Retirement, in the modern sense of permanently stepping away from all work at a set age, isn’t a concept Scripture directly addresses, the idea didn’t exist in the ancient world in this form. But Scripture speaks clearly to both rest and purposeful work, and understanding both gives a genuinely useful framework for thinking about it, alongside practical questions like what actually counts as a real asset as you plan.
The Closest Biblical Parallel
Numbers 8:25 actually does describe something close to retirement, specifically for Levites serving in the tabernacle: “they must retire from their regular service and work no more.” (NIV) at age 50. Even here, though, the very next verse clarifies they could still assist their fellow Levites, just no longer carrying the full weight of the regular duties themselves. Rest from the primary labor, not a complete end of contribution.
The Value of Rest, Taken Seriously
Rest itself is treated as a genuinely good thing throughout Scripture, not a reluctant concession. God himself rested on the seventh day of creation, and the Sabbath command in Exodus 20 builds rest directly into the fabric of a faithful life. Slowing down, stepping back from the intensity of full-time labor, is entirely consistent with this pattern.
But Purpose Doesn’t Retire
What Scripture never suggests is that a person’s usefulness or purpose has an expiration date. Psalm 92:14 says the righteous “will still bear fruit in old age.” Older believers are repeatedly shown continuing to teach, mentor, pray, and contribute, just often in different forms than earlier in life. Retirement from a career is a real, reasonable thing. Retirement from purpose isn’t really a biblical category at all.
Where This Leaves You
There’s nothing unbiblical about stepping back from full-time career work later in life, planning for it, and genuinely resting from decades of labor. What’s worth holding onto is that the rest is a shift, not an ending, a different season still meant to be lived with real purpose, not simply idle time to fill.
Scripture treats greed as a serious, active danger, not a minor character flaw, and Jesus specifically warned that it can hide in places people don’t expect to find it, including in hearts that don’t consider themselves wealthy at all. This is really the flip side of a question we’ve already looked at closely: is it a sin to be rich?
Jesus’s Direct Warning
Luke 12:15 records one of Jesus’s most direct statements on the subject: “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” (NIV) He says this immediately before telling the parable of the rich fool, a man who built bigger barns to store his growing wealth, only to die the very night he finished them, his accumulated abundance meaning nothing in the end.
What Makes Greed Easy to Miss
Jesus’s warning is notably broad, “all kinds” of greed, not just the obvious, cartoonish version. Greed isn’t only present in someone hoarding millions. It can be present in someone with modest means who is nonetheless never satisfied, always measuring their situation against what they don’t yet have. Ecclesiastes 5:10 captures this precisely: “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.” (NIV) The love described here scales with the person, not with the actual dollar amount.
The Real Antidote
Scripture’s consistent answer to greed isn’t merely restraint, it’s contentment. 1 Timothy 6:6 says, “godliness with contentment is great gain.” (NIV) Contentment functions as the actual cure, since greed is fundamentally a restlessness of the heart, not simply a behavior that more self-discipline alone can fix.
Where This Leaves You
Greed isn’t defined by a specific net worth. It’s defined by whether “enough” ever actually feels like enough. That’s a question worth asking honestly at every income level, not just the highest ones.
Gambling isn’t named directly anywhere in Scripture, since the modern casino and lottery industry didn’t exist in the ancient world. But several principles Scripture does address speak directly to what gambling actually involves, and most point in a cautionary direction. This is worth reading alongside a related question we’ve tackled separately: is investing in the stock market itself a form of gambling?
Getting Rich Quick, Directly Addressed
Proverbs 13:11 says, “Dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow.” (NIV) Gambling is built entirely around the opposite instinct: a large, quick, chance-based outcome rather than steady, deliberate stewardship. Proverbs 28:20 adds a further warning: “One eager to get rich will not go unpunished.” (NIV) These aren’t verses about gambling by name, but they describe precisely the mindset gambling is designed to activate.
The Math Behind It
Every form of gambling, by design, has a built-in house edge, meaning the system is structured so that, over time, the house wins and the player loses. This is a meaningful distinction from investing, where risk is taken in exchange for a share in real, productive economic activity. Gambling creates no value, it simply moves money from many losers to a few winners, with the house guaranteed a cut regardless of outcome.
A Real Tax on the Poor
Here’s where the honest math gets genuinely hard to look at. State lotteries specifically have earned a real, well-documented nickname: “a tax on the poor.” It’s not a rhetorical exaggeration. An Economist analysis of public lottery records found that adults in the poorest 1% of U.S. zip codes spend an average of nearly 5% of their income, roughly $600 a year, on lottery tickets alone. Adults in the wealthiest 1% of zip codes spend just 0.15% of their income, about $150 a year, on the same tickets. That’s a 33-times difference in the share of income spent on the exact same product. A separate Bankrate study found a similar pattern: the lowest-income households spend an average of $412 a year on lottery tickets, nearly four times the $105 spent by the highest earners, despite the highest earners making more than eight times as much money.
Research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research adds a further, sobering detail: lottery spending doesn’t come from disposable income sitting on the side. It measurably crowds out other household spending, with the reduction proportionally larger among low-income households specifically, meaning the money is coming directly out of budgets that had less room to give in the first place.
What That Same Money Could Have Become
Take that $600-a-year figure and run it the other direction. If, instead of lottery tickets, that same $600 a year had gone into a simple S&P 500 index fund earning the market’s long-term historical average of roughly 10% annually:
10 Years
20 Years
30 Years
Total contributed
$6,000
$12,000
$18,000
Value if invested instead
$9,562
$34,365
$98,696
That same modest, ordinary amount of money, the kind that can genuinely feel insignificant one ticket at a time, becomes nearly $100,000 over 30 years simply by changing where it goes. Even using the more conservative Bankrate figure of $412 a year, the same 30-year period turns roughly $12,360 in contributions into approximately $67,772. Neither of these numbers requires a windfall, a lucky number, or a jackpot. They require nothing more than consistency and time, the two things a lottery ticket is specifically designed to make feel unnecessary.
Stewardship, Not Just Legality
Something being legal has never been the same question as something being wise stewardship. 1 Corinthians 10:23 offers a useful lens: “‘I have the right to do anything,’ you say, but not everything is beneficial.” (NIV) Whether or not gambling is a sin in every individual instance, the honest math and the underlying heart posture it tends to encourage, chasing a windfall rather than diligent, faithful stewardship, are both worth taking seriously. The numbers above make that math concrete rather than abstract, especially for households with the least room to absorb the loss.
Where This Leaves You
Scripture doesn’t hand down a verse-by-verse verdict on gambling specifically. But the principles it does offer, patient stewardship over quick riches, honest value creation over house-edge extraction, and wisdom over mere legality, point in a clear, cautionary direction. The real-world data on who actually funds state lotteries, and what that same money could have become instead, only sharpens that direction further.
Jesus addresses financial worry directly and repeatedly, and His core instruction is consistent: worry doesn’t add anything productive, and it reflects a deeper question of where trust is actually placed. Practical preparation, like building a real emergency fund, is a genuinely faithful response to that same underlying concern.
Jesus’s Direct Teaching
Matthew 6:25-34 is the clearest, most extended teaching on this in Scripture. Jesus points to birds, who don’t store up crops in barns, and wildflowers, more beautifully clothed than Solomon at his wealthiest, and asks: if God cares for these, will He not care for you? He states plainly, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?” (NIV) Worry, in this teaching, isn’t just unpleasant, it’s genuinely unproductive, adding nothing to the actual outcome.
What This Doesn’t Mean
This isn’t a command against planning, budgeting, or working diligently. Proverbs repeatedly commends preparation and diligence. The teaching targets anxiety, a corrosive, trust-eroding worry, not responsible foresight. Someone can budget carefully and plan for the future while still fully trusting God, and someone can refuse to plan at all while being consumed by exactly the anxiety Jesus warns against.
The Alternative Jesus Offers
Philippians 4:6-7 gives the practical alternative: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (NIV) The instruction isn’t simply “stop worrying.” It’s a redirection, taking the specific concern and bringing it honestly to God rather than carrying it alone.
Where This Leaves You
Financial worry is addressed head-on in Scripture, not dismissed as unimportant, but treated as a real, common struggle with a real, specific answer: bring it to God directly, trust His provision, and keep planning and working diligently in the meantime. Those two things were never meant to be in conflict.
No, the prosperity gospel is not biblical. The core claim, that sufficient faith guarantees material wealth and physical health, does not hold up against the consistent witness of Scripture, including the actual lives of the apostles who wrote much of the New Testament. This is a different question than whether being rich is itself a sin, though the two are closely related.
What the Prosperity Gospel Actually Teaches
At its core, prosperity theology teaches that God wants every believer wealthy and healthy, and that poverty or sickness reflects insufficient faith or unconfessed sin. Giving, in this framework, is often presented as a kind of financial seed that guarantees a proportional return from God.
Where It Breaks Down
The apostle Paul, who wrote a significant portion of the New Testament, directly contradicts this framework in his own testimony. 2 Corinthians 11:27 describes his life as one of “labor and hardship… often without food… cold and naked.” Philippians 4:12 has him saying he has “learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” This wasn’t a man lacking faith. It was one of the most faithful men in Christian history, describing genuine material hardship as part of a life fully surrendered to God, not evidence against it.
What Scripture Actually Promises
Scripture promises God’s presence, provision for genuine need, and eternal reward, not a guarantee of earthly wealth in exchange for faith or giving. James 1:2-4 even frames trials as something to consider “pure joy,” producing perseverance, a framework entirely incompatible with the idea that hardship signals failed faith.
Where This Leaves You
Wanting financial stability isn’t wrong, and God does care about provision. But the specific claim that faith functions as a formula guaranteeing wealth doesn’t match Scripture’s own honest account of what faithful lives, including the apostle Paul’s, actually looked like.
The Bible never explicitly calls debt a sin, but it consistently treats it as a serious obligation deserving real caution, not something to enter into casually or treat as a neutral financial tool. This principle applies directly to newer forms of debt too, like Buy Now, Pay Later services.
The Clearest Warning
Proverbs 22:7 states the core dynamic plainly: “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.” (NIV) This isn’t a moral condemnation of debt as inherently sinful, it’s a clear-eyed description of what debt actually creates: real obligation, real vulnerability, and a real transfer of power to whoever is owed.
Old Testament Structure Around Debt
Scripture doesn’t treat debt as something to avoid discussing either. The Sabbatical year in Deuteronomy 15 required debts to be canceled every seven years among the Israelite community, a built-in system of relief rather than indefinite obligation. God’s law took debt seriously enough to build structured limits around it.
What This Means Practically
Romans 13:8 adds a further, often-quoted instruction: “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another.” (NIV) Many read this as counsel toward paying off obligations diligently rather than a flat prohibition on ever borrowing, since Scripture elsewhere assumes lending and borrowing will happen. The consistent thread isn’t “debt is forbidden.” It’s “debt is serious, and should be entered into rarely, repaid faithfully, and never treated lightly.”
Where This Leaves You
Debt isn’t a sin to avoid confessing. It’s an obligation Scripture takes seriously enough to warn about repeatedly, structure limits around, and instruct believers to repay diligently. That’s a different, more nuanced picture than either “debt is always fine” or “debt is always wrong.”
No, being rich is not itself a sin. Scripture never condemns wealth in and of itself, faithful, wealthy people appear throughout the Bible without rebuke. What Scripture consistently warns against isn’t wealth, it’s what wealth can do to the heart of the person holding it. This is closely related to a question we’ve tackled from a different angle: is the prosperity gospel actually biblical?
Wealthy and Faithful, at the Same Time
Abraham, Job, and Solomon were all extraordinarily wealthy, and all three are described as faithful, not condemned for their riches. Job in particular is described as blameless and upright, and also as one of the wealthiest men in the East, the two descriptions sitting side by side without tension.
Where the Real Warning Actually Lives
1 Timothy 6:10 is often misquoted as “money is the root of all evil.” That’s not what it says. “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” (NIV) The warning targets the love of money, an attachment, a trust placed in wealth instead of God, not the possession of money itself. Jesus’s own warning about the rich young ruler in Mark 10 wasn’t a blanket statement against wealth either, it was a specific diagnosis of that one man’s specific attachment, the thing standing between him and following Christ.
The Actual Test
The real question Scripture asks isn’t “how much do you have,” it’s “what has your heart attached itself to.” A person of modest means can be just as consumed by money as a wealthy person, and a wealthy person can hold their resources with genuinely open hands. Wealth reveals character. It doesn’t determine it.
Where This Leaves You
Being rich isn’t the sin. Loving riches, trusting them instead of God, and letting them crowd out generosity and dependence on Him, is exactly what Scripture consistently warns against, regardless of the number in your bank account.
Few questions in Christian finance generate as much genuine, good-faith disagreement as this one. Some Christians treat 10% as a fixed, non-negotiable floor. Others believe it was a Mosaic Law requirement that never carried forward as binding on the church. Many evangelical and Baptist traditions still teach the fixed tithe as a standard practice today, so this remains a live question, not a settled one. Here’s the strongest version of each case, what the original languages actually say, and why the percentage debate might matter less than the question underneath it.
What the Original Words Actually Mean
The Hebrew word behind every Old Testament tithe reference is ma’aser (מַעֲשֵׂר), and the Greek word behind the New Testament references is dekate (δεκάτη). Both words mean exactly the same thing: a tenth. The debate was never about what the word tithe means. It’s about whether the practice it describes still applies the same way today.
The Case for Command
The strongest argument for treating the tithe as a standing command starts before the Law of Moses even existed. Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils of battle to Melchizedek in Genesis 14, and Jacob independently vowed a tenth of everything God gave him in Genesis 28, both centuries before Sinai. If the tithe were purely a Mosaic Law requirement, the argument goes, it wouldn’t have shown up as a voluntary act of worship before that Law existed at all.
Malachi 3:10 is the passage most often cited: “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.” (NIV) Pastor and author Tony Evans, drawing on the Genesis 14 precedent, teaches tithing as an act of worship that predates the Law entirely, a tangible way of recognizing God as the source of everything a person has.
The Case for Guideline
The strongest argument on the other side starts with what the New Testament doesn’t say. Nowhere does Jesus, Paul, or any New Testament writer explicitly command a 10% tithe for Christians. Pastor John MacArthur has made this case directly and repeatedly over decades of teaching: “New Testament believers are never commanded to tithe.” His reading of 2 Corinthians 8-9, the New Testament’s longest sustained passage on giving, finds no percentage requirement anywhere in it, only the instruction to give “not reluctantly or under compulsion” (2 Corinthians 9:7, NIV).
Pastor Francis Chan holds the same position and has taken it further in practice than most, reportedly giving away roughly 90% of his own income without ever framing it as a required percentage. His point isn’t that giving matters less without a fixed floor. It’s that generosity shouldn’t need a legal minimum to be taken seriously, a conviction two centuries of thought have echoed. John Wesley’s own instruction to his followers never mentioned a percentage at all: “Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can.” And Charles Spurgeon, pushed on the question directly by his own congregation, put it plainly: “There are no rules laid down in the Word of God” for exactly what a Christian owes.
Why the Percentage Debate Is a Distraction
Here’s what we’d actually encourage you to take from all of this: spend less energy on the technical questions, gross or net income, before or after taxes, exactly which percentage, and more on the question underneath all of them. Every voice above, regardless of which side of the debate they land on, agrees on one thing: the goal was never a specific number. It was a posture of trust and sacrifice.
A precisely calculated 10% given without any real sacrifice attached to it can miss the point just as easily as skipping giving altogether. Someone giving 6% because that’s genuinely stretching them may be living out the actual heart behind these passages more fully than someone technically hitting the number without feeling it at all. The debate matters for understanding Scripture accurately. It shouldn’t become the thing that determines whether or how generously someone actually gives.
Where This Leaves Us
We won’t tell you which side of this is correct. Faithful, Bible-believing Christians across real traditions, some teaching the fixed tithe as a continuing standard, others teaching Spirit-led proportional giving, land in genuinely different places on this question, and both positions deserve to be taken seriously rather than dismissed.
1 Chronicles 29:14 captures something both sides actually agree on regardless of the percentage debate. King David, reflecting on the offerings gathered for the temple, prayed, “Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand.” (NIV) Whether you land on a strict 10%, a growing percentage, or Paul’s “as you have prospered” principle, that’s the actual foundation underneath all of it. The real question was never the percentage. It’s what your giving actually costs you.
Picture the scene: a busy temple courtyard, wealthy men in fine robes stepping forward one by one to drop large sums into the temple treasury, the clink of coins loud enough to turn heads. Then a poor widow steps up, and quietly drops in two small coins worth barely a fraction of a cent combined. Jesus, watching the whole thing, tells his disciples something that would have stopped them cold: she gave more than all the rest.
The Scene, in Detail
The story appears in both Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:1-4. Jesus was sitting near the temple treasury, watching people put in their gifts, a public act in that era, since the treasury consisted of trumpet-shaped receptacles where coins were audibly dropped in. Many rich people, Mark tells us, put in large sums. Then one poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, worth together about a penny.
Jesus called his disciples over specifically to make a point of it. “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. They gave out of their abundance, but she, out of her poverty, put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” (NIV)
What the Greek Reveals
Two small details from the original language add real weight to this story. The coins she gave were called lepta (λεπτά), the smallest, lowest-value coin in circulation at the time, literally meaning “thin” or “small.” It was about as low as currency got.
And the phrase “all she had to live on” translates the Greek word bios (βίος), which doesn’t simply mean money or savings. It means life itself, the same root behind our word “biology.” Mark isn’t just saying she gave her spare cash. The word choice says she gave her livelihood.
Why This Isn’t About the Amount
The math, on its face, doesn’t work in any normal accounting sense. Two small coins are not more than the large sums the wealthy donors gave, not by any measure of pure quantity. Jesus isn’t making a math argument. He’s redefining what generosity actually measures.
The wealthy donors gave out of their abundance, meaning what they gave cost them nothing they’d actually feel. Their lifestyle didn’t change. Their security wasn’t touched. The widow gave everything she had left to live on, an act that put her next meal in question. Jesus measures the gift not by its size but by what it actually cost the giver.
A Detail Easy to Miss
It’s worth noticing that Jesus doesn’t tell the widow to stop, doesn’t intervene to suggest she’s being reckless with her last money, and doesn’t hold her up as someone who made a poor financial decision. He holds her up as the standard. This sits alongside other places in the Gospels where Jesus shows real concern for the poor and vulnerable, which makes his silence here notable. He doesn’t correct her. He commends her.
That doesn’t mean this passage is a command for everyone to give away their entire livelihood. It’s describing what he saw in one specific act of worship, not laying out a universal financial strategy. But it does mean the passage can’t be softened into merely being about the size of a check.
What This Actually Asks of Us
If Jesus measures giving by cost rather than size, the practical question for anyone today isn’t how does my gift compare to what other people give. It’s did this actually require something from me. A wealthy person giving a large sum that doesn’t change their lifestyle at all isn’t automatically living out this passage just because the number looks generous. Someone giving a smaller amount that genuinely costs them something might be living it out more fully than they realize.
This isn’t a passage designed to make anyone feel guilty about their income level or their capacity to give. It’s a reframe: the size of the number was never the point God was measuring. The heart behind it was.
Ask ten Christians what tithing means and you’ll likely get ten different answers. Some will tell you it’s a strict 10% off the top, non-negotiable. Others will say it’s an Old Testament rule that doesn’t apply to New Testament believers at all. Both sides have real Scripture behind them. Here’s the actual history.
Where Did Tithing Come From?
Short answer: The first tithe in the Bible is in Genesis 14, when Abram (later Abraham) gave a tenth to Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High. That was centuries before the Law of Moses. Later, the Law made the tithe a command for Israel: a tenth of crops and livestock to support the Levites, the temple and the poor (Leviticus 27:30-32, Numbers 18:21, Deuteronomy 14:28-29). Whether that command still binds Christians today is a real debate, and we lay out both sides below.
Where the Tithe Came From
The tithe shows up early in the Old Testament, well before the Law of Moses. Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils of battle to Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High, in Genesis 14. Jacob vowed a tenth of everything God gave him in Genesis 28. By the time of Moses, tithing had become codified law: Israelites were commanded to bring a tenth of their crops and livestock to support the Levites, the tribe set apart for the priesthood and temple service, since the Levites received no land inheritance of their own (Leviticus 27:30-32, Numbers 18:21).
This wasn’t charity in the modern sense. It was closer to a national tax that funded Israel’s entire religious and social infrastructure, including provision for the poor, the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan (Deuteronomy 14:28-29).
Did the Early Church Tithe?
This is where it gets genuinely debated, and worth being honest about rather than picking a side and pretending it’s obvious. The New Testament never explicitly commands a 10% tithe for Christians. The early church in Acts didn’t run on a fixed percentage, it ran on radical, voluntary generosity, believers selling property and laying the proceeds at the apostles’ feet, giving as anyone had need (Acts 2:44-45, Acts 4:32-35).
Paul’s instructions to the Corinthian church point the same direction. He tells believers to set aside a portion of their income “as he may prosper” (1 Corinthians 16:2), and later urges cheerful, willing giving rather than giving under compulsion or by a fixed rule (2 Corinthians 9:7). Some Christian scholars, including writers like Stuart Murray Williams, argue directly that the tithe was a Mosaic Law requirement never carried forward as binding on New Testament believers, replaced instead by proportional, Spirit-led generosity.
Other traditions push back, pointing out that tithing predates the Law of Moses entirely (Abraham gave his tithe centuries before Sinai), and that Jesus himself affirmed tithing practice while criticizing those who tithed meticulously but neglected justice and mercy (Matthew 23:23), suggesting he saw it as a floor, not something to be abandoned.
Same 10% for the Wealthy and the Poor?
This is the practical question that matters most, and it’s worth sitting with rather than rushing past. A flat 10% is a very different sacrifice for someone earning $30,000 a year than for someone earning $3 million. Jesus made exactly this point when he watched a poor widow give two small coins at the temple, and told his disciples she had given more than all the wealthy donors combined, because she gave out of her poverty while they gave out of their abundance (Mark 12:41-44, Luke 21:1-4).
That story doesn’t settle the tithing debate, but it does settle something else: God has never measured generosity by the size of the number. He measures it by what it actually costs the giver. Whatever position a Christian lands on regarding a fixed 10%, the widow’s example suggests the real question isn’t “did I hit the percentage,” but “did this giving actually require faith and sacrifice from me.” For a closer look at that exact debate, see our piece on whether the 10% tithe is a biblical command or a guideline.
Where This Leaves Us
This site isn’t going to tell you which side of the tithing debate is correct, since faithful, Bible-believing Christians land in different places on this one. What we will say is this: whether you land on a strict 10%, a percentage that grows as you’re able, or Paul’s “as you have prospered” principle, the goal was never a number for its own sake. It was always a heart posture, that everything you have already belongs to God, and giving is simply putting that belief into practice. If you’re wondering why this topic doesn’t come up more often from the pulpit, we’ve written about that too: 7 reasons churches need to preach more on tithing.
Frequently Asked Questions About the History of Tithing
Who gave the first tithe in the Bible?
Abram, later called Abraham. In Genesis 14:18-20 he gave Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High, a tenth after a military victory. Hebrews 7 looks back on that same moment.
Where is tithing first mentioned in Genesis?
Twice. Genesis 14:20 records Abram’s tenth to Melchizedek. Genesis 28:22 records Jacob’s vow to give God a tenth of everything God gave him.
Was tithing part of the Law of Moses?
Yes. The Law commanded Israel to give a tenth of crops and livestock (Leviticus 27:30-32). It supported the Levites, who had no land of their own (Numbers 18:21), and helped care for foreigners, orphans and widows (Deuteronomy 14:28-29). But the practice is older than the Law, which is one reason Christians still debate whether it applies today.
When did tithing become money?
In ancient Israel, tithes were mostly crops and animals. Deuteronomy 14:24-26 let a family that lived too far from the place of worship sell its tithe for silver, carry the silver, and buy food there instead. Giving in coins and, later, paper money grew as economies moved from farming to wages. Many Christians today ask a related question: should you tithe on gross or net income?
