Are we willing to pay the financial cost of Faith….or not? What's answer say about what we value?

There is an interesting, albeit at times concerning, article over at Marketwatch.com that reports the simple fact that being a member of a believing community “costs” you something. And while the article is directed to a Jewish context, its implications reach all of us who believe and belong to the Church.

Underlying the article and those it interviews is a not so subtle premise that it is somehow wrong for faith to “cost” much. Never mind that just about anything in life costs something, involves tradeoffs and that the things we value are often where we chose to spend more. Somehow the implication of the article is that faith should be free, or less demanding financially.

Here are few excerpts from the article by Charles Passay with commentary from me in red and more substantial comments. The full article is here: The Financial Cost of Religious Faith

With the onset of Yom Kippur this evening, Jews will begin a day of fasting, prayer and reflection — all key parts of this holiest of holy days on the religion’s calendar. But this Day of Atonement often comes with another ritual of sorts — namely, a pitch from synagogue leaders for contributions….[It] may strike some as distasteful, but it underscores the reality that faith of any kind — Judaism, Christianity, Islam — often has a literal price. Houses of worship solicit donations in order to pay the bills…..

True enough, there are real costs to maintaining buildings and staffs related to houses of worship. But why should it be any more “distasteful” that a house of worship has costs and bills than say, a public school, a local recreation facility or city stadium, such that we are taxed to pay for their upkeep? The simple fact is that things we value have costs that need to be covered, churches are no different except that we are not forced to pay for them like the government does with taxes.

Beyond such fees, various religious practices, from adhering to certain dietary laws to avoiding certain types of investments, also have costs associated with them….The Jewish practice of keeping kosher — that is, adhering to a way of eating in which meats have been butchered and prepared a certain way, among other dietary matters — can translate into a 20% increase in a family’s food costs, according to one study….Some of the faithful say the financial burden has become harder to bear, especially in light of the slumping economy of late.

But again, it also costs money to go to a football game (often a LOT of money). And that money could be spent elsewhere too. But for people who value football, it is (apparently) a price they are willing to pay, along the the “privileges” of standing in long lines, sitting out in the cold rain on some game days, and paying 15 dollars for a tiny beer and hotdog. But people line up for it.

It’s about what people value. If I value my faith I accept that there are going to be some costs and inconveniences associated with it. If I want to keep my beautiful church open and in good repair, I accept that I will be asked to contribute to that, and will not have that money to spend on a movie or something else. If I want to be a true Christian, I am going to be generous to the poor and needy, and that means I can’t spend my money of some other things.

But If I love God, I value what he values and I want to do it. It’s called tradeoffs, and most people make them everyday for things they value. For Jewish people Kosher is important, and like anything important, it has some costs and tradeoffs associated with it. Welcome to life, filled with tradeoffs and with the need to decide what you value most. You can’t have it all, and almost none of it is free.

“I wish it wasn’t so expensive,” says Judy Safern, a Jewish resident of Dallas who runs a strategic consulting firm. In the past couple of years, Safern has cut back on what might be dubbed her “religion budget,” pulling her two children out of a Jewish day school in favor of a public one (a savings of $16,000) and foregoing membership to her local synagogue (a savings of $1,800). Safern’s hope is that she can maintain her faith without emptying her pocketbook. “I refuse to continue to be squeezed,” she adds.

While it is true that all of us might “wish” that things weren’t expensive, insisting on such wishes is not really a sign of maturity. A football fan might wish that the tickets in the nosebleed section behind the pillar weren’t $450 a piece, but (mysteriously) that is what the market will bear and he has to decide to pay it or not, whatever he wishes were not the case.

It is a worthy consideration, as Ms. Safern implies, to ponder if every expense is necessary. But at the end of the day faith does have costs in time, treasure, and tradeoffs. Does she value her faith so as to bear this cost…or not? From her remarks it seems doubtful that she values her faith much, since the “cost” is not worth it.

Regardless of the religion, Safern is far from alone in expressing such sentiments….A 2012 study by the Barna Group, a market research firm, found that 33% of Protestants and 41% of Catholics had reduced their contributions to churches or religious centers because of the economy….. Actually, Barna Group Vice President Clint Jenkin says it may be more than just the economy at play. He argues that a new generation of the faithful sees religion in an entirely different — and decidedly isolationist — way. “Faith is becoming much more something you do privately rather than something at an institution,” he says.

Exactly. Money and other resources are ultimately about what we value and what we do not value. The complaint about cost is not really all that much about money, it is about faith, it is about what we value. Many have devalued faith and decided that it isn’t “worth” much.

And, as the article suggests, one can try and reinvent the faith into a “private” matter. But at the end of the day it is clear that the driving force behind most theological syncretism and designer religion is not deep faith at all. It is about making faith less demanding, less costly, more convenient, more about “me” and what pleases me.

A few concluding thoughts. At one level, faith need not cost much at all. We could just meet in a local park on Sundays, expect that clergy be volunteer, and that very few implements such as books, bread and wine, candles, etc be used. But of course such an attitude seems foreign to people who value their faith more than that.

Traditionally it has been the instinct of the faithful to honor their belief with substantial buildings, and dignified implements. Further, since the faith is something weighty, the faithful do not simply depend on rookies or volunteer clergy for the most central matters of teaching the faith and leading the faithful in worship and governance. Rather, given the respect due to Holy Faith, clergy are expected by the faithful to be well trained. (I spent five years of post graduate and attained to two Master’s Degrees, then spent almost ten years in the internship of being a vicar rather than a pastor). This is par for the course and, yes, its costs money. But this is the instinct of the faithful.

So, faith, just like everything else we value does cost. And while there are legitimate discussions to be had about whether every cost is necessary, at the end of the day it is going to cost. If you want to find out what people value, find out what they spend their money and time on. In our increasingly secular and faithless world, many (including some believers) lament what faith “costs” even as we spend exorbitantly on many other things.

As I write this, it is a Sunday afternoon and quite literally billions of dollars and millions of hours have been spent today in an obsession known as “football,” a game having to do with the movement of a bag full of air on a field. Some fans (short for fanatic) spend as much as four to eight hours glued to the screen, or in loud uncomfortable stadiums. Hundreds of dollars are spent on tickets or parties. And yet many of these same people scoff at the “cost” of a Mass that lasts more than an hour, and would, if they went at all, consider themselves generous contributors if they put five or ten dollars in the basket.

What should faith cost? It is clear that the answer to this is for us to decide.

In the end however, the “lament” of the cost of faith reported in the article above is not about the money. It is about faith and what we really value. Everything “costs” it’s just what you decide to spend your money on that reveals what you most value. Do you value the faith? You decide, and you show it by what you are willing to pay. Where a person’s money and time is, there is their heart.

Video: the immigrants to this country were poor. But they combined nickels and dimes to build beautiful churches. Why? I suspect because they valued their faith and thought the cost to be worth it.

I agree in part, though I would argue that Galatians is more concerned with covenants than with commandments based on chapter 4, where Paul clearly defines being "under law" (not "under the Law" as found in most translations) as meaning to be under the Sinaic Covenant. Understanding that, we then note that the Ma'asei Torah, "works of law" (not Ma'asei HaTorah, "works of the Law" as seen in the DSS) always seems linked with circumcision and often with the cultural commandments of the Torah.

So my read is basically that the Gentile Christians were being told that they could only have a covenant relationship with Hashem if they joined the Sinaic Covenant by becoming circumcised as Jews. This would of course entail not only keeping the Biblical commandments but coming under Jewish authority so as to make them liable to the Mishnah (in it's oral form, of course). Paul's objection was both that this would, if allowed to spread, negate the promise that all nations would be saved as Gentiles, but also that Israel had broken the Sinaic Covenant 700 years earlier and was now suffering under the curse clause of Deu. 27-28 (which Paul twice cites in Galatians). That curse twice specifies that Israel would be subject to not only the nations, but also their gods, which is why Paul connects the idea of Gentiles being subject to the old covenant to their being enslaved again by their old gods.

However, outside of circumcision, Paul didn't object to Gentiles keeping the Sabbaths and Feasts. Clearly, the expectation was that Gentiles would do so, as we see, for example, in 1Co. 5. His objection was that anyone should depend on such observances rather than depending on their faith in and faithfulness to the God of Abraham and His Messiah.

Now I of course agree completely that our attitude to God's commandments should be, "I get to do that? Awesome!" instead of "How can I get out of this?" Nevertheless, there is a case to be made that just as there are special commandments that apply only to priests, men, women, farmers, shepherds, Nazrites, etc. that there are certain commandments that are only requirements for Jews. Circumcision is clearly one such.

If someone wants to make the argument that they as a Gentile Christian are not bound to keep the Sabbath or the Feasts and they make a cogent Biblical argument for it, I'm fine with that. We can argue it back and forth intellectually for the sake of edification, but I don't have a problem with someone who is clearly wrestling with God's Word and has simply come to a different conclusion on a relatively minor issue. My objection is when Christians then decree that nobody should keep the commands that they themselves don't, and in the process tell Jews that they must cease to be Jewish in order to be saved. That is, in my opinion, just as much a matter of legalism as the reverse and also presents a clearly false "gospel" to the Jewish people.

Shalom uv'recha.

Oh, that's clearly nonsense, and no Christian really believes it. They're not arguing that the commandment against murder, adultery, or drinking bloog have been abolished. What they mean to say is that the purpose of the Torah's rituals was to point to the Messiah, and now that He has come, they have been set aside with their purpose fulfilled. (Of course, since the NT does speak of keeping the Passover and many of the Feasts point to the 2nd Coming, that's still problematic.) But they've heard it as "The Law has been fulfilled" so often that it's just become a part of their vocabulary, a cliche spoken without really thinking through all the ramifications.

There's another cliche that we have to be aware of and be dillegent to overcome, and that is the idea that anyone who keeps the Sabbath, Feasts, kashrut, etc., does so in order to be saved "by the law" instead of trusting in "grace." This is why I take a personal demand against Gentile Christians (Jewish Christians are another matter) off the table and rephrase the argument: "So you're saying that God sent the King of the Jews to tell Jews to stop being Jewish?"

Most Christians that I get a chance to speak to are rightly horrified that this is the practical implication of what they've always assumed about the NT. They're not antisemitic; in fact, most true Christians love the Jews, even if only abstractly. They just never considered how their understanding of the NT plays out in that regard.

Shalom

I give no Gentile a hard time about kosher. Noah was told he could eat anything despite the fact that he knew the difference between tahor and tamei. Moreover, the Torah is quite specific that the alien in the Land may eat treif which is forbidden to the Jew.

As far as holidays go, no Christian is worshiping Tammuz or Ishtar. They repurposed holidays within their own Greco-Roman culture as evangelistic tools, and the tradition stuck. Given that Psalm 29 was originally a hymn of praise to Ba'al that David repurposed to praise the Lord instead and Paul repurposed an alter "to an unknown god" in Athens as the jumping-off point for preaching about the true God, I don't think that's a sin in and of itself.

The real problem is that by rejecting the Biblical Feasts, the Church both lost some of the most potent symbolism pointing to Messiah and intentionally rejected any association with its Jewish roots. In the process, they took a body that was supposed to be "neither Jew nor Greek" and turned it into "Greeks only; Jews need not apply."

Shalom

The “alien in the land” didn’t seek the benefit of the oracles of Yehova. He was lost.

Actually, no. There are two terms for aliens in the land, ger and nakor. The ger is a Gentile who came to the Land as a resident, temporary or otherwise, and gave up idolatry, but who never became a full citizen. (Later rabbis would claim the term meant "proselyte.") The nakor is the openly pagan, and who lacked many of the rights and protections of the ger.

Deuteronomy 14:21 uses both terms: A Jew may give trief to the ger or sell it to the nakor.

Since the Torah prohibits putting a stumbling block in the path of the blind and since the ger at least was in the Land to seek the Lord, the fact that he could be given treif means that Gentile worshippers of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not under the same obligation to kashrut as the Jew.

Of course, eating trief or tamei does mean that the Gentile would be ritually unclean (tumah) until he immersed and evening fell. He would have to take more care if he were going up to the Temple to worship. Obviously, that's an academic problem for us at the moment.

Also obviously, in any setting where Jew and Gentile were eating together, the meal would have to be kosher. Therefore, Messianics of Gentile birth have every reason to adopt kashrut to at least some degree, and I think are blessed for doing so. I think all Christians should at least know how to prepare a kosher meal, even if they don't keep it perpetually themselves. But again, there's not an obligation for all Christians to keep kashrut, nor should it be a point of division in the Body--Romans 14 is still in my Bible, after all.

Shalom

That's not an issue. Torah specifies that if someone commits certain sins, including not keeping brit milah, the Sabbath, the Feast of Matzah, and Yom Kippur, the Holy One will cut them off from the people. This is not a death sentence, but rather a loss of identity: We've found from bitter experience that if a Jewish family doesn't observe the Feasts, they become assimilated into the prevailing culture after just two generations. At that point, it takes deliberate conversion to reconnect.

Take Timothy as a case in point. He didn't even have one generation of separation and his mother was a Jewess, but he still had to be circumcised by Paul in order to be considered Jewish.

Ergo, someone whose family hasn't practiced brit milah or keeping the Torah may have a Jewish ancestor, but can't claim to be Jewish himself unless he deliberately converts. Basically, he's counted as a Gentile until he decides to take the steps to become (again) a Jew, just like someone without a speck of Jewish blood.

For those claiming that 2700 years ago their ancestors were Israelites, but idolaters (another crime worthy of karat) who ceased to practice Torah at all once they were taken and scattered by the Assyrians, it wouldn't matter even if it were true for the above reason.

None of the above is to say that if someone is a Gentile they can't practice Torah, only that there is a perfectly reasonable Scriptural case that they are no more obligated to certain sections pertaining only to Israelites than they are to those sections pertaining only to the priests. And if a Christian who is seeking God's will and striving to keep His Word makes that case to me in regards to kashrut or the Mo'edim, I have no reason to break fellowship with him or boast over him. He is still serving our Lord to the best of his ability and knowledge.

Shalom

I think that in your desire to avoid the obvious implications of Timothy needing to be circumcised to be considered Jewish, but Gentile converts like Titus not, you are misconstruing Paul. Paul's concern was three-fold: 1) The Gospel of Yeshua the Messiah, first and foremost; 2) the rights of the Gentiles to be saved and accepted as brethren while remaining Greeks, Romans, etc.; and 3) that #2 not be misconstrued as an attack on his own people or the Torah, nor lead his own people away from keeping Torah.

That's why he was quick to agree with Jacob (James) in Acts 21 to not only complete his own Nazrite vow (Acts 18:18), but that he would help four other Jewish disciples do the same. This would show that, contrary to popular opinion, he was not teaching Jews to forsake the Torah of Moses, to cease circumcision (Jewish identity), or even to cease from our traditions. Nevertheless, both he and Jacob were clear that this did not constitute a change in policy towards the Gentiles from the Acts 15 Council's decision.

That's also why he circumcised Timothy. He wanted to take Timothy back with him in Jerusalem, but the fact that Timothy's father was a Gentile and he had never been circumcised meant that Timothy wasn't a Jew--not only in the "carping" opinion of the Pharisees and other Jews, but Biblically (Gen. 17:14)!

The only way that Paul's actions and writings don't contradict is if he and the other Apostles saw more leeway in a Gentile's obligations to the Torah than a Jew's. I've already given examples of commandments that clearly do not apply equally to both--brit milah and kashrut. It is a reasonable argument from Scripture that given Romans 14 and Colossians 2 and Acts 15 and the general lack of emphasis on the Feasts in the NT that the Apostles regarded the Feasts as a commandment that the Gentiles were invited to keep (Isa. 56), but not required as a necessity of avoiding sin.

I frankly am not interested in creating more division in the Body where there are reasonable arguments on both sides, nor of promoting elitism regarding Ma'asei Torah.

What I am interested in doing is driving home the point to my Sunday brethren that the Church, by making eating a ham samwhich a test of faith for the last 1600 years, has been promoting as false a gospel to the Jews as Judaizing was to the Gentiles in the 1st Century. If that is the case, the idea that keeping the Feasts, kashrut, etc. must automatically be "trying to earn your salvation" has to be tossed out as well, and I think that we can re-appraoch the subject in a spirit of brotherhood.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." If you don't like Christians attacking you for keeping the Feasts because they think they know that under the New Covenant that's a sin, don't attack them for not keeping the Feasts because you think you know that their practices are sinful. And remember, we're saved by our faith in a Person, not by keeping the right set of creeds or commandments.

Shalom

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