Generosity

Deuteronomy 13-15

            Moses commands the Israelites to set aside a tenth of all that their fields and herds produce each year. The tithe had been mentioned in Leviticus 27 and Numbers 18, where the tithe is holy to the Lord and for the support of the Levites, who will not receive an apportionment of land in the settlement. In Deuteronomy a new wrinkle is added, namely, that the people will learn to revere the Lord their God who provides for them.

            Now, the tithe belongs to the law of Moses and is one of those things to which Christians are no longer obligated. But the New Testament does retain the idea of firstfruits (in the New Testament, the church is the firstfruits of a greater harvest) and St. Paul instructs God’s people to give in proportion to how they have been blessed. When I teach stewardship, I say that a firstfruits offering is an act of faith. “I will give to the Lord off the top, because I trust He will continue to bless me with more than enough.” And I teach that the tithe, while not required in the new covenant, is a handy rule-of-thumb.

            I note, too, that the command to tithe is also tied to the Sabbath year, in which slaves were freed. Moses points out that the Lord is giving a good land, so there is no need for anyone to be poor (15:4). But he also says, “There will always be poor” (15:11). It seems that then as now sometimes poverty has as much to do with poor choices as with lack of opportunity. (You want to be careful with those kinds of generalizations, of course.) The larger point of the section, though, is the call for generosity, “Don’t be hardhearted or tightfisted, but openhanded” (15:7-8).

            This call for generosity underscores the point I made above about our offerings. Generosity is the underlying virtue—whether in the way we give to the Lord or in the way we deal with each other. And generosity begins in the heart with the way that we think about others. In terms of our gifts to the Lord, Paul writes, “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7). Notice the rationale: God loves a cheerful giver, one who finds blessing in sharing and giving. In terms of others, I like to teach that generosity of spirit matters. We often look on those in need with suspicion. “Are they really in need? Are they trying to trick me? Are they trying to take advantage of me?” I had an experience early in my professional career where I bought a sob-story only to find out later that the need wasn’t a need at all and that there was a well-known group of people who made it a habit of asking churches for money. That experience really soured me, and, unfortunately, really made me suspicious. Yet the Lord looks on us in our (spiritual) need and shows mercy even though we don’t deserve it. So, part of our challenge is to learn to look on our neighbors with kindness and openness.

            There’s more to think about, too. Not every gift is a helpful gift. When our team was preparing to go to the Dominican Republic, we had to read about toxic charity, gifts that end up creating unhealthy and unhelpful dependencies. So sometimes we do look on things with generosity, but other considerations have to hold us back. It all gets very complicated…

            But to put things in their simplest terms, these chapters teach us to be generous in our approach to the Lord and to our neighbors.