Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>.\u00a0 Which means that they won\u2019t be able to enter the temple, be ordained apostles, and such like.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
And, of course, it\u2019s true:\u00a0 Not a full tithe-payer?\u00a0 No apostleship for you.\u00a0 No temple wedding.\u00a0 No luxurious three-year vacation as a mission president in Mongolia.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
(It should not be forgotten, however, that one can be a full tithe-payer while literally paying nothing.\u00a0 If you have no income, your full tithe is zero; as bishop of a relatively impoverished singles ward some years ago, I admitted several young people to the temple who were, at the time, paying no tithing.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unwilling to tithe your income or, absent income, to profess yourself a full tithe-payer?\u00a0 Then you won\u2019t be rewarded with appointment as a bishop and will be denied the enhanced leisure, the vast recreational opportunities, the eminent social status, and the lucrative financial benefits that accompany that sinecure.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, it seemed to me that the complainant was misusing the concept of freedom to suggest that we aren\u2019t free to choose not to tithe because, to be more precise, we\u2019re not free (if we have income) to choose to withhold tithing without that choice entailing consequences<\/em>.\u00a0 But those are quite distinct things.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true that, if I don\u2019t buy movie tickets, I won\u2019t be able to take a seat in the theater to watch Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible XXXV: Adventures with Dentures<\/em>.\u00a0 But I\u2019m still totally free to make that decision.\u00a0 If I don\u2019t practice the violin for hours every day, I won\u2019t ever perform onstage at Carnegie Hall.\u00a0 But I\u2019m entirely free to practice or not to practice.\u00a0 If I don\u2019t pay for a subscription to Cigar Aficionado<\/em>, I won\u2019t receive that magazine in the mail.\u00a0 If I don\u2019t renew my gym membership, I won\u2019t be permitted to work out on their equipment and, as a result, my legendarily buff appearance will be endangered.\u00a0 If I refuse to look through the telescope, I won\u2019t see the rings of Saturn.\u00a0 If I don\u2019t study hard, I won\u2019t go to an elite law school.\u00a0 All such decisions are free.\u00a0 That they entail certain consequences makes them no less<\/em> free.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
In order to make my point absolutely clear, I made a choice when I got into my rental car in Cairns for the drive up to Port Douglas:\u00a0 Rebelling against the irrational Australian demand that I drive on the left hand side of the road, I insisted on exercising my right of free choice and drove on the right.\u00a0 Shortly out of the rental parking lot, accordingly, I ran head on into a large truck that was fully loaded with sugar cane.\u00a0 That\u2019s why this post comes to you from an as-yet unspecified location in the spirit world.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But I trust that I\u2019ve made my point:\u00a0 Such decisions are entirely free.\u00a0 Unfortunately, though, the Latter-day Saints aren\u2019t the only people who will occasionally point out that they entail (sometimes grave) consequences.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
(Heh heh.\u00a0 I had you going there for just a moment, didn\u2019t I?\u00a0 Actually, I\u2019m not [yet] dead, but am, to the contrary, writing this blog entry from a pleasant location right here on Earth.\u00a0 Too bad for my extremist critics, who were probably gearing up to celebrate the end of what they pretend to regard as a life of unashamed avarice, cruelty, mendacity, and crime.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 A few days ago, after I had posted an item about plans to build a new high-rise office building in Salt Lake City, one disaffected former Latter-day Saint managed to turn the discussion\u2014as almost always happens in such cases\u2014to the damnably wicked biblical expectation and practice of tithing, reaffirmed in latter-day revelation. \u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1809,2511,2508,2505,389,55,2502,1625],"class_list":["post-67608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","tag-coercion","tag-compulsion","tag-freedom","tag-mormon-finances","tag-mormonism","tag-tithes","tag-tithing"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>