Fr. Dwight Longenecker: Why Tithing is Good for You

By Dwight Longenecker, The Stream, Sept. 18, 2021

Dwight Longenecker’s latest book is Beheading Hydra — A Radical Plan for Christians in an Atheistic Age. Visit his blog, browse his books, and be in touch at dwightlongenecker.com.

I was brought up in an Evangelical Protestant home where the principle of tithing was woven into our world view. My dad was a deacon and Sunday School teacher in our local church. He was also a businessman with his own retail clothing store.

He also tithed 15% of his income before taxes. He did this faithfully even though he was supporting a wife and five kids, had a mortgage on the house and business, and the store was (for no fault of his own) going into a nosedive.

In eighth grade economics class we had to make a pie chart of our family’s income and expenditures. I will never forget working on the chart in class and the teacher tapped me on the shoulder, looked at the chart, and said, “Dwight, I think you made a mistake here. You have it down that your folks give 15% of their income to charity. I think that should be 1.5% don’t you?” …

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