Money, Money, Money

[redjay]

As I just mentioned on another thread. My donations to the church have dried up, about a year ago now.

But Mrs RJ is still a regular tithe payer.

Mrs RJ works full time and has a professional job - albeit in the public sector, so it's not lucrative, but not insubstantial either.

If I was to speculate, I'm not sure Mrs RJ will be Morming in our retirement. I think she is waiting on parents dying, she just hasn't realised it yet, and then we'll both be out, or at least cultural mormoning.

So it really grates my gears that we are still paying 1000's each year to enrich a corporation that we will, I foresee, not be a part of, in our old age; that is already fabulously wealthy, and the corp will probably have stand-up/sit-down Dave at the helm, as sole owner of the corporation i.e. he will own my family's money. And yes, it makes a difference who is at the helm and how the church is being run - e.g. a real estate company run by yes men, versus a charitable organisation run by Christians.

(And yeah, I'm one of those dumb ones who spent decades getting an education, and telling my wife that neither of us needed to be in any pension schemes, because once I was educated, we would prove the lord herewith We proved nothing)

Anyone else feel the same?

[Hagoth]

Here's the real genius of the church. A significant amount of the billions they get in donations comes from people who don't really believe the party line. It is very possible that they know this and that it validates their time-honored process of social pressure, obfuscation, family hijacking and shame culture.

[SeeNoEvil]

As I just mentioned on another thread. My donations to the church have dried up, about a year ago now.

But Mrs RJ is still a regular tithe payer.

Mrs RJ works full time and has a professional job - albeit in the public sector, so it's not lucrative, but not insubstantial either.

If I was to speculate, I'm not sure Mrs RJ will be Morming in our retirement. I think she is waiting on parents dying, she just hasn't realised it yet, and then we'll both be out, or at least cultural mormoning.

So it really grates my gears that we are still paying 1000's each year to enrich a corporation that we will, I foresee, not be a part of, in our old age; that is already fabulously wealthy, and the corp will probably have stand-up/sit-down Dave at the helm, as sole owner of the corporation i.e. he will own my family's money. And yes, it makes a difference who is at the helm and how the church is being run - e.g. a real estate company run by yes men, versus a charitable organisation run by Christians.

(And yeah, I'm one of those dumb ones who spent decades getting an education, and telling my wife that neither of us needed to be in any pension schemes, because once I was educated, we would prove the lord herewith We proved nothing)

Anyone else feel the same?

Amen to all of this! I was the one who always said we didn't have to worry about retirement because God would provide. When the shelf fell it was sobering to think about all the $$$ I gave to the church. My only saving grace was I thought "well at least some of it went to help people...." then I learned just how much. By the time I learned about the malls, cattle ranches, buying up acreage and the salaries and benefits enjoyed by our humble leaders I was beyond angry. Now here I am, retired and living on pennies. I have only myself to blame. This reminds me of a girl I worked with back when I was deep into being TBM. Her rich aunt who was never married and had no children was on her death bed. The nieces and nephews (her husband was a nephew) were already counting and dreaming about how they were going to spend her money. She passed and yep, you guessed it .... turns out she had broken away from her all catholic family and joined the church. She left all her money to the church. It was not a pretty day in the office that morning when she stormed in to let me know my church stole all her families money.

[w2mz]

...

Anyone else feel the same?

Holy crap YES! This is one of my BIGGEST issues with the church. In fact my NOM hiking buddies probably are sick of me ranting on this very topic.

Mrs w2mz is hardcore TBM. She does not work outside of the home and does not have a viable degree or marketable skills that would allow her to make a decent income. We have been very fortunate that I have had (to this point) a decent salary at my job so we have been able to make our monthly mortgage payment, car payments, food, sustain kids, etc. We do not have much in the way of discretionary money at the end of the month after everything is paid. My job historically has been high-stress for me but it has been relatively stable.

For her, tithing is always first and it had always been on gross. (Including on birthday gift money, etc.)

About 7 years ago (I had my faith crisis about 10 years ago) I recognized that tithing was killing us financially and I made a bold move. I approached DW and told her that I no longer wanted to pay tithing on my income. It nearly ended the marriage. Not joking. We compromised and she consented to paying on net vs. gross, but it still was a really tough time in our relationship.

Fast forward to today. Due to the business climate I work in I am now at real risk of losing my job. I have terrible anxiety and constantly worry about what the hell I will do if I lose my income and how I will be able to make ends meet. I have a DD at BYU, a DS that will be home from a mission next month and will go to college, a disabled teen daughter, and a 10 year old son. My life is nothing but expenses now.

When I think back over the last 7 years that I could have been saving that tithing money it makes me livid. The further I look back and calculate the money thrown away, the more bitter I get at the church.

Sorry to rant but this is such a hot button topic for me. Tithing is a way that the church hurts people physically, emotionally, and mentally by taking real money from them and then stuffing magical thinking in their brain that somehow the lord will provide.

The ONLY true statement about tithing is that once you give it to the church, they have your money and you don't. The End.

[Thoughtful]

...

Anyone else feel the same?

Holy crap YES! This is one of my BIGGEST issues with the church. In fact my NOM hiking buddies probably are sick of me ranting on this very topic.

Mrs w2mz is hardcore TBM. She does not work outside of the home and does not have a viable degree or marketable skills that would allow her to make a decent income. We have been very fortunate that I have had (to this point) a decent salary at my job so we have been able to make our monthly mortgage payment, car payments, food, sustain kids, etc. We do not have much in the way of discretionary money at the end of the month after everything is paid. My job historically has been high-stress for me but it has been relatively stable.

For her, tithing is always first and it had always been on gross. (Including on birthday gift money, etc.)

About 7 years ago (I had my faith crisis about 10 years ago) I recognized that tithing was killing us financially and I made a bold move. I approached DW and told her that I no longer wanted to pay tithing on my income. It nearly ended the marriage. Not joking. We compromised and she consented to paying on net vs. gross, but it still was a really tough time in our relationship.

Fast forward to today. Due to the business climate I work in I am now at real risk of losing my job. I have terrible anxiety and constantly worry about what the hell I will do if I lose my income and how I will be able to make ends meet. I have a DD at BYU, a DS that will be home from a mission next month and will go to college, a disabled teen daughter, and a 10 year old son. My life is nothing but expenses now.

When I think back over the last 7 years that I could have been saving that tithing money it makes me livid. The further I look back and calculate the money thrown away, the more bitter I get at the church.

Sorry to rant but this is such a hot button topic for me. Tithing is a way that the church hurts people physically, emotionally, and mentally by taking real money from them and then stuffing magical thinking in their brain that somehow the lord will provide.

The ONLY true statement about tithing is that once you give it to the church, they have your money and you don't. The End.

Im so sorry.

[Hagoth]

Tithing is a way that the church hurts people physically, emotionally, and mentally by taking real money from them and then stuffing magical thinking in their brain that somehow the lord will provide.

This is truly frustrating. And its the oldest trick in the book. You create a false threat and then extort money from people so they will have your protection from the threat that you invented. "Nice little eternal family you've got here, it would really be a shame if something horrible happened to it."

One reason the Aztec empire fell so quickly was that the Spanish were able to help the vassal states come to the realization that their masters didn't really have the power to destroy them all. We get cautionary tales about the horrible things that happen to people when they don't pay tithing. If we are faithful we will believe those stories and keep paying. If we start to doubt them and suspect that maybe God doesn't really need our money, routed through the COB, we become the enemy. That is really an ugly concept when you think about it.

There has been a lot of hope from NOM-types for the church to be more proactive in reassuring members that faith differences are not a a good reason for divorce. I like to imagine a day when the church would specifically say that your family will not suffer dire eternal consequences for not handing over sufficient funds but I seriously doubt that would happen because it undermines the entire monetary hegemony they have over their members. On the surface it's all about family and togetherness and has nothing to do with money, right? But the church has engineered your eternal family into a commodity that can be purchased with an annual fee. The fact that full tithing payment is a requirement for saving ordinances is the biggest red flag imaginable.

This is deeply ingrained stuff and I'm so sorry that you guys are captives of it. It took me years to slowly extricate myself and I was in a much better starting point. I guess the big question is are you able to live with it if your spouse can never deal with another option? They may see it as the cost of keeping an eternal family, when really it is the cost of keeping an earthly family.

I posed this question in another thread but I'll repeat it here. I wonder how much of the billions of dollars the church takes in every year comes from people who don't believe the church's claims and are paying a marriage club membership fee, contrary to their own desires and better judgement.

[DPRoberts]

(And yeah, I'm one of those dumb ones who spent decades getting an education, and telling my wife that neither of us needed to be in any pension schemes, because once I was educated, we would prove the lord herewith We proved nothing)

Anyone else feel the same?

Absolutely, yes.

It always weighed heavily on my shelf that the windows of heaven were not opening as I had been led to believe they would. Or if they were, I still had plenty of room to receive. A bishop once laughed at me when I suggested that Malachi might be prophetic hyperbole since I had never experienced not having room enough to receive. He was for the most part a really good bishop but he failed to grasp the relative ease he had in paying tithing on his far more than adequate income. His kids had music lessons. His family spent Christmas break in Hawaii every year. It is hard to feel blessed when you know that you are giving money to the church that your family really needs. If I had that money back I would not have spent it selfishly. It would have been consecrated to the needs of my family that went unmet in the name of religious sacrifice.

Indeed I saw that those who appeared to have those windows opening were themselves doing the kind of everyday worldly things to make that happen. The right education, the right profession, working for the right firm. Sometimes they enhanced natural abilities like needing less sleep than the average person. Spiritual magic had nothing to do with it from where I stood.

What really bugged me about tithing were the double binds it put me in. You talk about not being as well prepared for retirement as you would like to be because of tithing. But that same church that took those funds away from you wants you to be willing and financially able to serve a mission when you reach retirement. The church wanted me to bring a bunch of spirits into a gospel home, then it took away funds I needed for their upbringing. I guess I should be grateful for the strain that helped to finally open my eyes to their fraud.

[w2mz]

This is truly frustrating. And its the oldest trick in the book. You create a false threat and then extort money from people so they will have your protection from the threat that you invented. "Nice little eternal family you've got here, it would really be a shame if something horrible happened to it."

One reason the Aztec empire fell so quickly was that the Spanish were able to help the vassal states come to the realization that their masters didn't really have the power to destroy them all. We get cautionary tales about the horrible things that happen to people when they don't pay tithing. If we are faithful we will believe those stories and keep paying. If we start to doubt them and suspect that maybe God doesn't really need our money, routed through the COB, we become the enemy. That is really an ugly concept when you think about it.

There has been a lot of hope from NOM-types for the church to be more proactive in reassuring members that faith differences are not a a good reason for divorce. I like to imagine a day when the church would specifically say that your family will not suffer dire eternal consequences for not handing over sufficient funds but I seriously doubt that would happen because it undermines the entire monetary hegemony they have over their members. On the surface it's all about family and togetherness and has nothing to do with money, right? But the church has engineered your eternal family into a commodity that can be purchased with an annual fee. The fact that full tithing payment is a requirement for saving ordinances is the biggest red flag imaginable.

This is deeply ingrained stuff and I'm so sorry that you guys are captives of it. It took me years to slowly extricate myself and I was in a much better starting point. I guess the big question is are you able to live with it if your spouse can never deal with another option? They may see it as the cost of keeping an eternal family, when really it is the cost of keeping an earthly family.

I posed this question in another thread but I'll repeat it here. I wonder how much of the billions of dollars the church takes in every year comes from people who don't believe the church's claims and are paying a marriage club membership fee, contrary to their own desires and better judgement.

This is brilliant and absolutely true. So very well put Hagoth.

I guess the big question is are you able to live with it if your spouse can never deal with another option?

That is definitely a question I ask myself a lot.

[Enoch Witty]

I have some very unkind words to share about my opinions on tithing... but they're more the kind of words for an uncensored place like Reddit.

[RubinHighlander]

Besides all the time I wasted, this is the number one hardest thing for me to try and get over. All the $$$$ I gave to those SOBs all those years and between that and my first failed marriage I've got hardly anything in the retirement funds. Insert many expletives here....

[crossmyheart]

I have to sheepishly admit that more than once I paid tithing and then lived off of credit cards the rest of the month. Young and dumb. Still paying off that debt and I have been tithing free for 5 years.

[Linked]

Yes, this is definitely frustrating for me too. I am fortunate to not be paying as much tithing anymore, though my wife still pays on her income.

Looking up the amount I have paid on LDS.org was a painful moment. It wouldn't be so bad if I had some hope that the money was going towards something I believe in, like helping the poor, instead of something I don't believe in, like indoctrinating people through the missionary program or BYU or through some sort of laundering before being used for real estate investments to keep the church running in perpetuity. Ugh.

[redjay]

Apologies to all who replied, things have been nuts with work and home life, so i havent had a chance to reply. The only comfort i can offer is, at least most of us have shook off the sunk cost fallacy (in terms of time and money) and as individuals we are better off, than had we kept on the hamster wheel

[Spicy McHaggis]

If I've done anything well, it is in telling my kids to NEVER pay tithing. DW pays some, but nowhere near full.