Blessings of Tithing?

[_maklelan]

Well then, you've just proved my point. Your upturn of fortune was not the result of your tithe, but rather it was the result of your grandmother's generosity.

And any blessings received from paying tithing must not be at all the result of any human interaction. I see. Blessings are not valid if any humans have taken part.

Here is an important question for you: Did you [b]expect[/u] to receive a blessing of some kind as "payment" for your tithe? I.e., were you looking for things (such as your grandma's generosity) which could somehow be linked up to your tithing payments?

No, I just wanted to be faithful to the promise I made. It didn't occur to me until much later that what had happened could have been the result of tithing.

Ah, well then, that settles it. Are you not the same guy who was scolding me for "appeals to emotion" on another thread? ; )

And are you not the same guy who repeatedly ignored my objection to it as you continued to manifest it? I'm just telling you how I feel, I never expected anyone to take me seriously; and I especially am not trying to influence the sensitivities of anyone else or try to make you appear like a monster.

Nothing you have described could be legitimately labeled "miraculous."

And coming from a man who appears to completely deny the existence of miracles that means what?

[_maklelan]

Just last month my wife had some unexpected major dental work, and I was going to have to go into debt to pay for it. A couple of days before her appointment, I got a letter from my employer telling me that I was receiving $1500 for having referred someone for employment 6 months ago. If I were a tithe-payer, I might describe this as a miraculous blessing. But it was just a coincidence. It did, however, more than cover the dental work.

Or it could just be that someone is still watching out for you.

[_maklelan]

What you're describing here sounds like a form of communism. "we used virtually all of our money to pay a few weeks of tithing we had missed" It sounds like you give your money to the church then wait for them to take care of you. It reminds me of members who get welfare from the church. The church expects them to pay their tithing, then the church provides them with food from the storehouse. Why not give the money back to the member and let them take care of themselves? As has been pointed out in other posts on this thread, people get unexpected money, bonuses, raises, new jobs, etc. all the time. It's what keep the economy moving forward. It happens every day all across the country, yet very few people are Mormon.

I don't recall saying a word about the church providing me with anything. It sounds more like you're just reading something into my statement that's not there.

[_maklelan]

Unfortunately, too many people are like Maklelan, and when something fortuitous happens (like his grandma sending him money or his professor giving him a job), they attribute it to the wrong source. Mak's little surprises didn't come from God; one came from his grandma and later, another from his professor. Now Mak could argue that God influences his grandma and/or his professor, but that wouldn't necessarily mean the influence was because he paid his tithing. There could be many other reasons why God would influence those two people.

So you have no clue who is influencing who and for what reason, but you're positive that my attribution is incorrect?

[_maklelan]

Nothing at all wrong with the idea that God works through people to answer prayers, but that's not what paying tithing is about. Perhaps Mak's grandmother had been asking for an opportunity to bless someone, and God told her to send Mak a check. Perhaps Mak's professor had been deperately praying for someone to help him illustrate his book, and God directed him to Mak. In those cases, neither encounter had anything to do with Mak paying his tithing.

And perhaps it all was because I payed my tithing. If you would like to make up a bunch of hypothetical scenarios to include the blessings of god but avoid attributing it to tithing then be my guest, but if God's blessing is the agreed upon method here then my explanation satisfies the law of parsimony.

[_maklelan]

I understand your point, but what is wrong with the idea that perhaps God works through people to answer the prayers of others? I've been able to do things for people in the past that they later confided in me that they were praying for. Most answers, if not all answers to my prayers, have come through other people.

Nothing, except it is about as logically sound as The Intelligent Falling theory.

It goes hand in hand with Inconceivable's post.

Your outlook determines your reality. No arguments against it, you find what you are looking for.

The concept of prayer was designed to get that powerful tool, you subconcious mind, thinking about your problems. That's it. Prayer put you into a state of mind in which you were more likely to accept the answer that your subconscious provided.

So, if you are "praying" about someone mowing your lawn for you, because you just got out of surgery. . . guess what? Yup, anyone mows your lawn, you attribute it to God. Unfortunately, it does kind of break down a bit. "Sister So-and-So just got out of surgery. Young Men, I want two of you to go to her house every other week and mow her lawn."

From God? Or from a neighbor who found out about your incapacitated state and wants to help?

Being a firm believer in the power of the mind and the Law of Attraction, my only problem with The Secret is that while a decent introduction to the concept, they promote the Law of Attraction as being this quasi-mystical event. When in reality, it is merely your mind finding and pointing out things that you have been focusing on. A very good example of this, take a look around the room you are sitting in right now. Just for 30 seconds. Now close your eyes and recite back everything you saw. At max, you can around 150. But are there only 150 things to notice? It sounds stupid to have to right it out, but you see the things you look at.

Does The Secret work? Debatable. Try it on something completely mundane. I tried it on green traffic lights. I hate waiting in traffic. So, rather than focusing on "No Red Lights" (because your subconscious cannot understand a negative), I focused on "Just Green Lights". I haven't sat at a traffic light for longer than 30 seconds since I started this. Now, I argue that this is as much a product of the The Secret as it is me conditioning myself. Do I honestly believe that I haven't been stuck for longer? No. But I can rationalize those few times away, in the same manner as someone's Blessing from Tithing.

Oh, geez, are you talking about that silly book The Secret? I've got some friends at an office I used to work at that have been reading it. It's a riot. I'm glad someone's finding some way to apply it, but in five years when the next pseudo-scientific book comes out that promises to hold the key to happiness and you abandon The Secret to subscribe to those theories you're gonna look as silly as the people who abandoned the Celestine Prophecy for The Secret. Then when it happens again five years after that it's gonna get even sillier.

[_harmony]

Nothing at all wrong with the idea that God works through people to answer prayers, but that's not what paying tithing is about. Perhaps Mak's grandmother had been asking for an opportunity to bless someone, and God told her to send Mak a check. Perhaps Mak's professor had been deperately praying for someone to help him illustrate his book, and God directed him to Mak. In those cases, neither encounter had anything to do with Mak paying his tithing.

And perhaps it all was because I payed my tithing. If you would like to make up a bunch of hypothetical scenarios to include the blessings of god but avoid attributing it to tithing then be my guest, but if God's blessing is the agreed upon method here then my explanation satisfies the law of parsimony.

If it comforts you, continue to believe what you do. I'm just saying there are other explanations that are at least as believable.

[_Yoda]

Nothing at all wrong with the idea that God works through people to answer prayers, but that's not what paying tithing is about. Perhaps Mak's grandmother had been asking for an opportunity to bless someone, and God told her to send Mak a check. Perhaps Mak's professor had been deperately praying for someone to help him illustrate his book, and God directed him to Mak. In those cases, neither encounter had anything to do with Mak paying his tithing.

And perhaps it all was because I payed my tithing. If you would like to make up a bunch of hypothetical scenarios to include the blessings of god but avoid attributing it to tithing then be my guest, but if God's blessing is the agreed upon method here then my explanation satisfies the law of parsimony.

I think that all of these hypotheticals could have come into play...including the fact that you paid your tithing.

;)

[_Runtu]

And perhaps it all was because I payed my tithing. If you would like to make up a bunch of hypothetical scenarios to include the blessings of god but avoid attributing it to tithing then be my guest, but if God's blessing is the agreed upon method here then my explanation satisfies the law of parsimony.

I think that all of these hypotheticals could have come into play...including the fact that you paid your tithing.

;)

Precisely. In the end, attributing a particular occurrence to divine intervention is a choice based on perspective.

[_Who Knows]

And perhaps it all was because I payed my tithing. If you would like to make up a bunch of hypothetical scenarios to include the blessings of god but avoid attributing it to tithing then be my guest, but if God's blessing is the agreed upon method here then my explanation satisfies the law of parsimony.

I think that all of these hypotheticals could have come into play...including the fact that you paid your tithing.

;)

Precisely. In the end, attributing a particular occurrence to divine intervention is a choice based on perspective.

Exactly. If I were still a full tithe paying TBM, I might have attributed my bonus and raise to GOD - a blessing for paying tithing. But obviously that's not the reason.

I just don't see any correlation.

The old bishop in my ward went over a year without a job. There's other family's in my ward who can barely survive. We had to round up some donations from various folks in the neighboorhood/ward to donate some money to one family so they could buy a van for their enormous (7 kids) family. These are all tithe payers.

And then you have tithe payers who do very well. But you have non-tithe payers who are also very well off. And you have non-tithe payers who struggle with money.

Is there any correlation here? Is there any connection at all? What do you say to those who pay their tithing yet struggle with money?

Again, how do you know your good fortune is from God - for paying tithing?