Our youngest son called me Tuesday evening to ask if I’d like to join him as he drives home from college in a week and a half. It means I have to buy a one-way plane ticket and take a couple of days out of my schedule. As long as the airfare wasn’t too high (what’s too high?), I decided, absolutely.

Sure enough, Southwest had a great fare. So we’re scheduled to go.

I’m excited.

Is it because sitting in a Toyota Corolla for 24 hours of driving over two days sounds like a lot of fun?

No. Rather, it’s because I expect our experience will be along the lines of something Kevin Swanson, executive director of Christian Home Educators of Colorado, said a couple of months ago. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve gotten into some fairly philosophical discussions with our professional legacy planner. As a result, several months ago–I didn’t know at the time whether he was seeking merely to be provocative or whether he was really serious, but–he said he is opposed to ministers who teach the concept of tithing. He said he thinks such teaching holds too many wealthy Christians back from giving more.

Since then, I have come to realize he is actually very serious in the matter. And a month or two ago he sent me a note in which he said he believes “the concept of tithing as taught in the Old Testament does not apply to New Testament Christians in any way and is nowhere endorsed in the New Testament as a basis for giving.”

For some initial food for thought, he said, he thought I would enjoy reading some “very scholarly papers on the subject”: “Will a Man Rob God?” (Malachi 3:8): A Study of Tithing in the Old and New Testaments, Part I and Part II by Andreas Köstenberger and David Croteau.

“I’ll enjoy the dialog with you after you get a chance to digest all this material,” he wrote.

Just what I need–more “material” to digest! I’ve got thousands of books sitting on shelves in front of me still needing to be read!

But this guy impacts a lot of people, and he’s trying to influence me, so I thought I’d better read up on the subject. I finally completed the assignment while on vacation the last couple of weeks, and I wrote back.

I, too, have some severe concerns about tithing, but of a very different nature, I expect, from his. Read the rest of this entry »