The lifestyles of many who are called reverends, prophets, apostles, pastors and other titles of the church mock the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not all, of course, but the misuse of the altar, pulpit and video technology to amass material wealth must not escape our vigilant attention.

To many, Jesus Christ is a commercial commodity. They preach the Gospel for personal material gain, not for the spiritual benefit of their congregations. Messengers of the prosperity gospel are enslaved by money and other luxuries that they extract from the materially and spiritually needy. 

They reach into the Scriptures to extract passages that they use to persuade congregations to surrender money to them in the guise of giving back to the Lord. These preachers, many of whom self-identify as “men of God”, enjoy lifestyles of entertainers and royalty, even as their pews are filled with some of the poorest people in their communities.

They rub shoulders with the politically powerful and often travel with armed bodyguards as though they have no faith in the power of God who watched over His apostles to hostile lands nearly 2000 years ago. 

The complete merger of the church and the state is not limited to the so-called evangelical churches. Some of the traditional churches have consummated a marriage with the ruling houses and political parties, with complete erasure of the line that used to separate the two. 

Officials of ruling parties are often members of church councils. Churches offer preferential seating to politicians, especially members of the ruling party. They accord them special time to engage in electioneering. The politicians, including those whose resumes include injustice, rigged elections and other forms of corruption, “greet the congregation” with offers of bribes and empty promises. They gladly donate money towards the purchase of a car for the bishop or the building of an archdeacon’s house, a good investment that they hope will yield dividends at the ballot box. 

The commercialisation of politics is only surpassed by a similar affliction that has turned houses of Christian worship into bazaars. Many church leaders are more interested in how much money has been given than how many people have given their hearts to the Lord for His saving grace.  

Many Christians are forced to give. They are intimidated to believe that they must tithe. Few subjects cause more passionate debate among Christians than tithing. In the Biblical context, tithing was the Old Testament Mosaic law that required people to bring one tenth (a tithe) of the first fruits of their harvest to the House of the Lord. 

We find the earliest mention of the tithe in Leviticus 27:30 where the Lord commanded Moses for the people of Israel: “Every tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the trees, is the Lord’s; it is holy to the Lord.”  

The Lord repeats this command in Deuteronomy 14:22-23, in Proverbs 3:9-10, and in Malachi 3:8. The central theme of these verses is that the tithe was a way of honouring the Lord. To not tithe was to rob God. As a Christian, I acknowledge this history of the unique covenant relationship between God and the children of Israel. 

The purpose of the tithe was to provide for the needs of the Levites, the tribe whose main job was to serve God in the Tabernacle and the Temple, and work as judges and teachers. The tithe was not a means of making the Levites rich, immersed in opulent lifestyles at the expense of God’s children. 

However, the tithe does not apply to Christians, for we are not under the Law of Moses. We are under the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ whose birth, death and resurrection bought us and freed us from the legalism that hardly anyone could fulfil on their own.  

So, we need to embrace, with humility, the command to honour the Lord God, not with just 10 percent of what we have, but with 100 percent of what He has given each one of us through his death and resurrection.

The idea of giving one tenth to the Lord may be misconstrued to mean that the remaining 90 percent belongs to the person that tithes. In fact, you and I do not own anything. Everything we have belongs to God. We are simply custodians of what is His and there is no limit to how much of it we can and must give to serve His purpose. 

The key phrase is “to serve His purpose,” not to enrich people who have mastered the art of taking from the needy and the gullible to feed their love for luxury. I fully endorse the need for church members to provide accommodation, transportation, food and other necessities to those that the Lord has chosen to lead his Church. However, I do not believe that God wants us to build palatial homes or purchase luxury motor vehicles for men and women whose brief is to preach the Gospel of the humblest person that ever lived. I do not expect church leaders to live in tents or walk across the mountains the way Apolo Kivebulaya did in his mission among the Bambuti of Congo. However, I am certain that God’s priority is that we spend more on the poor and the sick than on the vain wants of church leaders.  

When modesty flees from the church, the devil comes in to fill the vacuum. When money becomes the central theme of the church, the financially wealthy take advantage to drive agendas that conflict with the true message of the Lord Jesus Christ. When greed consumes the leaders, they use language that compels people to give as a ritual, not with conviction. 

What does the Bible teach Christians about giving? We should give generously but not do so under any compulsion. We should give cheerfully and joyfully, according to what is in our hearts, not what is demanded by the church or anyone else. We must not give in competition with others or expecting praise and recognition but do so according to what the Lord teaches us in Mark 12:41-44, about the poor widow whom He considered to have given more than all others combined, because she gave all she owned, all she had to live on. 

© Muniini K. Mulera