leader in my book so I would ignore him.

When will the MORG do financial settlement?

Isn't it funny how other churches manage to figure out what members donated without giving those members an annual shakedown?

If you are asked again, you might consider saying, "That's okay. I'm good, I don't need to see the bishop. Tell him to mark me as a full/partial/non-tithepayer."

It especially bothers me that if they know someone is a FULL tithe payer, they then think they know your annual income.

We had an awkward moment once when some goofball bishop's counselor said to my husband after tithing settlement, "You make a lot of money. Would you be willing to help provide funds for Elder Stickyhand's mission?"

I suspect Elder Stickyhand's parents lied and said they were full tithe payers which make it look like they had a lot less income than us (which I doubt).

It's very creepy that religions like this have trained us to report our sex lives, our financial lives, our psychological lives, our careers, and our family relations.

Answer,,, I don't do tithing settlement, and you guys need to leave me the f&^%$ alone!

Go to tithing settlement. When the bishop asks you if you have paid a full tithe, look him square in the eye and say “Yes.”

Don’t give any other explanation. Don’t go into your finances. Just say that you consider yourself a full tithe payer.

If he starts to probe, just tell him that your personal finances are not up for discussion by him or anyone else. You are declaring yourself a full tithe payer. According to the Church Handbook, the Bishop has no choice but to accept your declaration. If you burn in hell, the sin is on your head, not his.

what is a "full tithe", anyway ?

completed for the year already. I wondered how they beat people into paying up their tithing to the end of the year when they have not earned it yet? Maybe that was why the moral of the ward seemed to be down or gone. Everyone seemed to be in a drug induced state last week. Again it could just be looking through a different lens. But if I had to continue in this ward I would need drugs to keep my sanity and spirits up. And this ward sits beside the Edmonton temple where you think people would be happy and joyous.

Always, at the very busiest and most expensive (for us) month of the year (in Dec., at Christmas time).

And, besides, my husband and I made a compromise agreement as to the amount to pay--but then he would 'cave-in' when he submitted 'our' check. By this, I mean paying far more than I thought was plenty for a one-member active family, and submitting it 'in secret', so that I would not see the amount.

In other words, he respected the church's demands, more than he did his wife's compromise agreement with him.

As in the past, he tended to spend "our" money on whatever he wanted, ignoring whatever our household needs might be--and yes, I worked part-time 'outside the home', as well as full-time at child-care and home chores that needed to be done,which he steadfastly ignored as far as doing his share of these goes.

Notice, I don't say, "helping me" with these, as household chores, IMO, should be shared---why should the female get stuck with all of these?

As you can see, this subject still stirs resentments in me, at least enough to spill them out in this post.

An addendum: The big arguement used to be, 'does one pay a full 10% tithing on one's take-home pay, or of his/her full income (of which one's total earning have already been deducted by income tax, Soc.Sec. required deductions, health insurance etc., funds that one never has access to spend as he/she might wish.

(If I remember correctly), The Bible speaks of paying tithing of one's surplus money--that is, on the amount left over after one has paid his living expenses.

Net vs. gross can make a huge difference. I take home only about 60% of what I earn. The rest goes to Federal and state taxes, Social Security and Medicare, health insurance, union dues, pension contribution, etc.

Even Mormon scriptures, and therefore Mormon doctrine, states that tithing is figured on 10% of your increase. Like other Mormon doctrines, it has changed. However, there it is in black and white, and if one wanted to argue, one could just haul out the book and point to it.

Yep, pollythinks, sounds like we were married to the same douche.

Is this real? https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865681124/LDS-Church-will-return-tithing-donated-by-man-who-defrauded-5400-victims.html

Yes. In cases of fraud the government seeks to get funds from people or institutions that may have benefited from the fraud even unknowingly.

Note the family paid $235,000 or so in tithing and the church fought to keep as much as possible. Finally settling on $150,000 by claiming the difference was tithing paid on legitimately earned money.

This is not the church doing the right thing and returning stolen money to the owner. This is the federal government suing the church and accepting half of what an ethnical person with the means would pay.

Its the nazi mafia, what other organization has a tithing settlement around christmas time. No guilt there.

To this nevermo, a 'tithing settlement' is a bizarre practice!

“Tithing: it's just the start” could be LDS’s catch-phrase

Mormon tithing historicity, along with its succeeding perversions and changes over time (even comparing tithing slips’ fine print over decades), “tithing settlement” (sounds like a law! or a refugee crisis), as it is preached in Mormonism today, is rife with unreasonable expectations/ punishments/ extortions/ orders/ commands/ demands/ promises/ false-scriptures, ignorance (of truth-facts), lies and misinformation and is LDSinc’s way to get what it wants out of its followers (pants down, bent over, OPEN WALLETS) and what it needs to operate (on the hearts of its members): EXCEEDING WEALTH and [the appearance of] POWER [over its members, otherwise they wouldn't be fearful and OBEY], a LARGE - but EMPTY - agenda, and millions of blind eyes and followers/ supporters [Whose lives it strives to tarnish, ruin and lay to waste].

Think about tithing the way it is supposed to be portrayed, preached, and 'practiced' - increase! You don't increase every day/ week/ month/ year, etc. and so you don't Pay The Church NEAR as much (or as often, and without fanfare or interviews) as you think you suppose you do or as Much as it wants, expects or thinks you should.

2% is MUCH more common [in traditional churches (much less cults)] and given freely - without demand - for the church to DO GOOD, as it should.

Are we paying TOO MUCH tithing?
Yes!

Puremormonism

http://puremormonism.blogspot.com/2012/12/are-we-paying-too-much-tithing.html?m=0

"If paying tithing means that you can’t pay for water or electricity, pay tithing. If paying tithing means that you can’t pay your rent, pay tithing. Even if paying tithing means that you don’t have enough money to feed your family, pay tithing." (Aaron L. West, Sacred Transformations, December 201

First, some background: On December 7, 1836, Bishop Edward Partridge and his counselors officially defined tithing as 2 percent of the net worth of each member of the church, after deducting debts. This money was put to covering the operating expenses of the Church, and it appears to have been adequate for a time. Still, this was man's law, not God's. Apparently no one in the young Church had thought to ask God about it yet, so He had not weighed in on the matter.

Two years later, when the Church was eight years old, some 15,000 converts had already emigrated from their homes and gathered to Missouri, the new Zion. Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, who constituted the First Presidency at the time, were spending all their time dealing with and settling this huge flow of immigrants, to the exclusion of being able to provide a living for their own families. Things were at a point where Joseph and Sidney must either be compensated for their time, or they were both going to have to stop what they were doing and go out and get a real job. On May 12th the two men took the matter before the High Council of the Church. George W. Robinson recorded the minutes:...

The High Council voted eleven to one (George Hinkle vigorously opposed "a salaried ministry") to further contract the two men for their services, being careful to note that the money was "not for preaching or for receiving the word of God by revelation, neither for instructing the Saints in righteousness," but for work in the "printing establishment, in translating the ancient records, &c, &c." (ibid.)

Richard S. Van Wagoner, in his biography of Sidney Rigdon, further explains:

After negotiations, they agreed to offer Rigdon and Smith an annual contract of $1,100 apiece, more than three times what the average worker of the day could earn. Ebenezer Robinson, the High Council's clerk, later wrote that "when it was noised abroad that the Council had taken such a step, the members of the Church, almost to a man, lifted their voices against it. The expression of disapprobation was so strong and emphatic that at the next meeting of the High Council, the resolution voting them a salary was rescinded." (Richard S. Van Wagoner, Sidney Rigdon, Pg 230.)

Fortunately, most of my bishops hardly ever organized tithing settlement interviews. I guess they just checked the history of payments throughtout the year to tick the appropriate box.

But I had an overzealous bishop who really annoyed me once. Not only did he interview me, but he kept asking all kinds of questions. During the year I had taken a one-month vacation. (So I was not there to pay tithing that month, but the following month I paid the double amount.) It was crystal clear that I had paid everything, but he still was questioning why I had skipped a month... A total jerk.

Soon afterwards I was out. I am glad I haven't paid tithing for over 15 years now. Not one more cent to an evil cult.

And this was from squared-away TBM members: "Don't bother going to tithing settlement. If you are paid up, you don't need to go. If you are not paid up, you don't WANT to go."

I never, ever went to tithing settlement, in nearly two decades as a member. And I never caught any flak about it.

In TMC, 'tithing' is NEVER "settled".

You ALLWAYS ["Oh God"] owe more!

THE ONLY WAY FOR A MORMON TO GET OUT OF (tithing prison) 'DEBT' TO tscc IS TO DIE (and hope you have no lds family living).

M@t

P.S.
Like catnip. Good advice.
ALL MEMBERS should be told that.

No tithing settlement for me. Hooray!

As a faithful TBM, i went with pride to the tithing settlement. Now looking back, i see that the entire process is to put pressure on families and individuals to "come clean" and to reconcile their monies with TSCC.

Think of it this way. In many households the man is the breadwinner. If the family is called in to reconcile their income at tithing settlement and the man has not been paying his 10%, he knows full well that the wife will see that so he regretfully pays in full to appease the wife and to show the bishop and the ward that the family has now paid a full tithe.

Hell, even the term tithing settlement is so blatant that the church wants your money and they want you to feel pressure to make good, so you can still claim to be a full tithe member. Pressure, pressure and more pressure to make sure you are compliant.

Extortion courtesy of Joe'sMyth

I remember being SO willing to pay my tithing and a "generous" fast offering. Even when I was paying my own way through college through tips from waitressing. I would count my cash each night and put 15% aside. I was SOOOO poor but I paid. And honestly, if I knew it was going toward a real cause...like charity, I wouldn't even feel so bitter.