On Religious Sacrifice

This is the fourth in a series of posts derived from old Facebook notes. As it happens, this particular topic happens to be topical again! The original was posted on September 3, 2013.

A friend-of-a-friend post showed up in my Facebook newsfeed once that rather bothered me. Some guy I don't know posted a link to an article about the LDS-church-owned City Creek Mall, along with a bunch of (unexplicated) Bible verses on hypocrisy. This of course set off a rather extensive and heated discussion in the comments (which resulted in it showing up in my news feed when a friend commented).
The primary point of discussion was whether or not it was appropriate for the church to be involved in commercial ventures. As though capitalism and creating wealth are somehow inherently anti-spiritual? That it is possible to run a business and to be a good person at the same time, and, furthermore, to use the proceeds as an enabler of greater amounts of good in the world than could be accomplished if you were poor, is so incredibly obvious to me, and I find myself so utterly incapable of fathoming the minds of people who could think otherwise, that I really don't know how to argue this point. If you are not LDS, think what you will; if you are, chill out, dudes, and just trust that people in charge know what they're doing even if you don't get it yet.
Of course, with the recent news items about how the church has billions of dollars stashed away in reserve, the same kinds of issues are coming up all over again. Somehow, it's a shocking, outrageous thing for a church to actually >save money. Instead of, what, spending all of its assets on immediate distributions to the poor (something which the critics, of course, aren't actually doing themselves), and being left with nothing in reserve and no ability to continue to do further good?
Another common concern, however (and the source of the title of this note), seemed to be "was my tithing money used to pay for that!?" (Spoilers: At last in the case of City Creek Mall, no, it wasn't.) Followed up by agitated remarks about how "I expect my tithing to be used for..." whatever, building churches, helping the poor, etc. In short: If you are worried about what your tithing money is being used for, you are doing it wrong. Or any other donations, for that matter.
The Church should be accountable for how it uses its funds. And it is. That's why it has an auditing department. And it does in fact do a good job of being pretty transparent about the important, large-scale stuff--hence, I know that City Creek Mall was not built with tithing money. It's not completely transparent, 'cause it doesn't have to be, and mandating that would actually add to administrative overhead and lead to worse wastage of the sacred money that everybody is so worked up about. But we know what kinds of things tithing money is used for. We know what kinds of things fast offerings are used for. And we know what kinds of businesses the church owns. Nevertheless, the fact that you can go and look that stuff up is not for your benefit--it's for the Church's benefit, to ensure that the Church organization is kept in line. The emotional benefits to members of the general populace due to the fact that they must be allowed to know some of this stuff as a requirement for preventing mismanagement are purely ancillary. In other words, it's nice that you can find out a little bit about how tithing and other donations are and aren't spent, but you really shouldn't ever need to care. You shouldn't need to care anymore than you care about how your next-door neighbors manage their budget, because it's not your money.
This is because the whole point of paying tithing is to give it up. If you think along the lines of "I expect my tithing to be used to (x), not (y)", or even just "they better not be using my tithing for (z)" you have not actually given it up. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that you have not actually paid tithing at all, despite what the donation slip says--rather, you've granted the church some of your money with additional contractual stipulations known only to you in your head, and that's a very different thing. Members aren't commanded to pay tithing to finance the Church (although that's a wonderfully practical side-benefit, much like the emotional security of being able to look at financial reports)- members are commanded to pay tithing because members need to be taught to give things up to God. And the Church could accomplish that purpose regardless of where the money goes afterwards. It just doesn't matter. If 50% of the tithing budget were allocated to gold-plating all church-owned buildings and vehicles and the other half to powering the furnaces for Church office buildings by burning $100 bills (which will never happen, because see above about mismanagement, etc., but let's go with the hypothetical scenario), that should not change a single person's willingness to pay tithing or faith in the Church. If it would make a difference to you, clearly you need to keep paying tithing--you have not yet understood the meaning of sacrifice.
Furthermore, tithing is not a charitable donation. I mean, legally it is, because the church is, among other things, a charity-- but the commandment to tithe is not a commandment to give to charity. We have a whole separate thing for that--fast offerings. And giving to charity does not discharge one's responsibility to tithe. Tithing serves a completely different purpose--to teach you how to sacrifice, with a simple, concrete example. If we could all just figure that out, then maybe we'd be ready for the real deal-- the real law of sacrifice, and total consecration of all we have to the Lord.