Wasting Tithing Money?

[_zeezrom]

Personally I would rather have my tithing going toward feeding the poor, clothing the naked and housing the homeless. Temples are as big a waste of money as a high end mall is. All the ordinances of the Temple could be done within the existing Chapel buildings at much much much lower cost. Think about it, instead if people having to travel great distances at much cost, they could just go to the ward Temple night at their own chapel.

Or helping people find purpose through creating things. Or tutoring kids who struggle academically. Or helping animals find a home. Or helping people appreciate ballet. Or...

[_Yoda]

What's the diff between, say, a $3,000 table and a $80,000?

$77,000

smartass

And Darth's answer surprises you....how? LOL

Love you, Darth!

[_Chap]

Personally I would rather have my tithing going toward feeding the poor, clothing the naked and hosing the homeless.

I believe you made a typo. It should read "hosing off the homeless."

Best thing to do with them.

[_Fence Sitter]

The title of the thread seems tautological.

[_quaker]

I think it is bad enough that we have resorted to paying individuals to do the work to build temples. To change the temple from the best expression of a building we can offer to the best building money can buy is bad enough.

To make the priority of the quality of the building a subsidiary to economic frugality is too much. When church members start to feel that way about temples then it will clearly demonstrate what is being worshipped, and it is not Christ.

That said it is possible to have unreasonable expenses. Some expenses, like 70,000$ for the types of tables I've seen, would raise suspicions of money laundering or funneling money. Very little of what composes a temple is obtained beyond an open market, where nothing is priceless.

[_zeezrom]

Maybe the church could implement the "super mini temple plan".

That is where each member family constructs a mini temple in their own house, at their own expense, using their own design. Follow some basic rules that gets the minimum done: ordinances get completed.

Put the ordinance records on the Amazon cloud.

[_DarkHelmet]

When church members start to feel that way about temples then it will clearly demonstrate what is being worshipped, and it is not Christ.

Eyring gave a talk and recounted how is granddaughter took part in a temple dedication and asked where Jesus was. Eyring chuckled, of course Jesus isn't in the temple. He's right. Why would Jesus be in a Mormon temple?

[_Sethbag]

Yeah, that Jesus. He is pretty snobby when it comes to this things. He was a carpenter, afterall.

Nah, carpenters woulda let it roll. Now, if Jesus had been a joiner or cabinetmaker, it would be a different story.

[_consiglieri]

I'm sure the window, as it was, represented the best efforts of someone. So what if it was slightly imperfect? Isn't the fact that it was the best effort of someone enough?

This is the kind of thinking that really pisses God of.

[_keithb]

I'm surprised that no one has commented on something I found especially bothersome in this latest conference. Saturday morning there was a talk by a seventy named Craig Christensen. In his talk he spoke of the building of a temple and how he was walking through it with the contractor before it was completed. He told about how the person inspecting the workmanship ran his hand along a wall that was going to be covered with wallpaper. The wall had a little bit of what he called "grit" on it. They were told "this is not up to temple standards" and so they would have to redo it. Then they went by a stained-glass window in a part of the temple that few people would see, and that would be covered by a plant anyway. He noticed a single small pane in the window that was a little skewed in some way. He said again "this is not up to temple standards" and he told the workers that the window would have to be replaced.

His point seemed to be that the quality of temple construction had to be absolutely perfect or it wouldn't be good enough for God to come to it. But all I could think about was how much tithing money was unnecessarily spent on the extra work to re-do a wall and an expensive stained-glass window just to satisfy the white-gloved nutjob that was reviewing the workmanship. It makes me wonder what happened to the expensive window? Can you imagine how much those things cost? At least hundreds if not thousands of dollars to do fancy windows like that. Surely the window with the slightly out of square piece was good enough, especially if it was going to be behind a plant and rarely seen by temple goers.

Anyway, that really bothered me and made me wonder how much tithing money is wasted in a similar fashion, just to satisfy the demands of people who probably live in million dollar custom built mansions and are used to getting things just how they want them, no matter the expense.

If the contractor was non-Mormon or NOMish (not sure if you need a recommend to work at a temple site or not), then I can imagine him thinking, "Yes sir, Mr. Asshole sir" in response to all of these questions. If he was active Mormon, they wall and window probably were redone.