Welcome to Verity. I'm your host, Felicia Masonheimer, an author, speaker, and Bible teacher.

This podcast will help you embrace the history and depth of the Christian faith,

ask questions, seek answers, and devote yourself to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.

You don't have to settle for water down Christian teachings, and if you're ready to go deeper,

God is just as ready to take you there. This is Verity, where every woman is a theologian.

Welcome back friends. In this week's episode of Verity, we are talking about

tithing. I realized when I was compiling the final episodes for this series on theology,

that we had never discussed tithing, and yet it's one of the questions that repeatedly comes

through on Ask Anything Monday on my Instagram and has for the last couple of years.

One of the reasons I think I haven't covered it is because I had not delved super deeply into it

myself. I knew enough to make a decision, but I hadn't really dug into those texts and looked

at the different viewpoints on the topic. In this shorter episode, we're going to look at

kind of a pro tithing stance, and then a not anti-tithing stance, but maybe a tithing isn't necessary

stance. Anti just sounds too harsh. We're going to look at both of these views, and then we're going

to talk about kind of how to respond to that as a Christian who wants to honor God with her money,

and then a little personal anecdote of what Josh and I have chosen to do regarding tithing.

First of all, what is tithing in the first place? What's interesting is that a lot of Christians

actually know the term tithing, and they use the term tithing as simultaneous with giving.

Even during a church service rule here, you can put your tithes and offerings in this basket

envelope box at the back, et cetera. Tithes and offerings are often said together. So clearly,

there's a distinction between the two, and a tithe is literally a tenth. So it refers to a tenth,

and that comes from the biblical narrative, as we'll see in just a second. So if someone said,

...