A ‘tithe of a change’ — 10% of an investment — can help us make positive changes
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
December has us thinking about the new liturgical year, which starts in Advent, while January has us thinking about the new calendar year. It’s a time for resolutions, so let me ask:
What’s one small change each of us can make this year to make the Gospel a deeper part of our lives and more evident to the world around us?
Perhaps we can pick up something for the local food pantry each time we go to the grocery store. What if we spent 10% of each grocery bill on such a donation? “We eat, they eat” could become our mantra and our habit.
Perhaps we could keep track of the time we spend listening to the radio, watching television or watching internet videos and dedicate 10% of that time to prayer instead.
Perhaps we could walk, share a ride or take public transportation to one of our regular destinations once a month, changing a small percentage of our action in favor of reduced fuel consumption and increased community.
Perhaps we could keep track of how much time we spend consuming news each day or each week — whether through internet, television, radio or newspaper — and then dedicate 10% of that time to studying the faith instead.
Sometimes, to be sure, we need to make drastic changes to our lives! But we all know: It’s hard to sustain those changes.
What I’m proposing, instead, is that we start thinking about small changes that are building blocks. When we make a small change in one part of our life — what we might call a “tithe of change,” a 10% change — it doesn’t seem like much at the start. Over 10 or 20 years, however, those small changes accumulate like compound interest, and they can become great!
Frankly, that’s what our culture needs. We’ve been drifting away from the Gospel, one small step at a time, for a long time. The gap between the Gospel and culture is now large! But that’s not just recent history; it’s a perpetual tendency of fallen humanity. What’s needed is that we keep “bending culture back” toward the Gospel. And culture is nothing but the accumulated habits of individuals, so change starts with each one of us.
After an election, many people feel like huge parts of the world are beyond our control. The temptation is to spend a lot of time and energy talking about things that are beyond our sphere of influence. It’s a skillful temptation, to be sure: the problems are real. But it’s still a temptation because we’re spending our time and energy where it won’t make a difference.
It’s harder, but ultimately more effective, to make changes within our sphere of influence.
So: What’s a tithe of change you can make this year?
