BeforeThereWas
New Member
- Dec 30, 2007
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Call it what you will, but if you are being (spiritually) fed at a church, you should be paying for your meal.
You appear to have assumed that anyone here demanded that nothing be handed over to organized religion. I know I never said that. I simply stated that what is handed over to them should be a lower priority in the membership's giving. Our FIRST priority is our own families, each other's needs outside one's own house, those of our local communities, and THEN the luxuries of an insitutional church organization.
It's all about our priorities being in the right order.
If you are a member of a church that does God's work and you are not regularly contributing, you are robbing that church and robbing God.
It may be robbing that organization, but it certainly isn't robbing God. I don't believe you're qualified to make that judgement against anyone.
Every cent of your money is actually His money anyway.
I agree.
You are also missing the point that if you give from your heart because you know it is right and are not giving just to get something back, you WILL be blessed by God.
Everybody gives-to-get from what they hand over to organized religion. Anything handed over to organized religion has a direct benefit lavished back upon the giver.
Handing over one's giving to the family down the street after the husband lost his job reaps no direct benefit on this earth to the giver. THAT is doing the work of the Lord, very much unlike what one gives to institutionalized religious organizations, and thus reaping many benefits by way of all the luxuries afforded by institutions for their memberships.
That's a no-brainer.
But if you God is blessing you and you can't manage 10% to help bring others to Christ (just as someone else helped you do), then you are wrong...
I bring people to Christ without the luxuries of those communal buildings, air conditioning, heating, lawn care, parking lots, spires, crosses, chandeliers, etc.
The TRUE Church is a living, breathing entity with no need for money nor the luxuries "churchgoers" routinely lavish back upon thesmelves by way of their so-called "giving" to the institutional model.
But you can't/shouldn't neglect the the church you park your butt in every week.
Ahh, no worries there. I don't attend or support any one of them. I gather together and fellowship with other believers every week without the need for communal facilities, orators, or any of the other trappings of organized religion and its religious ceremonies.
I never could figure out how one fellowships with the backs of other people's heads as members of an audience. That's a trick I never did master.
SW