Editorial—Tithe
Being born in a Seventh-day Adventist family, I was raised in a conservative Christian environment and introduced to spiritual things when I began to understand my first words and heard the Bible stories my parents told me. I can vividly remember my mother telling me stories about Creation, the Garden of Eden, the first man and woman living on earth and the sin they committed, along with its accompanying death penalty for eating the fruit from the tree God placed in the center of the garden—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
As I grew, I began to have questions: “Why did Adam and Eve have to die just because they ate some fruit? Was the fruit poisonous? If so, why did God grow a poisonous tree in the garden? Or was it because of the location of the tree?” I remember asking my mother these questions, but she gave me unsatisfactory answers. She said, “I don’t know how to answer your questions. I just know what the Bible tells me.”
When I sat in the Spirit of Prophecy class during my college years, I got the answers to my questions through Ellen White’s writings: “There was nothing poisonous in the fruit itself, and the sin was not merely in yielding to appetite. It was distrust of God’s goodness, disbelief of His Word, and rejection of His authority that made our first parents transgressors, and that brought into the world a knowledge of evil.”—Education, p. 25.
So I learned that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was created as a “testing instrument” for Adam and Eve to prove whether they trusted God and His goodness, if they believed in God’s Word, and if they accepted God’s authority for their lives. Ellen White wrote, “In the garden, He caused to grow every tree that was pleasant to the eye or good for food; but among them, He makes one reserve. Of all else, Adam and Eve might freely eat; but of this one tree, God said, ‘Thou shalt not eat of it.’ Here was the test of their gratitude and loyalty to God.”—Counsels on Stewardship, p. 65. Unfortunately, Adam and Eve failed to pass the test; they transgressed God’s command, and they brought sin into the world. Then I said to myself, “Alas, it is because of Adam and Eve that people suffer, get sick, and die.”
But wait a minute! Don’t blame Adam and Eve for causing all people to sin. Why? Because we commit the same sin if we fail to return God’s TITHE. Ellen White wrote, “He asks us to acknowledge Him as the Giver of all things; and for this reason, He says, Of all your possessions I reserve a tenth for Myself, besides gifts and offerings, which are to be brought into My storehouse.”—Ibid. The tithing system in our day is equivalent to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. If we make excuses for not returning the TITHE, it is proof that we distrust God’s goodness, we disbelieve His Word, and we reject His authority in our lives.
Don’t make the same mistake that Adam and Eve did. Obeying God’s command is the best way of showing our love to Him. We show respect and honesty when we TITHE and set apart the 10 percent before doing anything else with the money we receive, knowing all that we have is God’s, not just the 10 percent. When we return the 10 percent to God, He blesses the 90 percent and multiplies it. But that’s not all, because we haven’t given anything yet. The offerings are an expression of our thanksgiving for the blessings and mercies He gives to us.
Friends, let’s do it!
Hiskia Missah
Editor
