Love of Money

That sounds so sad! I can just imagine a homeless person sitting in sacrament meeting crumbling a tiny piece of Wonderbread smashed flat by unwashed hands into one of those tiny sacrament cups and dropping a single tear into it to season it. Meanwhile everyone else in the room is business as usual.

For real.. I wonder what all these temples are going to become when the church goes under.. or how the church will attempt use them to stay afloat..

I think in this day and age, most of them would stay standing. They are beautiful buildings. Maybe libraries?

I'm just glad I can't see the new cedar City temple when I'm driving around town or from my front porch.

Fuck that noise

Good point. My guess is that he was unaware of the fires in Logan and St. George. Nauvoo is easily explained away by “enemies of the church”

This and that

someone can correct me if I'm off, but my understanding is that the church's philanthropy / humanitarian contributions do not use tithing funds.

I don't know if that is the case. I don't see this as an important point in either case.

Those causes can be donated to specifically and I can tell you that donors absolutely DO receive reports on the use of those funds.

Sure. But how often and how much does the church ask people to donate to these causes? Not terribly often, and as much as you are able.

Now how often and how much does the church ask people to pay in tithing? Every single conference and several to dozens of times in stake and ward meetings, 10% of your salary/income.

No matter how you cut it, much more will be paid to tithing than humanitarian efforts. And what does the church do with that surplus (because it is undoubtedly much more than is needed)? Malachi 3 is not about those wicked people who did not pay tithing. It is about the corrupt priesthood which had a tithing surplus and failed to redistribute their surplus to the poor.

Given that the church's level of surplus each year is in billions of dollars and given that their humanitarian efforts are roughly 1% of their income, I would say that Malachi 3 applies just as strongly to the modern LDS church as the wicked priests in Malachi's day.

pro tip. there is no such fund as "non-tithing" money which exists within the church. tithing funds from the beginning have been used to start businesses, investments, etc. just because now the investments and businesses have been successful and the returns from those businesses can be used on non church things like shopping malls the truth of the matter is the church would have never had money if not for tithing. it's just been prioritized for so long in growing businesses that produce profit that now it's easier to say "these funds did not come from tithing".

right. and the $5 I gave to my son to invest which yielded $100 now didn't spend $95 that came from my money given to him.

also the church did announce what they've spent on humanitarian aid over the last 30 years and every Mormon should be up in arms how much goes to humanitarian aid versus lavish rugs in the temples.

unslant those deliberately deceptive numbers and we can talk about how deceptive you feel this post is

Look at the bottom of your paper tithing slip.

Though reasonable efforts will be made globally to use donations as designated, all donations become the Church's property and will be used at the Church's sole discretion to further the church's overall mission.

Translation: Just because you donate to the humanitarian aid fund, does not mean that money is only (or ever) spent on humanitarian aid. Everything goes into one big pot, and the church decides, with zero transparency, how that money is spent.

Please point me to a report on how those funds are spent. I am looking for just a basic balance sheet summary of funds received, how those funds were designated, and funds dispersed.

Church finances were reported in every General Conference until 1959, the last year they were made public. See pages 91-93 of the PDF.

EDIT: page numbers