Flameless Triple Scented Candles .com

Chronicle of Tithing

The beginning of tithing can be seen in the Bible, yet many Christians as well as non-Christians have the habit of doing some type of tithing today.

Tithe is conventionally a Christian term that signifies the contribution of one tenth of one’s earnings as donation to one’s Church as a type of Church giving. However, every other religious system has similar practices within itself. In Islam the word used is ‘Zakat’. In the Sikh religion of India the name for it is ‘Dasvandh’ which again signifies setting apart a tenth of one’s earnings for pious acts. It was Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh guru who started the practice. The sacred texts of Hinduism like the Bhagavadgita and the Upanisads state that ‘true alms’ is that which is given as a part of one’s duty in the right place and at the right time to a worthy individual, from whom nothing is expected in return.

The origin of the word tithe can be traced to the Hebrew work ‘asair’ which also means to give one-tenth of a thing, generally an individual’s income. Today, tithes, or tithing, is a cash payment and is voluntary in nature. Nevertheless, in certain European countries there is still the provision for enforcing tithing by allowing the church to make it mandatory.

Denmark is an example where members of the Church of Denmark pay a church tax, which varies between municipalities. The tax is generally around 1% of the taxable income. And in Finland members of state churches pay a church tax of between 1% and 2.25% of income and the Church taxes are integrated into the common national taxation system.

However the practice of regular tithes was not established until after Exodus. Tithes were common throughout the ancient Near East, as well as in later Lydia, Arabia, and Carthage.

The Hebrew custom of giving tithes finds mention in the Bible, starting with the gift from Abraham to Melchizedek, the Canaanite king and priest (Genesis–:20). Tithing was also common in former Lydia, Carthage and Arabia. The practice of tithing was espoused by the early Christian church, and was discussed in councils at Tours in 567 and at Macon in 585. Formal recognition to these was given under Pope Adrian I in 787.

Tithing in certain Christian churches is a disputed issue as it deals with an Old Testament process to a New Testament institution (the Church). There is no proof in the New Testament that tithing can be applied to Christians. In fact, it was obligatory only on those Jews who were living in the Promised Land to pay the tithe according to the Old Testament, as it was in reality a form of income tax required to support not just the government of the Israel of the Old Testament, but also its religious institutions and priests.

Modern day Tithing

Despite the fact that it has originated in the Bible and earliest Christianity, now it is a unique way to gift something whenever you are given something. Giving EVERY time you are in receipt is a compelling form of giving as it allows the benefactor to experience something exceptionally eloquent - more on that later.

Let us have a little more of history. Malachi 3:10 is the section of the Bible that Christians hold in importance when they deliberate on tithing. Many Christians do tithe to their church as they feel that they are duty bound to do as per the rules of the Bible. Many Churches have all throughout maintained that their members should tithe to the church to help it conduct its activities. The core of giving is its voluntary nature and its delightful experience, without which it does not get its ideal effect - if in fact you are hoping to create an ideal effect by giving.

Controversy about Tithing

Tithing has often been a disputed issue. The subject of should a Christian pay tithe is often brought up in many Christian get-together.

In an article in Wall Street Journal regarding tithing named ‘The Backlash Against Tithing’, Suzanne Sataline says, ‘As Churches push donations, congregants balk; ‘that’s not the way God works’.’

Unfortunately, the potent mix of ideology, power equations, and a narrow perspective, can often give rise to a Jekyll and Hyde situation - the perfection of giving being lost in the mishmash and mix-up of mysticism. Despite the conflict, tithing is still a complete and amazingly forceful action that anyone can carry on to turn their lives around to come face to face with a more plentiful direction.

For those who are interested in finding out more about a Christian perspective in tithing there are plenty of materials to go through. For those who are keen on knowing the reason WHY tithing is so compelling, what follows will be useful.

Why is Tithing so powerful?

This is indeed a very forceful question because if you just heedlessly take a certain path without considering what the whole process entails you may be advancing on the wrong road.

If more people who are in the habit of tithing knew exactly why it works when done with the feeling of total giving, then it is likely to make people eager to give even more. And for those who do it intermittently, it could encourage them to give first every time they are in receipt of something.

To look at the real ‘why’ of how regular giving creates more we have to move into the world of Quantum Physics and Quantum Mechanics. The laws in this world are not the same as in our physical or Newtonian world.

The picture ‘What the Bleep’ paints the quantum world through easily graspable examples. The link to the movie here gives some details about how matter gets converted into waves and behaves like liquids when seen from a quantum physics angle: http://video.yahoo.com/watch/1349535/4653525.

The movie paints the picture of a startling world visible from a quantum space. When a line of electrons is fired through a plate with a cut in it onto a wall - predictably, it would hit the wall straight across the cut in a single line.

If the experiment is conducted by using an energy wave that reacts the way a water wave does, one gets a foreseeable result. As the wave strikes the plate it rebounds off the plate but where there is the opening, a part of the wave goes across through the opening. Coming out of the other side of the opening, the surging water moves out in the pattern of an arc, resulting in a new wave just as in the old laboratory tests done in schools in analysing wave patterns. As the surge of water strikes the wall across, it will have maximum force in the middle straight opposite the opening and will have lesser force all across the wall. This is exactly like the line the electrons make.

If we created one more opening in the plate, again the upshot would not be totally unexpected while experimenting a wave - two smaller waves would be formed through the openings and when the waves come into contact, they would dissolve each other and make an intervention pattern. Many waves would now strike the wall across, giving a stripped effect. These are standard patterns of wave behaviour and so there is nothing unexpected in the result.

Now this is where the quantum experiment gets interesting. With the two slits in place if electrons were fired at the plate we would expect to see two lines to be created on the wall. But guess what - instead a stripped affect appears - an interference pattern is created! This is totally unexpected. Somehow the matter had changed into a wave. You would think that electrons were bouncing off each other creating a wave; so then if you fired the electrons one at a time and then see what happens. The result is the same! This can only happen if the electrons leave as a single particle, splits into a wave of potentials when it hits the plate, passes through both splits and then interferes with itself on the other side of the plate. This is simply amazing - matter behaving like a wave - or solid behaving like a liquid. Maybe the world is different to what we think it is after all!

Though the world that we live in appears to be hard and solid, it is perhaps possible that in reality we are living in a place that has more properties of a fluid - liquid energy or persistent movement of a fluid, which reacts more like the fluids in our material world. According to the rules of physics, similar fluids have a tendency to congregate, while those with dissimilar properties tend to diverge and remain separate. A typical example of this is oil and water. Chromatography explains how a single substance can break up into its individual components in clear bands the way groups of people break up into smaller ones with common interests, potencies or aims.

The secret of it all is that when we give we feel delighted and know utmost joy. As a donor we get the best of gifts, which is the gift of contentment. Often we think that it is the one who gets a gift that gets the thing and thus overlook the fact that the giver is the real getter. If anybody is in doubt about this equation, then look at yourself with kids around and observe how intently you feel when you give to them and how much you enjoy irrespective of how they respond.

When we understand that we are first giving to ourselves when we give and that we do this because we want to feel joy then we have a key. This key unlocks the door of understanding to giving. And when we give repeatedly the momentum builds up just like a wave getting bigger and bigger the more we add to it with our giving.

The truth that we feel happy when we gift things alters our power equation fully - we feel good and in that moment we are lovelier to others. Have you ever known a vendor on the street peddling things that we do not want like tissues, which you usually do not buy, but one day you buy and the motive for doing it is just to see that vendor happy and relieved? A similar situation could be seen in relations to buskers playing music at a street corner.

A contended individual radiates a natural magnetism that draws others to him and in doing so he enriches himself. It is clear-cut. They pull towards them both those who are desirous of experiencing that feeling as well as those who have already known the richness of it.

Similar to water and oil, givers and non-givers tend to collect together in different places. And the greatest place to get something is a place where givers come together! But of course you will be allowed entry into that group only if you are ready to give! Givers relish to give to those who love to give.

So even if we may turn to quantum physics for our solutions, they are very much there right in front of us. Similar attracts similar - simple. Wherever you look you see this going on. Lions group together with lions, students interact with students, women form groups with women, men makes friends with men, ‘poor’ likes to be with ‘poor’ people and ‘rich’ with ‘rich’ people. And in the same way - givers prefer the company of givers.

So those who give out of remorse cannot benefit from it - it will only help in attracting to him others with similar guilt complexes who are not able to sense joy or ecstasy. Guilt is very close to anger in the ladder of negative emotions; for those who give out of a sense of self-reproach anger might be their next step in understanding things. Joy is very near the pinnacle of human sensations - you can graduate from there only to love - something that everyone is trying to do.

So when you initiate the act of giving, you are very close to knowing perfect love - really wonderful to know that it is. More so as we know that most people are continuously trying to find love. We now know that the answer is so easy - begin giving! And gifting money is only an aspect of giving - giving on the whole will create a special place of joy for us, no matter how ‘little’ the amount.

There is also an emotional aspect to giving consistently. This aspect might not in the beginning appear to have connections to the sensation of joy - in the end it completely bonds us to the absolute bliss of joy.

When we gift a thing - especially a thing which is definitely not in surplus in our lives, we are sending a strong message to ourselves that life is reliable. When we have accomplished the act of giving and afterwards see that act in retrospect we understand that we can form a perfect relationship with that reliability. The opposite of reliability is fright. A group of frightened people are unlikely to be happy and delighted and so will not be able to attract any one. On the contrary, a group of reliable people would be contented and so would be quite appealing to those who are seeking such enriching experiences. At the end of the day, when reliability gets transformed into delight and again we find ourselves very close to that which we yearn most - love.

The sum and substance of what has been ignored for years is fully in front of us for anyone to bond with in finely. For Christmas my son got a good amount of money. I queried him as to what he planned to do with all that money. He replied that he wanted to set aside almost whole of it. Then I enquired how much of it he would like to give to someone. It was something that he had not even taken into account until I introduced the idea. What would be the result if upon receiving anything our first consideration was to give away part of it - do you think we would know delight in abundance?

Transaction based giving - or transaction based philanthropy

This leads us to the power of transactional giving. Many businesses give when they have lots of money. When they have little they tend not to give. Because of this their potential levels of joy are always go up and down based on the market trends - they have no control. But those who give EVERY time they receive are in control and connected with their experience of joy regularly.

Transactional giving rather than total giving is based on the highs and lows of business and so is a self-evident way of giving. The method is that when you get something you also give something - straightforward. If your business is bad you might give but according to the income. And when business is marking a rising graph, giving can also improve.

A key factor of transaction based venture is that a person can celebrate the joy of giving mutually with everyone involved - clientele/commune - personnel - and venture itself. A customer knows that when he buys from a business he is giving without having to expend anything other than the time to select and buy from that outlet he experiences the power of giving - reason for the conventional CSR - Corporate Social Responsibility, to change instantly to Customer Social Responsibility, with the ability of the customer to effectively respond to the sharing by valuing the venture and have that added sensitive though subtle reason, for opting to do business with the venture.

Your staff also get to share in the joy of giving because every time they are personally involved in creating a sale, they know directly they have helped give something to someone in need. This experience is powerful within a team because it can be used in so many ways such as team motivation and staff incentives.

Any business, including startups with no profit, can do Buy1GIVE1 transaction-based giving - there literally are no barriers to entry and the business controls everything. The contribution amount per transaction starts from just one cent and goes up to thousands of dollars with each business choosing their own level of giving and charity cause project to support depending on their business type and profitability. There is simply no reason not to give this way when the benefits of giving are so numerous. Businesses who are currently giving to a cause can usually convert very quickly and easily to Buy1GIVE1 transaction-based giving while still supporting the same cause providing extra tangible benefits to the business.

At the end of the day commercialised giving is the current day reincarnation of tithing that is simple and manageable for any person, anywhere. Now that we recognize that it is not about the amount that we give such as a specific percentage, but only about the fact that we are giving that is making all that effect. When we enter the brotherhood of givers we move into a restricted and exclusive world that only those who give can enter. And if you do not begin giving today, you may not ‘get’ giving and never will till you begin. So get going.

‘We’re not here to give in order ‘to get’. We’re here to have more to give more.’

Click for further information on Cause Marketing or BOGO.