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"Keyboard Brian" responded to my piece on tithing.  He probably should have read my latest back and forth with Russell Earl Kelly.  I was very gratified at Dr. Kelly’s response; it has lightened this whole discussion.  One thing’s for sure: you have to give credit to a man who’s legally blind and hang glides!

In any case, in looking at Brian’s own blog, his current piece is on What is a prophet?  He’s brought up an intriguing question, one that’s challenging people here in the Church of God regarding its own future.  Frankly, until about a year or two ago I hadn’t given the subject much thought, but I had set myself up for it, and one of my visitors "called my bluff" on the issue.

In the preface to my master’s thesis (it’s an engineering thesis, I’m not a seminary product) I quoted the following from Moses Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed:

My son, so long as you are engaged in studying the Mathematical Sciences and Logic, you belong to those who go round about the palace in search of the gate…When you understand Physics, you have entered the hall; and when, after completing the study of Natural Philosophy, you master Metaphysics, you have entered the innermost court, and are with the king in the palace. You have attained the degree of the wise men, who include men of different grades of perfection. There are some who direct all their mind toward the attainment of perfection in Metaphysics, devote themselves entirely to God, exclude from their thought every other thing, and employ all their intellectual faculties in the study of the Universe, in order to derive therefrom a proof for the existence of God , and to learn in every possible way how God rules all things; they form the class of those who have entered the palace, namely the class of prophets.

One of my visitors who cruised both sites put forth the simple question: do you think you’re a prophet?  I was very reluctant to answer one way or another.  What I told him was that, if I am one, that others (such as himself) should make that judgement.

Today we have many who claim to be prophets.  But that’s a pretty serious claim.  Without going into a long Biblical study on the subject, it seems to me that an individual who can reasonably be said to have the prophetic gift should fulfil several requirements:

1. They should be living a life that is pleasing to God.  Jesus told us that those who loved him kept his commandments; if you can’t keep the commandments, how can you speak for God?
2. What they say should square with God’s Word, his authoritative revelation.  One of the things that I’ve come to understand in the back and forth I’ve had with some in my own church is that the strongest prophecy should be a reminder of what God has said in the first place.  Put another way, if we had done the work we were sent to do right to start with, we wouldn’t need a prophet to come along and tell us to fix it.
3. Their pronouncements should be accurate relative to the mind of God, if not necessarily precise.  The differentiation between accuracy and precision is a scientific one, and I won’t spend a lot of time on it.  An accurate prophecy of a future event might, for example, describe the event but not give a specific date.  This is fairly common in Biblical prophecy.
4. They should be validated by others.  This is the central reason why I cannot describe myself as a prophet.  Self-validation isn’t good enough.  Divine validation is essential, but that validation should come through others, be they friend or foe (and we have examples of both in the Bible.)   Going around telling people you’re a prophet is like the self-proclaimed know-it-all; he or she claims to know everything, but the rest of us know that isn’t true.  It’s also like churches who advertise that they’re friendly; if they have to advertise it, chances are they’re not.  When it’s established in the witness of others, it has more credibility.

I am sure there are other characteristics of a true prophet that I have missed.  But the ones I list above are ones that are frequently missing in those who proclaim the prophetic gift today.

Note to Brian: if you want to be blessed by a fellow upstate New York Christian blogger, you should check out The Ancient Star-Song.  And if you’re going to promote LuLu published books online, try this one.  (And don’t give me a hard time for not giving it away; you can see that by clicking here.)

On my companion site vulcanhammer.info, I have an entire section devoted to my business dealings in China.  In the epilogue to that, I make the following commentary:

The triumph of the Communists in 1949 led to cutting off the Christian church (official and unofficial) from the outside world, organisationally and otherwise. But in the long term that led to the Chinese church doing the work Jesus sent it to do on its own. Today we are seeing the greatest Christian revival in human history in China, and the effort is almost entirely indigenous.

The government has generally reacted by attempted to suppress this movement. Part of the reason, of course, is that China is still in theory a Marxist-Leninist state, with the atheism to go with it. But there are historical reasons as well. The fall of virtually every dynasty was preceded by the formation of secret religious societies which would coalesce into a rebel force. In the nineteenth century, the most spectacular example of this was the Taiping Rebellion, where Hong Xiuquan claimed to be Jesus Christ’s younger brother and started a revolt that claimed 20,000,000 lives. Chinese regimes are routinely skittish about underground religious movements such as Christianity and Falun Gong, and the followers of Jesus’ greatest challenge in the long run is to show that secular revolt is not the objective of the religion.

Now George Conger reports the following:

RELIGIOUS belief under the guiding hand of the state can be a tool for promoting social harmony, the number four man in the Chinese Politburo said on Monday at the opening session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Beijing.

The chairman of the national committee of the CPPCC, Jia Qinglin’s (pictured) comments come amidst rising tensions and expectations from China’s rapidly growing Christian population. The state “should fully follow the policy on freedom of religious belief, implement the regulations on religious affairs, and conduct thorough research on important and difficult issues related to religion," Jia said on March 3.

"We should guide religious leaders and believers to improve their lives, and make full use of their positive role in promoting social harmony," he said. The state will also liberalize its control of the growing professional classes, he said according to a report released by the official China Daily. The CPPCC needs to "maintain close ties with members of the emerging social strata, such as private entrepreneurs, accountants and lawyers,” he said and should “show concern for their interests, open up channels for them to articulate their views, and guide them to conscientiously assume social responsibilities and effectively promote socialist development with Chinese characteristics."

American Christians and conservatives may not find the emphasis on socialism to their taste, but my experience with the Chinese–and subsequent history bears this out–is that their idea of operating in socialism is vastly different from what we’re used to.

Dr. Kelly responded to my post, a reaction itself to the CBS Sunday morning piece which featured Dr. Kelly on the subject of tithing.

This whole adventure has to rate the most frustrating back and forth I have experienced in the time I have been maintaining this web site (it started in August 1997, so you do the math.)

It’s a sign of the times that two people who live less than 200 kilometres from each other (the institution from which he received his doctorate is only a few kilometres from where I live) use the “World Wide Web” to carry on a very public debate with each other.  But I think we are far closer geographically then we are in the way we look at church finances.  Really, we’re closer geographically than the way we look at life, and I think this has fuelled this debate longer than it deserved.

Irrespective of whether it makes me look like a snob or not, I tend to look at things through the lens of someone who was raised in the upper reaches of this society and lived to tell about it. That’s a point of view that relatively few Evangelicals share, but it’s one that Dr. Kelly and others (and that includes many of his opponents) should consider before they make statements about wealth and poverty.

Let me respond to what Dr. Kelly has to say.  He’s said much of it before on this blog.

Your answer (about selling all) is far too simplistic. The early church which “sold all” in Acts 2 and 4 thought Jesus was about to return at any moment. The church outside of Judea did not follow or repeat their decision to live in communes until their supplies were exhausted. It took generations to replace what they had willingly given up and start all over again. This is one reason Paul had to bring them food. This same church 30 years later in Acts 21:20-21 was still tithing –not to church leaders—but the temple system. Read the text.

I refuted (in part) Dr. Kelly’s idea of Acts 2 and 4 in Once More, With Feeling, on Tithing.  But in reality, my focus on selling all starts with Matthew 19:16-30, which I discuss vis a vis liberal church in Sell All or Shut Up.  I’m aware as anyone of the economic difficulties of the Jerusalem church.  That’s why their model wasn’t emulated in other places.  But I still believe that Christianity is a total commitment, and that total commitment includes finances.  The fact that Christians hold earthly title to what they have doesn’t change that.

One of Dr. Kelly’s favourite points (and this is even more true with his colleague Bernie Dehler) is that tithing is unfair to poorer people.  What neither one of them may realise is that, if all the wealthier members of Evangelical churches (and defining “wealthy” is always fun) actually brought 10% of their gross income into the “storehouse,” churches would experience a serious “windows of heaven” experience.  This is because, as a general rule, the more people make, the less portion of it they give to the church.  You can say all you want that tithing is unfair to the poor, but if you really want to scare a group of people, just invert your emphasis and campaign to enforce tithing on the “rich.”  (That, BTW, is part of the point of the Widow’s Mite.)  On the flip side, you may not think that 10% is enough for higher income people, but I can assure you that, without the 10% as an initial guide, many of them wouldn’t do that well.

But it’s the rare church and pastor who will put serious heat on his or her wealthier members.  That of course, runs afoul of James 2.  Now that’s an explosive issue, and one of my favourites.  But I digress…

Please be honest to my writings. I spend my time refuting their arguments whether those arguments come from the Old Testament or the New Testament.

Since Dr. Kelly’s opponents generally construct their arguments on the Old Testament, and he likes to refute them at all points, it makes sense that he would spend most of his time in the Old Testament.  I do this to a limited extent and on a different topic in my piece Blowing Your Own Horn.  But I still think that, on this issue, the different nature of the New Testament economy (theological and literal) is the easiest way to refute a literal carryover of the tithe as a legal requirement, and ends the debate more quickly.

I accused him of spending too much time attacking other Christian teachers, to which he answered:

I fight for the truth. I suppose this is true also of Jesus fighting other Hebrews, of Paul fighting other Hebrews, of Martin Luther and the Reformers disagreeing with other Christians. It is unfair to accuse me of doing what all reformers have done and will continue to do…We cannot hide our head in a hole and hope the whole mess will go away. If the Christian press and Christian leaders will dialog with me and those who agree with me perhaps the false doctrine can be corrected from within Christianity. It is a shame that the secular press has to make money off the disagreement merely because the Christian press is running from the matter.

I’m not a reformer, never have been, so I’m not much sympathetic with this argument prima facie.  (Perhaps my school shouldn’t have made me read Animal Farm.)  Beyond that, the biggest problem with a campaign such as this is the nature of authority (or lack of it) in Evangelical churches.   Put another way, who’s going to decide if Dr. Kelly is right or not?  And if “they” are convinced, how can “they” tell these other preachers to shut up?  What bothers me more than anything else about this whole business is that their end game–whether they intend it or not–is state control in one form or another.  This, to my mind, is unacceptable, especially since Evangelical Christianity is seriously upside-down in the minds of many decision makers in our society.

If you get past this post, you will discover that my site and my interests are broad.  I could never bring myself to make a career out of correcting other Christians.  Dr. Kelly obviously feels differently.  That’s a decision he has made and one that he and others of like mind will have to live with.  I frankly could not face God with that, but then again I’ve found that the key to success in Christian life is to do what God leads you to do rather than to allow others to dictate that mission.  Obviously Dr. Kelly is rising to the challenge he sees, and I can assure you I will continue to rise to mine.