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Comment by sturgill | Hacker News Reader

Bad comparison when you’re skeptical of an entity investing money in businesses who employ lots of people...

I see you're admitting the church is a business. Too bad that's not how they tell it to their members. I'd be perfectly fine with the church's actions if they would just admit that they're a profit seeking enterprise and charity is only of value for the PR it brings.

At least then I wouldn't have felt swindled when I found out that all that money I spent on tithing while working 80 hours a week as a truck driver to pay my way though college was actually just sitting in an investment fund making a handful of people rich. I would have known from the beginning that that was where my money was going, and I would have no room to complain.

I called it an entity that invests in businesses. It very clearly has an investment arm (which I have known about for decades). The Church owns physical assets and I’m okay with that. I’d rather it have liquid assets than struggle to pay its bills like in the 1800s - early 1900s. I’m a fan of financial prudence.

At the end of the day, and as unpopular as it is, I believe Joseph Smith saw the Father and the Son. Other things are details. I’m not a naive or ignorant person, but I honestly have no issue with how the Church handles its finances (as an organization). Given that we do not believe that anyone is infallible (including the Prophet) I will stop short of absolute statements of any one particular person. But, as an organization, they handle their finances prudently.

Which I appreciate and respect.

The modern church teaches that you should pay tithing irregardless of living condition, income level, destitution or poverty conditions. I taught this principle to people who were literally starving to death in Honduras. It was extremely hard for me to tell people who didn't even have a cup of rice in their 4x4 corrugated steel shack that they needed to donate 10% to the church before they could buy food for their three kids.

Later I learned that it hasn't always been this way. The church has deliberately misrepresented its own doctrine to extract everything they can from these people.

In 1899 the Church was almost bankrupt. President Lorenzo Snow and the GAs went around Utah shaking the members down. The 1899 General Conference was "the tithing conference" and where Lorenzo gave pivotal instruction about tithing - which defined the church in relation to tithing going forward.

Lorenzo Snow said in the 1899 Conference Address

"...I plead with you in the name of the Lord, and I pray that every man, woman and child WHO HAS MEANS shall pay one tenth of their income as a tithing..."

Conference Report Oct 1899 page 28 (3/5th way down column 2 on page 28) [http://archive.org/stream/conferencereport1899sa/conferencer...

However, in the 2011 Lesson Manual, in Lesson 12- Tithing, the Church quote this talk as:

"....I plead with you in the name of the Lord, and I pray that every man, woman and child ... shall pay one tenth of their income as a tithing...."

Teachings of Lorenzo Snow manual, page 160 [https://www.lds.org/manual/teachings-of-presidents-of-the-ch...]

THE HISTORICAL IDEA THAT YOU ONLY TITHED IF YOU HAD MEANS HAS BEEN REDUCED TO AN ELIPSES.

So yeah...the broke church from the past only asked for tithing from those who had means, but the "prudent" multibillion dollar corporation of the present expects it from people whose children will only grow to 5 feet tall as an adult because their diet consists of rice and yucca and parasite-infected water.

The church is a wealthy corporation today. Sure they manage their finances well. But their coercive tithing policies that are misrepresented by their own modern literature are extremely burdensome to a huge portion of their membership. They don't need their money, and they should stop asking for it and pretending like their salvation depends on it. And if it really is the case that their financial secrecy is hiding their personal enrichment off the backs of those experiencing poverty, I really hope that a hell exists that is as bad as they deserve.

And Jesus praised the widow for casting in all she had. And Elijah took the last of the flour of that one family. The church is hardly unique in Christian theology in asking for sacrifices that requires faith.

Also church policy has changed over time too - the word of wisdom is a prime example of this.

If you want to find reasons to hate the church, you can. I guarantee it. If you believe God doesn't reward tithing, then yeah, it's scummy.

Personally, I believe and don't think it's scummy.

If everybody is paying tithing truly out of faith and it's truly not scummy, there should be no material consequence to financial transparency. If people can look and acknowledge that the Mormon church is a multibillion dollar corporation, and still believe that god wants them to continue donating 10% of their daily pittance in order to build up god's kingdom, then more power to them.

Personally, given what the church claims that they do with the money, I think it's a very simple and pure case of fraud, and I would like my money back.

    I see you're admitting the church is a business.

Your argument might be more serious if you didn't weave comments like this into it. It's quite clear that statement hasn't been made or insinuated.

Also, as far as the church spending time teaching its members all the different ways it invests would be quite tangential to a Sunday class. People don't go to church to understand how the church operates but rather why. As far as the church employing individuals who have studied finance and know how to make the church financially sound is logical and right. The church itself encourages higher studies. Employing those who have studied to further the work is being a wise steward.

Now if they are only using the money to make individuals rich, that would go counter to teachings. What handful of people are you referring to?

A membership report is tangential to the topics in general conference, but that was never left out of conference (at least until the church stopped growing).

You don't have to spend time talking about it in church. Publish an audited yearly financial report, and send it to members in the mail.

And yes it does matter. The church operates like a business. Members literally think of tithing as a form of giving to charity. They should have some expectations and understanding of how that money is spent. Would tithing receipts be the same as they currently are if everybody knew the church had hundreds of billions of assets, 15 years of tithing on reserve, and spent less than a percent of it actually helping those that are in need of charity?

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