On Love, on Charity, and on Salvation.

[Vort]

2 hours ago, Overwatch said:

I am actually very saddened by this activity we have done here. It was fun but learning about the nature of these things and how much further we have to go as people kind of bummed me out. It did however reaffirm my belief that the poor and needy need love and care. C :

Take heart. As long as we're on the path, we will get there. Victory may be distant, but it is assured.

[Overwatch]

1 minute ago, Vort said:

Take heart. As long as we're on the path, we will get there. Victory may be distant, but it is assured.

Thank You Brother, I appreciate that.

[JohnsonJones]

15 hours ago, Vort said:

That's not my understanding of the word "increase". If I plant a twenty bushels of wheat and I harvest a hundred. my increase is eighty bushels. That's before I decide how much I need to keep to feed my family for the following year. If my family needs, say, thirty bushels for the year, then my excess is fifty bushels. But when I tithe, I tithe on my increase -- eighty bushels. I take eight bushels, not five, to the bishop's storehouse.

That's how it has been defined today in the LDS church, but that's not how it's defined in the past or by businesses and financial institutions today.  Counting their increases like that is a good way to go broke instead.  Increase is over and above what you started with not including your costs.

Thus, let's say I have a grocery store.  We start off with 50K.  We spend 40K on expenses leaving us with 10K.  We thus are now -40K in the hole.  We sell things, and we make a gross of 50K back.  Thus now we have 60K. 

Thus, we have increased the amount of money we have by 10K.  Our money has NOT increased to the amount of 50K more than what we had, it has increased by 10K (or what we could call net profit). 

Another example, if you are driving 30 miles per hour, when you increase your speed, what do you mean?  If you increase your speed by 10 miles per hour, does that mean you are now driving at 40 miles per hour, or are you driving at 10 miles per hour?  Or, to frame it another way...if I told you were driving 30 miles per hour and I asked you to increase your speed by 10 miles...would you then slow down to 10 miles an hour, or would you speed up to 40 miles an hour?  If you are driving 30 miles an hour and speed up to 40 miles an hour, have you increased your speed by 10 mph, or by 40 mph?  An increase is normally defined by whatever you have ABOVE what you had before (or in the case of the vehicle, an increase of speed above the speed you were driving previously). 

However, as per modern day prophets on tithing, we no longer define tithes as per the world's definition of increase. 

In the above car example, if you were to tithe on your increase for the car speed, you would deduct 4 miles from your speed (leaving you at 36 miles per hour) rather than 1 mile (10% of the 10 mile increase you had) as you are tithing on the entirety of the speed that you moved forward during the last hour, rather than what you increased your speed to.

Some people have tried to use the verbal trickery/definitions to try to claim that they need only pay on their actual increase as the world explains it rather than how we understand it...HOWEVER, the church leaders have explained what they mean by increase in the past, which is all of our income, leaving them very little room to try to squeeze out of that verbal wordplay.

But, in the past, increase didn't mean all your income, but your actual increase of possessions (which would include not just income, but anything that you gained above what you had when you started).  Tithing didn't always mean paying on your increase either, that is a unique LDS definition.  This definition of tithing seems to vary from religion to religion and sect to sect in the world. 

Thus in the above example, if I were the store if I were part of another religion, but one that defined I pay 10% of my increase, I probably would pay tithes on the increase of 10K.  My increase would have been 10K, not 50K.  Thus my tithing is 1K.

However, as an LDS individual, I would pay 5K, as the church counts the increase as ALL the income, which would be 50K.  It doesn't matter what the world sees or defines it as, it is what the church defines it as, which is that 50K.  Hence my tithing as an LDS in that measure would be 5K.

The LDS are different in many ways from the ways of the world and the way things were done historically.  This is no surprise, as we are to be in the world but not of the world.

 

Edited June 1, 2018 by JohnsonJones

[JohnsonJones]

What IS interesting is that we DO have people in the church who actually ARE living under the Law of Consecration.  Using them as an example, those living under this law do not pay tithing on what the church redistributes to them for their living allowances. 

Those that I know are living under this law right now would be some General Authorities (the Twelve, the First presidency, and the first quorum of the Seventy, as well to a limited degree...the young missionaries of the church).

It is to be noted that they are given living allowances, which is DIFFERENT than a salary or income.  These allowances are to be used on the necessities of life.

[Vort]

1 hour ago, JohnsonJones said:

 

I don't understand how your examples differ from mine.

[Guest]

On 5/29/2018 at 9:42 AM, 2ndRateMind said:

I am not at all sure that the early church fathers distinguished between these two; love, and charity.

I take it that this means you will NOT be actually answering any questions.

But, of course, you only failed to answer because we didn't give you a chance...  I forgot.

[2ndRateMind]

Don't worry, friend. I will answer questions as and when I have nothing better to do than cast pearls, before those who think them valuable, or otherwise.

Best wishes, 2RM.

Edited June 7, 2018 by 2ndRateMind

[2ndRateMind]

On 6/1/2018 at 2:52 PM, JohnsonJones said:

What IS interesting is that we DO have people in the church who actually ARE living under the Law of Consecration.  Using them as an example, those living under this law do not pay tithing on what the church redistributes to them for their living allowances. 

Those that I know are living under this law right now would be some General Authorities (the Twelve, the First presidency, and the first quorum of the Seventy, as well to a limited degree...the young missionaries of the church).

It is to be noted that they are given living allowances, which is DIFFERENT than a salary or income.  These allowances are to be used on the necessities of life.

That's very interesting. For those who think that (for example) a clearly defined limit on income and net worth* destroys any incentive to participate in the economy, why do they think these people do any work at all? 

Best wishes, 2RM.

*Those of you familiar with my previous postings will note that I still advocate these (voluntarily observed) limits to be:

$X/Z net income

$Y/Z net worth

where $X = gross world annual production, $Y = gross world wealth, Z = total world population.

Edited June 7, 2018 by 2ndRateMind

[2ndRateMind]

On 6/1/2018 at 2:40 PM, JohnsonJones said:

That's how it has been defined today in the LDS church, but that's not how it's defined in the past or by businesses and financial institutions today. 

 

I would be inclined to agree with this. Seems to me tithes should be paid on profit, not income. However, individuals do not generally run their lives like corporations, and have other priorities than maximising return for their shareholders. They may even want to spend some or all of their excess of money on what Jeremy Bentham called utility, or 'happiness'. Quite how one accounts for individual or family profit therefore seems to me to be a somewhat vexed question, and maybe a tithe on income is the pragmatic way of avoiding such considerations.

I would say though, that those with less net income/worth than $X/Z and $Y/Z as defined immediately above, their 'fair share' of God's providence, should be excused tithes altogether.

Best wishes, 2RM.

Edited June 7, 2018 by 2ndRateMind

[Guest]

1 hour ago, 2ndRateMind said:

Don't worry, friend. I will answer questions as and when I have nothing better to do than cast pearls, before those who think them valuable, or otherwise.

Best wishes, 2RM.

In other words, no.

You can either prove yourself a liar by refusing to answer the questions that we've given you ample time to answer. 

OR you can prove that you were sincere by carrying on an actual conversation by responding to questions.

You've started two new threads with no mention or thought about the other threads that you promised to answer.  You've continued to post and develop those new threads.  And your only excuse for not answering is that you don't have time?  Would you actually buy that if someone told you that?

Edited June 7, 2018 by Guest

[2ndRateMind]

It's not a no. I am just trying to reorganise my time amongst various business and hobby demands.

Best wishes, 2RM.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, 2ndRateMind said:

It's not a no. I am just trying to reorganise my time amongst various business and hobby demands.

Best wishes, 2RM.

Not enough time to answer simple questions.  But enough to respond to other things in two different threads?  uh huh.