The struggle of giving

Sunday was different, it seemed more peaceful than any other day of the week. My peace however was always disturbed by a common practice of the Pacific Island church that we attended and that was the reading out at each Sunday service the monetary contribution/tithing given by each family. This practice acts as a silent influencer to the amount members contribute, exacerbated because giving in general is inherent in PI culture, but this type of giving is not in line with the original purpose of tithing. It is detrimental to the Pacific people and is a major contributor to the debt they face and this practice should be disestablished. 

 

There are social environmental and emotional techniques common in coercive persuasion that can produce substantial behavior and attitude changes which I thought could be a way to describe the effect this practice of reading out members' monetary contributions has. Using this term however would also suggest there is some ill intent behind the practice, and I don’t believe this to be true of our churches or our church leaders. So I coined the term silent influencer. The church leaders can either stand at the pulpit and say to their congregation “give us as much money as you can find and you will go to the top of the praise list, bless the church financially and you in turn will be blessed” or they can read out your family name and how much you gave each week; both options produces the same outcome, the latter obviously having a lower risk of causing outrage. The Pacific Island culture is embedded in faith, respect and service to others and therefore this practice produces results beneficial to the churches funds. To act against it would be to go against everything we are raised to do. Vea Mafile’o co-director of For my Father’s Kingdom says “Church and culture can’t be separated, they’re intertwined” which she discovered during her family’s documented journey of trying to understand why her Father gives so much money to his church among other things.

I remember asking Nana why she would give so much to the church and she would reply with - Never question the work of the Lord - Well it was not the work of the Lord that I was questioning. As we know “God’s intention” and what has been created by “religion” can be two very different things; but we can save that opinion post for another time. Well Nana, I would say; Leviticus 27:30 (GNB) says only “One-tenth of all produce of the land, whether grain or fruit, belongs to the Lord” and the word tithe comes from the Old English word teogotha, which means “tenth”. So Nana, based on this you are only obliged to give 10% of your income to the Lord!! Yeah ok; I never actually replied like that to Nana because firstly she knew the bible way more than I did and secondly, I wanted to keep my teeth! Whether it was out of fear or respect that I didn’t verbally challenge my Nana’s ideology, internally I held the belief that 10% of your income was the goal not the starting point.