“I have argued with pastors that they are using the tithe as a ruse to blackmail people to give money and I said it is wrong," the Council of State member has said.
According to him, pastors take advantage of of Malachi 3:10 which says: “’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,’” to swindle their church members.
“I have a different concept of tithe.
“I have argued with pastors that they are using the tithe as a ruse to blackmail people to give money and I said it is wrong. I give, I don’t go and give tithe. And I give not only to church, I give to church, I give to people who have need, I help those who I think are in a situation where they need help.
“I don’t pay tithe because that’s Old Testament concept and I’ve told the pastors that they are wrong,” the former president of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) told Paul Adom-Otchere in an interview on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana programme.
The 82-year-old believes that “God does not bless you because you give tithe, God blesses you because you’re worshipping him. He blesses you because you love your neighbour as yourself, and you provide for your neighbour when he has need, that is what God wants you to do. So, we are turning the Bible upside down.”