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The Myth of the Widows Mite

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The Myth of the Widow’s Mite

[repost from a few years ago. edited for clarity and brevity]

I’ve read endless commentaries on this story and have heard many pastors preach on it. Usually it has to do with some form of the merits of sacrificial giving, and I can’t get behind that at all. That understanding doesn’t make sense to me, even though that seems to be the universal application for this text. This story is seemingly always used to tell us that we ought to give the way this widow gave, or some variation thereof, and I cannot see any basis in the text for reaching that conclusion. All these pastors are wrong. All the commentaries are wrong. And I’ll show you why.

“And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury.  And He saw a certain poor widow putting in two small copper coins.  And he said, ‘Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all of them, for they all out of their surplus put into the offering, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.’” Luke 21:1-4.

To set the stage, this is all going down on Wednesday of Passion Week, which is the final week of Jesus’ life. On Monday He entered the city, on Tuesday He cleansed the temple, and all day Wednesday He has been teaching the multitudes in the temple area and has been confronted by the false religious leaders of Judaism. By this point his ministry had winded down and was effectively over. There are no more gospel invitations or any more clarifications to the crowds and to the leaders. All these leaders have rejected him. There is a finality to it, and all that’s left is Jesus preaching an extended message of destruction and judgment upon them, which will come to pass in 70AD. In fact, the last words of chapter 20 are clearly words of judgment, “And in the hearing of all the people he said to his disciples, 

“Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” Luke 20:45-47.

Luke is pretty gracious though, because Mark gives us the fuller account of the dangers of these false religious leaders, some 39 verses after this incident. He pronounced judgment on the leaders and therefore judgment on the nation for following those leaders and rejecting Him. And so what we see is that sandwiched between the condemnation of the false leaders and the pronunciation of judgment is a little story of a widow dropping two copper pennies into an offering receptacle in the temple. It is somewhat of an odd place to find such a story, and so we need to ask why it’s there and what it has to do with anything. How does something like this fit?  Why does Jesus inject this moment of reflection on a widow giving an offering in the temple into this section between a diatribe against false leaders and all the people that follow them, and a pronunciation of judgment on the temple, on the city and on the nation?

Universally commentators will tell us that Jesus  is giving us a little glimpse of true worship in the middle of the false worship that dominates the temple.  They tell us that it’s a beautiful little story in the midst of ugliness.  A little light in the midst of darkness, an illustration of giving till it hurts, contrasted with the selfishness of the spiritual leaders.

That’s not what’s happening here.  In spite of the popularity of these views, none of these explanations makes any sense. Here’s why;  Jesus never makes any of those points that peopel try to make about the widow and her offering. Jesus never said anything about what’s left behind, what percentage, what attitude, or  that we should do likewise and give everything. He does not say the rich gave relatively too little and that they had too much left over.  He doesn’t say the rich gave too low a percent.  He doesn’t say the widow gave the right amount.  He doesn’t say the rich had a bad attitude and the widow had a good attitude, or good spirit.

In fact, He doesn’t say anything about their giving except that she gave more than everybody.  He doesn’t say why or with what attitude, or whether she should have, or shouldn’t have, or they should have, or shouldn’t have.  Her outward action is all that you see.  Nothing indicates that it is more/ or less good, bad, indifferent, humble, proud, selfish, unselfish than anybody else’s act.  There is no judgment made on her act as to its true character.  There is nothing said about her attitude or her spirit.  She could be acting out of devotion.  She could be acting out of love.  She could be acting out of guilt.  She could be acting out of fear.  She could be acting out of pride. We don’t know because Jesus doesn’t say anything.  He doesn’t say anything about the rich, doesn’t say anything about the widow, doesn’t draw any conclusions, doesn’t develop any principles, doesn’t command anything, doesn’t define anything. Why? Because none of that matters.

There’s only one comment that Jesus makes, and that is that she gave with her two copper coins relatively a great deal more than all the others because all the others gave out of their surplus, which means they had some left.  She gave out of her poverty all she had to live on.  That’s all there is.  No comment that the Lord appreciated her.  No comment that the Lord loved her or commended her.  No comment that she was now in the Kingdom of God.  No invitation to the disciples to reach in to their little money bags and go up there and throw in everything they had because it was good enough for the widow, it should be good enough for the disciples of Jesus.

Who among us would argue that it’s normative for God to expect you to give 100 percent of what you have so that you have absolutely nothing left and you are utterly and completely destitute? Anyone?  Because that’s the only obvious principle here if you’re going to draw a principle.  Besides, why would you inject the principle in giving in a context like this?  This is no place to interject, “Oh by the way, a few words on giving.” What in the world does that have to do with anything?  Jesus makes no comment about giving except that she gave more than everybody else relative to what she had.  .  No one’s attitude or spirit in the giving is discussed.  And no principle regarding giving is drawn by our Lord.  The narrative is not intended to deal with any of those matters.  The reason the Lord doesn’t say anything about it is that’s not what it’s about.  And if you look at the context before and after, this is all about the condemnation of wicked spiritual leaders and a corrupt religious system that is about to be destroyed.  In fact, in verse 5, the passage immediately after this, some were talking about the temple, that it was adorned with beautiful stones and votive gifts, and He said, “As for these things which you’re looking at, the days will come in which there will be not one stone upon another which will not be torn down.”

So I think it’s pretty clear what this text is not about. This passage has nothing to do with Jesus commending a widow for giving much, and exhorting us to do likewise. That is nowhere in the text at all. That’s just made up. It doesn’t even have to do with giving at all, and I’ll make the case that this is not a obscure of difficult passage to understand. It’s not even a particularly deep or insightful observation, but rather is simple.  In the midst of his pronouncements of judgment and woe Jesus saw a widow give more than everybody else.  In other words, her involvement in religion cost her more than it cost anybody else because it cost her everything.  That’s all it is. It’s just an observation which the disciplines weren’t confused about, as they didn’t even ask any questions about it.

Another thing to think about is that it seems the assumption in interpreting this as a model for Christian giving is that Jesus was pleased with what she did. But we don’t see that anywhere. It doesn’t say that at all. It doesn’t say that Jesus was pleased with her gift. It doesn’t say Jesus was pleased with her attitude or with the heart and mind that she gave this.  It doesn’t say anything about His attitude at all, though I would make the case that if anything what this widow did in giving her two copper coins displeased Jesus immensely. I think it angered him and her giving this made his blood boil. When I consider my own life, as a Christian man who loves his God and cares for other people and cares about their needs, I have no tolerance for a morally bankrupt religious system that compels a poor, destitute widow who only had two coins left to buy her food for her next meal to give those two coins to said religious system.

The very idea outrages me.  Something has gone terribly wrong in a system that encourages and even demands that. How else am I supposed to feel when I see an impoverished woman give to her religion her last hope for life to go home and perhaps die? I feel sick and repulsed just thinking about it. Listen- any religion that is built on the back of the poor is a false religion.  What a sad, misguided, woeful, poor victimized lady.  It’s tragic and painful, and I think that’s exactly how Jesus saw it. He saw that corrupt system taking the last two pennies out of a widow’s pocket who in her desperation hoped that maybe in that legalistic system her two coins would buy some blessing. The rabbis had said that with alms you purchase your salvation and so here she is,  trying to buy her way into heaven, trying to buy relief from her desperation and her destitution. [Contemporary “evangelists” call this ‘seed faith’- “Give me your money and God will multiply it back to you.”]  God doesn’t want a widow to give up her last two cents and you can’t find that concept anywhere in the Bible at all. In fact, that’s the last thing God would want a widow to do.

The system that had developed in Judaism abused poor people on an economic level and a spiritual level. God’s law was never given to impoverish people, but to help them, and that’s why it’s so wretched to see that this woman was part of a system that took the last two cents out of her hand on the pretense that this was necessary to please God; to purchase her salvation and to bring her blessing.  She was manipulated by a religious system that was corrupt.  This is not an illustration of heartfelt, sacrificial giving that pleases the Lord and this is not a model for all of us to follow.  And so something very different is going on here.  This is not about Jesus honoring giving, this is about a victim of a corrupt system who is literally made absolutely destitute trying to live up to that system and earn heaven.

Verse 1, “And He looked up,” I think this is important. If you read around this chapter, you see that Jesus just spent a chunk of time leveling blistering attacks against the false teachers, compounded with feeling physical drained and we get the image that he’s tired and exhausted and sad and resigned. So you get the image of Him sitting there in a moment of thought before He turns to pronounce the judgment for all his disciples to hear.   And when He looked up, Mark 12:41 says, “He saw opposite, the treasury observing how people were putting money into the treasury.” Jesus had said in Matthew 6 that you were to do your giving in secret but the religious system had developed a very public prominent way to do it and Pharisees came along and had trumpets blown announcing their arrival to give, according to Matthew 6.  And so Jesus looks up and there He sees the people coming, the treasury and how people were putting money into the treasury.

Then there is the woman herself; a poor widow. That should sound very familiar to us because a few verses back we see Jesus saying   “Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and love respectful greetings in the market places and chief seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets, who devour widows’ houses” These are people who are building their  success monetarily on the backs of widows. And so what happens? Jesus indicts them for their severe abuse of widows, along with the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the scribes who operated the system that abused the poor and the defenseless for whom they had only disdain. We know that these people view any poor widow as being under the judgment of God, -as that’s why she was a poor widow.  Furthermore, widows were women and women were second-class, and Pharisees every day prayed, “Lord, make me not a Gentile or a woman.”  And because they were widows, they were defenseless and easy prey.

So what does this scene in particular show us? You have Jesus talking about poor widows being devoured and then nearly in the same breath he sees an example of this abuse. To reiterate again; That was all. Nothing is said about her attitude, nothing is said about her spirit, nothing said about whether she did it in desperation or devotion, whether she did it in legalism or love, it doesn’t say anything about that.  The Lord doesn’t commend her, doesn’t make her an example, doesn’t validate what she did, doesn’t say it was a worthy spiritual act that greatly pleased Him.  All He said was, this religious system is preying on widows, this cost her more than everyone else. She put in relatively, comparatively more than anyone.  The religious leaders were devouring widows and the more desperate these poor widows became the more they thought they needed to buy God’s blessing. Belittled by the establishment because they were thought to be in that state because of divine punishment, second-class women, they were defenseless, easily exploited and the system exploited them to the max.  And so they took the last two cents of the poor woman and it was all, the end of verse 4 says, she had to live on, it was literally her life.  She would probably go home and die.

Jesus isn’t commending her; she’s a victim. He’s not proud of her.  He’s not making her an example of sacrificial giving.  This is an absurdity.  He is observing the corruption of the system that is going to be destroyed under the leadership of these corrupt condemned leaders.  They’re exploiting the most defenseless, the most impoverished.  Jesus certainly is not saying she gave her last cent and that’s what you should do, of course not.  He doesn’t want you to give up everything you’ve got and go home and die. He’s observing the false religion that preys on the weak and the desperate and the defenseless and holds out hope to the hopeless if they just give their money.  I don’t think Jesus was happy.  I think Jesus was angry.  And that’s why He says in verse 6, “As for the things which you’re looking at, the days will come in which there will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down.” And the disciples say, “When’s it going to happen?”  And He says, “It’s going to happen,” and He describes it in the remainder of the chapter.

I don’t know why pastors insist on reading into this text and eisegeting into it these ideas of the joys of giving all we have. There’s no denying that those ideas are imported. If you saw a widow give her last two cents to some religious organization in the hope that she could purchase salvation or purchase blessing, or buy healing, or buy prosperity, you wouldn’t commend her, you’d want to stop her and you’d want to shut down that religious system that preys on the desperate.  This act did not please our Lord.  She’s simply been taught falsely and she bought in to a system that destroyed her.  No praise is given of her act or her attitude.  She’s caught in the corruption of the system at the hands of those wretched leaders.  She has given her last coins to a false religion.  Jesus is angry.  And that’s why He’ll destroy this den of robbers, which goes down in AD 70.

This has to do with a woman giving all she had to a corrupt system, Jesus observing that she had indeed given her all, and reinforcing the idea that what this woman was doing was not right and that she was being preyed on by widow-devourers who were engaged in an ongodly spiritual scam which Jesus condemned and rejected. That’s it.That’s all there is to it. It’s simple and it’s easy to understand and it doesn’t need to be tinkered with or bred with assumed external interpolations in order to be made clear. This passage is not for us. We are not to emulate this woman who is being taken advantage of. If anything it’s a warning to us that we do not do the same, and put not our trust in broken systems that enslave us to works righteousness and the law, but rather put our trust in the loving mercies of Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins and for salvation.

The Myth of New Testament Tithing

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The Myth Of New Testament Tithing

The idea of tithing in the Church is so ingrained and commonplace that it has become  part of the very fabric of ecclesial life. The necessity of giving 10% as the tithe is a belief as widespread and accepted as Jesus rising from the dead in bodily form. Everyone knows that you’re supposed to give your tithes and offerings in church, and every envelope says so much on it. This of course tends to get abused very easily, and while it would be tempting to speak of the abuses that money-hungry charlatan pastors engage in, or the manipulation and compulsive pressure that is placed on people who don’t tithe enough, that’s not the thrust of the post. People will use and abuse money all the time, and so the purpose of this post is not to rattle and rant against prosperity preachers [directly anyway] but rather to point out some simple facts about tithing- which is that tithing has nothing to do with New Testament Christianity. We are no longer that Old Testament Mosaic Law, and pastors should never teach you that you must tithe.

I don’t think that most pastors are putting their flock under the unbiblical commands and laws on purpose. While some preachers may use the tithe and the false promises that they attach to it as a way to manipulate their congregations, I think the vast majority of them simply do it out of ignorance. The reality that there was no compulsion to tithe before the law, there was a necessity to tithe under the law, and no compulsion or command to tithe after the law. For this reason I would urge every pastor to re-examine the issue, and then  tell their congregations that they don’t have to tithe anymore, and that there is a system of giving in the New Testament that is superior to law-based, out of context,  Old Testament tithing.

There are people who say that tithing is binding upon New Testament believers. They argue  that since tithing was practiced before the Mosaic Law was given it must also be practiced after the Mosaic Law was fulfilled. They point to Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, Abram and Melchizedek in Genesis 13, and Jacob in Genesis 28.  And yet we see upon closer examination that there was no command from God that they should be tithing. With Abram, it was completely voluntary, being made out of his free decision and choice. Abraham was never commanded to give a tenth on a regular basis and there is no evidence that Abraham ever tithed again. His giving of a tithe to Melchizedek was a voluntary reciprocation for the priestly functions performed by Melchizedek and a thank offering given to God for the success of his military excursion. Indeed, if Abram’s tithing is any kind of model for Christians, it provides support only for occasional tithes of unusual sources of income. Therefore the texts that discuss tithing prior to the Mosaic Law do not portray tithing as a systematic, continual practice but as an occasional, even exceptional, form of giving.

We start to see the actual, legitimate tithe when Moses comes around and the theocracy begins. There are three major passages related to tithing in the Mosaic Law: Lev 27:30–33; Num 18:21; and Deut 14:22–29. Each passage needs to be examined to see whether God commanded the Israelites to render one, two, three, or four tithes. The primary key to identifying how many separate tithes existed within the Mosaic Law  is the description of their nature and purpose in the respective passage.

The first tithe is the Levitical Tithe, found in Leviticus 27:30-33. In the Mosaic law the Levites stood between Israel and God, offering daily sacrifices for sin. Numbers 18 and Leviticus 27 declare that the Levites will receive the tithes for their service as payment for bearing this burden and for not getting an inheritance of land. Because the Levites had no inheritance in the land of Canaan like the other tribes, God provided for their support through the tithes of the rest of Israel. The tithes took the form of animals, land, seed and fruit. In fact, while land, seed and fruit could be redeemed with money by adding 20%, animals could not. In this case the offering was compulsory. These tithes were used for the livelihood of the Levites, who would then give one tenth of their tithes to the priests.

The second tithe is the Festival Tithe, found in Deuteronomy 14:22-27.  On the prescribed days the Israelites would go to a place determined by God and celebrate the feasts. This was mandatory and no one was to be excluded. They were to bring either their second tithe with them to share and devour. If it was too much and too hard a journey to travel with all their goods,  they could sell their for money and then buy whatever they wanted to eat. In this, they were exhorted to share of it with the Levites.

The third tithe is the Poor Tithe, found in Deuteronomy 14:28–29.  This third tithe can be distinguished from the previous two by the facts that  it was offered every third year and because  it was intended for the Levite, foreigner, orphan, and widow. The previous tithes were to be given either every year or during feasts; this third tithe was to be offered every third year. The previous tithes were mostly for the Levites’ sustenance; this third tithe was not for the Levites. It was not to be gathered in Jerusalem, but in their own town. The people of the town were to bring a tithe of their crops and herds and gather them together to take care of the poor of their towns including the alien, orphan and widow.

Don’t even get me started on the butchering, misuse, molestation and out of context scripture twisting that is thrust upon poor Malachi 3 and Luke 21 on a weekly basis by preachers saying that we’re robbing God when we don’t tithe, and that we should give like the widow with her mite.

So here’s the situation. First, it appears that the annual tithe of the Israelites surpassed ten percent of their income, actually totalling more than twenty percent. The Levitical Tithe was ten percent of the Israelites’ income. The Festival Tithe was another 10 percent of a person’s income [or of the remaining ninety percent after the Levitical Tithe had been paid], with both of these tithes totalling twenty percent of a person’s income. Finally, the Poor Tithe averaged 3 1/3 percent every year. This adds up to a total of approximately 23% of people’s overall income. That’s just what was compulsory. When you factor in the involuntary giving, such as leaving gleanings in fields for the poor, helping pay the temple tax, giving on the Sabbath year, and setting aside of debts in the Sabbath year and the jubilee, it’s probably more like 25%. The fact of the matter is that clearly it was much more than just 10%. The whole idea that a tithe is 10% is based on faulty figures and an incomplete number. It only takes one of the three tithes into consideration, making its very foundation biblically suspect.

That’s just biblically speaking. Historically speaking, Judaism around the time of Christ understood the Old Testament as prescribing multiple tithes Josephus wrote concerning tithing that “in addition to the two tithes which I have already directed you are to pay each year, the one for the Levites and the other for the festivals, you should devote a third every third year to the distribution of such things as are lacking to widowed women and orphan children” (Ant. 4.8.22). The Mishnah, for its part, describes three tithes: First Tithe, Second Tithe, and the Poor Tithe.

Furthermore, we must keep in mind that the tithes were given to the Levites. Since there are no Levites in the church today, the argument is sometimes made that pastors have taken the place of Levites and that they should therefore be the primary beneficiaries of the tithe. Yet no one else besides the Levites had the slightest authority to receive that tithes. More importantly, the priests, a group within the Levites, served as mediators between God and people, yet the New Testament teaches that there is only one mediator “between God and people, the man Christ Jesus”. For this reason it is deeply problematic when pastors are said to replace priests in the New Testament church, not the least because this compromises the New Testament teaching on the priesthood of all believers.

If someone truly wants to tithe according to Scripture, he/she would have to do the following: 1) Quit their job and buy a farm so that they can raise herds and grow crops; 2) [No one ever tithes money in the Old Testament] Find some Levitical priests to support; 3) Use their crops to observe the Old Testament religious festivals like Passover, Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, and Tabernacles; 4) Begin by giving at least 20 per cent of all their crops and herds to God; and 5) Expect God to curse them with material deprivation if they were unfaithful or bless them with material abundance if they were obedient. That’s neither feasible, practical, or commanded under the New Covenant of Christ. And so I make the case that it is a myth that we should be giving tithes in the Church today. In fact, the scant few references to tithes in the New Testament are always descriptive, never prescriptive.

ANSWERING OBJECTIONS.

So as I’m against giving tithes to the church today, does that mean that I think that it should all be free and that the pastor should preach for free and that we shouldn’t be giving? Not at all! I think the worker deserves his wage, and that there ought to be people in the local church who regularly go to the pastor to make sure that all his and his family needs are met, above and beyond whatever his set salary is. We should be upkeeping the building, giving to missions, have a relief fund for the poor, funding programs, and whatever else a church wishes to spend money on. What I am saying though, is instead of telling your congregations that they should be giving an unbiblical tithe, that you should exhort them to just GIVE in general. Don’t beat them over the head with threats of curses because they’re robbing God by failing to bring tithes into the storehouse. Don’t withhold the Eucharist from them if they don’t give their income tax money. Don’t point to the widow who gave all she had and tell us we should do likewise. Don’t manipulate them using out of context, dead, mosaic covenant demands.

Instead, tell your people about the glorious riches of Christ Jesus, the absolute majesty of Jesus and how he had intimate fellowship with God the father for eternity past, and yet laid down his life for sinners. How He added sinless human nature to himself.  That He died on the cross for our sins, and the sins that we had He suffered under the wrath of God to completely absorb our sins. And how he was raised as victor over death sin, hell, and how he has adopted us into his family, and how we have been saved from our sins and the glorious nature of the Gospel. If you teach your people that, they’ll give.  Someone who is overwhelmed by God’s grace will be generous, and will grow in generosity the more they come to see how good that grace is.

The New Testament never gives a certain percentage point as an obligatory and required standard for our giving. The Bible especially doesn’t give us 10%, which I think is a confusing and unhelpful baseline anyway, as it supposes that people who can’t afford and shouldn’t be giving 10% should give it, and that those who can give much more can give only 10% and feel like they’ve done their giving duty. Instead, the Scriptures declare, “Let each one do just as he has purposed in his heart; not grudgingly or under compulsion; for God loves a cheerful giver” [2 Corinthians. 9:7]. The Old Testament tithe was required by law and was pegged at 23%. The Jews were under compulsion to give it. The New Testament teaching on giving focuses on its voluntary character. “For I testify that according to their ability, and beyond their ability they gave of their own accord” [2 Corinthians 8:3]. This voluntary giving is exactly what Abraham and Jacob were doing before the institution of the Law, and is what all Christians are to be doing today. We are to be free and joyous and hold our money loosely by give sacrificially and cheerfully. Truth be told, many of us are probably not even doing that.

Believers today are free to give the amount they choose to give. If you want to give 10% as Abraham and Jacob did, then go for it.  You’re perfectly free to do so, but don’t do it because you consider that some sort of tithe.  And as a freebie, you should know that you’re never blessed if you give a tithe.  He blesses you because you give, but not if you go back to the Mosaic Law which Ephesians 2 has destroyed. You’re blessed when you give, even if you mistakenly think it’s a tithe, but there are no blessings inherent and associated with giving what you consider the Old Testament tithe. However, if you decide to give 3% or 11% or 20% or 50%, then you may do that as well. Only you know how much you should be giving. The standard of giving is not a fixed percentage point, but the example of our wonderful Savior “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich” [2 Corinthians. 8:9]. Our standard of giving is Christ Himself, who did not give mere percentages of himself, but rather gave everything He had, including His very life in order to redeem us.