NOVAE MILITIAE

We have never given a tithe, if by that term is meant 10% of our income, to any church or combination of church and charity.  Not that we don't believe in doing so, mind you.  It's just that while the spirit may be willing, the assets are weak.  Our strategy is to pay off all of our debts, which we are close to doing, thank God.  Then we will consider the tithe.  

However, the foregoing may indicate that it is our faith which is weak, and not our checking account.  I have heard anecdote after anecdote from those who give the tithe about how it is impossible to out-give God.  The Malachi 3:10 principle is alive and well, they say.  That text reads, "'Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house.  And try Me now in this,' says the LORD of hosts, 'if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it.'" (NKJV)  Our closest friends, Dan and Michelle, are tithers, and they are adamant about the fact that God has fulfilled and keeps on fulfilling this promise in their lives.  And it appears to be so.  Both currently students, they seem to enjoy a prosperity that we don't, even now that their income is consequently less than ours.  (As an example, someone GAVE them a virtually new Ford Explorer a few weeks ago -- just when they needed to obtain a new vehicle.) Moreover, it is not merely material blessings they say they have reaped.

Not that we don't have any personal experience of this at all.  While we do not tithe, we noticed that when we did start giving "sacrificially," things started getting better for us financially.  "A bruised reed He will not break, And smoking flax He will not quench," and all that.  If God greatly blesses the ones who give the tithe, perhaps He proportionally blesses those who don't but who nonetheless give "cheerfully," as St. Paul puts it.  

As I read the following section of David Fagerberg's recent Touchstone article entitled Between Heaven and Earth: C.S. Lewis on Asceticism and Holiness  (  http://www.touchstonemag.com/docs/issues/17.3docs/17-03-030.html ), I wondered if there isn't a parallel here between the tither who reaps the blessing to which Malachi refers and the ascetic who reaps other kinds of blessings, such as the mastery of time:

The ascetic has patience, which Evdokimov considers a form of "interiorized monasticism," because it is the opposite of despondency, which so often results from a desire for instant gratification. The ascetic trusts time because he does not live in "merely ordinary time, where death has the last word and where time erodes . . . but [in] time mingled with eternity, as it is offered to us by the Resurrection."

Lewis thought this transfiguration made the person complete, and that already these completed people were dotted here and there, all over the earth. "Every now and then one meets them." In Mere Christianity, Lewis offered an intriguing description of these ascetics. "Their very voices and faces are different from ours; stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant. They begin where most of us leave off." The ascetic who is being conformed to holiness is recognizable, but Lewis thought you must know what to look for, because they will not be like your general idea of religious people.

They do not draw attention to themselves. You tend to think that you are being kind to them when they are really being kind to you. They love you more than other men do but they need you less. They will usually seem to have a lot of time: you will wonder where it comes from. In that way, to become holy is rather like joining a secret society. To put it at the very lowest, it must be great fun.

The Kingdom of God is marked by paradoxes aplenty.  I wonder if this isn't yet another one.