For their sake, I’m glad they weren’t asked to quadruple their offering. That’s what Frank’s title initially brought to my mind!

A single, disabled woman in Montana in the 1940s was baptized along with her daughters and attended church for as long as they received welfare assistance. When the assistance stopped, she was offended. She left the church.

However, in the meantime, one of her girls had become converted, even if only in small degree. Years later when her husband was attending graduate school, members of the Church found her, brought her in, taught her the gospel and taught her to be a mom, helping her overcome a dysfunctional background that would have been destructive for her own five children.

Four of those children are now active in the Church. One is my husband. I’m pretty glad there was welfare assistance for my mother-in-law’s mother, even though she was probably “just a rice Christian.”

You are right I should have rephrased the above comment.

I understand that your position is that this particular method of asking for offerings is not coercive. I also agree that obeying for the right reasons increases the value of obedience. But it seems that there are many times when the value of obedience is greater when it is *harder* to disobey. The more banal case is when it is harder to disobey *because* the value of obedience is so great (e.g. we make it hard for people who want to stick up 7-11s); but the reverse may also be true. If I have a good relationship with someone, it is harder to fail to do my duty to them than if I have no relationship with them. We may feel ourselves forced to do our duty by our relationships because we will lose many things we like if we shirk our duty. And yet I think that the value of obedience here is even greater because we are not only obeying an absract (though real) duty to serve others but we are also cultivating and responding to relationships which are necessary and good. I have a duty to help the poor, even if the poor is someone I don’t know. But I have an additonal obligation to respond to the call of my particular church community and priesthood leadership, e.g. when they are attempting to help the particular poor within the church and without. The former duty is thinner, but harder to fulfill preceisely because of this reason–there is no individual who we imagine going without, no face appearing before us and calling upon us to serve. In the latter case I think it is harder to disobey and yet greater to obey. Yet another case, I think, where doing the harder thing is not always doing better.

Mike: “Then, in order to receive any assistance people had to do 4 things:

1. Come to church meetings at least once a month.”

I know that helping the poor involves considerably more than writing a check–teaching new skills and attitudes, even calling to repentance if necessary is part of it too. There are also some wards which I hear do have serious spending problems (though none in which I’ve had an in-the-know leadership position). But while making it into a this-for-that may bring spending in line with contrbutions, it seems far out of joint from King Benjamin’s teaching that you simply do not turn away the poor (even the ‘undeserving’ ones). It also seems sure, more than just about anything, to ‘decrease the value of obedience’ when it comes to going to church. Having lived in the church for quite a while and served in some leadershp positions, I have no illusions about the special virtue of the poor; I just don’t think that the gospel is well-designed for giving a strong jolt to those among the poor who are lazy and have a sense of entitlement. But it is pretty good at shaking the non-poor out of their sense of entitlement and superiority, since they are asked to give without virtue-testing the payouts.

Locke: “I am irratated at the tithing stories that end with someone getting a financial reward because most of the time it doesn’t happen and two it can’t even measure up to the inward blessing that is received.”

How do you know that most of the time it doesn’t happen? I’m willing to believe someone who says they’ve had it rough while paying a full tithe, but the only evidence I know of is anecdotal evidence, which, from what I hear from trustworthy saints, is quite good on the side of the temporal blessings of tithing. I don’t want to get to the point where we never talk about the temporal, could-have-another-reasonable-explanation type of blessings, because we are focusing on the possible and actual counter examples. I’d never want to downgrade the spiritual blessings of obedience, but temporal salvation seems pretty good, too, and the scriptures seem to be pretty high on it.

Ardis: And even non-members can make contributions under every category except tithing. :-)

There’s a story in our local mission about an 80-year old investigator who said he didn’t want to join, but he asked if he could make financial contributions to the church. They got him the slip/envelope, so he did. He eventually did get baptized.

Of course home/visting teachers don’t have authority to ask if someone does pay tithing/offerings. However, they both have authority as teachers to teach about tithing and offerings. And if the person being visited is inactive, then bringing them a donation slip and envelope is doing them a service, right? Giving them the opportunity to receive the blessings that come from paying tithing/offerings is a “good thing,” right? Aren’t inactive members allowed to pay tithes/offerings? And wouldn’t they receive at least some kind of blessing from doing so?

Is that too bold? Would that be overbearing?