Tithing teachings false, fear-based; don't be pressured to give – Creflo Dollar

US preacher Creflo Dollar has admitted that he has taught wrong things about tithing in the past but now working to correct them.

In one of his recent teachings, he told the congregation that the church has been using Malachi 3: 8 – 10 to put a lot of fear and guilt into Christians in order to get them to give one-tenth of their monthly earnings to the church.

Admitting his own wrong teachings, Creflo Dollar said: “I’m still growing”, adding: “The teachings that I’ve shared in the past on the subject of tithing were not correct and today, I stand in humility to correct some things that I’ve taught for years and believed for years but could never understand it clearly because I had not yet been confronted with the gospel of grace, which has made the difference”.

However, he said: “I won’t apologise because if it wasn’t for me going down that route, I would have never ended up where I am right now but I will say that I have no shame at all in saying to you: throw away every book, every tape and every video I ever did on the subject of tithing unless it lines up with this [the corrected version]”.

He noted: “I have done some corrective teaching in the last ten years but not to the degree of what we are getting ready to do now”.

Dollar said it was important for him to correct his own false teachings “because religion is sustained by two factors: fear and guilt”.

“And, if there is one subject that the church has used for a long time to keep people in fear and guilt, it is that subject of tithing and it has to be corrected and it’s got to be corrected now”, he declared.

According to him, his new teachings about tithing, which goes against the grain, will cost him friends and invitations.

“I may lose some friends, preachers may never invite me anymore but I think I’ve already been through that so it doesn’t matter”, Dollar told his church.

The American preacher said pastors all over the world keep using fear and guilt to put pressure on their congregation to tithe but that was wrong.

To buttress his point, he referred to 2 Corinthians 9:7, which says: ‘You must each decide in your own heart how much to give. And don’t give reluctantly or in response to pressure’.

“The tithing teaching always pressured me”, he confessed, noting: “It gave me fear”.

“You should never give in response to pressure and fear”, he told the congregation.

“I’m not suggesting that we water down our giving but let’s admit, tithing is an Old Testament teaching. The New Testament contains a theme that overrides it”, he taught the church.

The New Testament, according to him, says Christians no longer live under the requirements of the Mosaic Law but under the grace of Jesus Christ and, thus, sin was no longer their master since Christ came to fulfil all those requirements on their behalf.

Creflo Dollar said the oft-quoted Bible verse used by pastors to scare Christians into tithing is Malachi 3:8 – 10, which says: ‘Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, ‘Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse that there may be meat in mine house and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it’.

However, he noted: “We equated the church with the storehouse [but] the church and the storehouse are not equal. The storehouse was something that was built because the temples didn’t have enough room to store all the tithes, so, they built granaries. The church is not a storehouse for granaries”.

He said pastors love quoting and misinterpreting Malachi 3: 8 – 10 because it is laden with fear and guilt, which “keep religion alive”.

Dollar said a lot of pastors are spreading the same false teachings about tithing all over the world because there’s an unwritten convention that compels them to stay within the same boundaries.

“God forgive me but in the preachers’ circles, you can’t say anything that is too off from what everybody else is saying; you got to stay right there in the boundaries of what everybody is saying”, he explained.

“How do you even use this [Malachi 3: 8 – 10] if you are no longer under the law but under grace? And Galatians says that Jesus has taken – he became a curse for us that the blessing of Abraham, of knowing that he is the possessor of heaven and earth; he gave us His son and he’ll give us everything else – … the curse from us”.

“Don’t let anybody tell you you are cursed. You are not cursed, you are blessed, you have Jesus in your life”, he told the congregation.

Source: Classfmonline.com