In general terms, tithe is defined as a fixed amount of money or goods that is given regularly in order to support a church, a priest or a charity. In the Christendom, tithe is regarded as a strong pillar of the church, more sought after than offering. There are no hard and fast rules guiding offering. You could drop as little as one kobo and no offence is committed. However, some pastors, if not all, resent the stingy habit of worshippers that drop peanuts as offerings as though God is a Beggar.
Even beggars, as poor as most of them are, are known to frown when offered miserable sums as low as 50 kobo. That the economy is depressed does not bother them one bit!
Some years ago, I had a nasty encounter with a troublesome Jos-based lunatic eleemosynary. It was along Adebayo Street that leads to the First Baptist Church. I had gone to drop a car transistor radio with a technician and no sooner had I entered the car and shut the door than the lunatic, armed with a bowl and a stick that looked like the one used for preparing “amala dudu”, accosted me by the window. I was a bit startled by his mean look. Poking his dirty hand into my face, he desperately asked me for alms but the glass stood between us.
He ordered me to wind down. I obeyed. I scooped a handful of coins from the cigarette tray and handed them over to him. Disgust suffused his unshaven beard and dirty face. He bounced the coins in his hand a couple of times. But instead of appreciating me by saying “God bless u” for my generous gesture, he sprayed my car with them. Sensing danger, I quickly gunned my car to life and hit the gas. He ran after the car and hurled the stick like a javelin thrower which narrowly missed hitting my rear screen.
What actually informed this piece is the story I read in the SUNDAY SUN Newspaper of January 24, 2016. According to the account, a robbery kingpin named Clement Abanara told the SUN reporter that he always paid tithes in three churches to beg God for His forgiveness. Clement, whose alias is “Millions”, was said to be the mastermind of the audacious bank robberies that took place last year in Ikorodu and Festac areas of Lagos, among others.
He got the nickname from his mother following the breakthrough his father got the week he was born. His old man who was a poor wooden boat carver managed to buy a speedboat engine that turned the family’s fortunes around. As a poor family, the improved income from the speedboat was like earning millions of naira.
However, the fortunes nosedived when the breadwinner died, forcing Clement and his siblings to drop out of school.
After trying his hands on some trades which included timber and palm wine tapping, his desperation to subdue poverty propelled him into working for some Niger Delta warlords where he made some good money. Following the granting of amnesty to the agitators, he shifted his attention to oil bunkering and established his own illegal local oil refinery.
Somewhere along the line, Millions was able to warm his way into his community with his enormous wealth and was even conferred with a chieftaincy title of Ebvmeiwe I of Ogbembiri in Warri North Local Government Area of Delta State as recently as 2014. The title means “the man who does good”.
Millions claimed that he belonged to three churches in Warri where he regularly paid tithes. He further disclosed that at the end of last year, he sowed N5, 000 in each of the churches as a way of seeking absolution for his sins including his involvement in the robberies that took place at Ikorodu, Festac and Agbara.
Millions’ way of obtaining absolution from God is a common practice among criminals like pen robbers, corrupt politicians and civil servants. There was a time that a cashier took N30m to one of the high profile Pentecostal pastors based in Lagos. The greedy man of God collected the money without querying the source. As far as the pastor was concerned, God was blessing his ministry.
The receiver of the loot must be a believer of the saying that all is grit that comes to the mill. When the pastor was asked to return the stolen cash, he refused, saying the money had been given to God. The security agents had to breathe down his neck before he surrendered the loot.
The Christendom in this clime is replete with thieving churchgoers who lumber to the church every Sunday with Ghana Must Go filled with (unholy) tithes as a way of atoning for their heists. The church system harps on tithe as if it is a passport to heaven. There is no space to go into the A-Z of tithe, from the era of Abraham to the days of Prophet Malachi, the chief tithe protagonist. Curiously, the Founder of Christianity only mentioned tithes in passing on two occasions and made it clear that there are weightier matters like love, mercy, truth and judgment.
Popular gospel singer, Panam Percy Paul, once preached at a Pentecostal Church in Jos where I worshipped, during which he stressed that what God (the Giver of wealth) needed from us was 10 per cent of our time (10% of 24 hours daily) and not money. The resident pastor, who was visibly angry with the guest preacher because he wanted to spoil business for him, quickly got up and countered Panam’s sermon, much to the latter’s embarrassment. Most tithes end up in pastors’ pockets.
A few years ago, a relation was robbed along Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. She ended her sob story with a million naira question: “Why should this happen to me when I pay my tithes as at when due?”
I fell short of telling her to direct the question to her pastor, the eater of her tithes, as to why the devourers were not rebuked for her sake.
