The good news is the First Presidency issued a letter announcing a tithing refund! The bad news is the letter’s a fake. What can we learn from this? RFM takes us on a deep dive!
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Radio Free Mormon: 167: Tithing Refund!
I love your podcasts RFM. As soon as you starting taking about the perpetual education fund and how it functioned I thought, “well, they have to fund the free BYU tuition for the families of the GA’s somehow.”
Nice observations, I knew it was a fake because the Church is one of the most stingy organizations when it comes to altruism that I know of. Sure pay your tithing at the expense of begging the church for survival. Some help the church is.
I remember living in Mexico at the time, hoping that I could tap into the perpetual education fund to help finance my university costs. Well, first I wasn’t thrilled about having to repay the loan, but fine… I’ll take the help if it’s offered to me. However, after applying apparently I didn’t meet the criteria because the loan was only for college or technical training skills, and I was taking electrical engineering.
I remember being so upset and offended, here I am giving my heart and soul to the church, serving in every calling they extended to me having covenanted in the temple and being temple married and was considered ineligible for receiving the fund. “Fine”, I said… it’s not like I wanted it anyway.
Unfortunately, this incident didn’t help me open my eyes until at least 10 years later. Triple dipping… damn!! Good thing that I’m down to surplus tithing only… but even that took a soft slow transition.
Thanks for sharing your personal experience, David.
You don’t happen to remember what the interest rate on the loan was, do you?
;^)
It was never mentioned. I didn’t even bother to ask since nothing was offered, at the time I thought it was going to be 0 and if not zero something close to zero.
As I read back through my comment through the eyes of having faith in the Lord and his church. There might be something to say about having that mindset that drives you to perform better and work harder to dig yourself out of the rut. There’s something about the comfort zone that we don’t tend to want to go beyond, but when we are driven through faith in the Lord… it’s sort of like having Dumbo’s feather that can help us fly.
That can almost be an entire podcast episode in of itself. I’ll let you think about that one.
Here is a link to the LDS Philanthropies video.
https://youtu.be/PxA6nT-YDqc
The juicy deets begin around 6:30
Me thought it might be the 7:30 mark.