Median household incomes in the South Bay far exceed the national average, leading some pastors to quietly suggest that 10% is a floor, not a ceiling, for engineers and product managers. Is proportional generosity a biblical mandate, or is the tithe the tithe regardless of your stock options?
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Add your commentBorn and raised in San Jose, attended Calvary Church on Leigh for 20 years. Let me tell you something — the moment a pastor starts eyeing your W-2 instead of your heart, something has gone very wrong. The tithe is 10%. Period. It's not a sliding scale based on your RSUs. God doesn't have a Levels.fyi page for spiritual giving.
My husband and I gave 22% last year. Nobody told us to. We just prayed about it and that's where we landed. Honestly the question of "what's the minimum requirement" is kind of a weird starting point for a Christian to have. If you're negotiating with God over percentages you might want to sit with that for a while.
2 Corinthians 9:7 — "Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." I've always read this as the New Testament actually TRANSCENDING the 10% rule entirely. The real standard isn't 10% or 15% — it's radical, Spirit-led generosity that may look completely different for each believer. A senior engineer at Cisco and a checkout clerk at Safeway on Blossom Hill shouldn't be handed the same percentage and told they're square with God.
lol imagine making $400k at Google in Los Gatos and only dropping $40k at church and thinking youre done. some of yall tithe 10% and then drop $8,000 on a ski trip to Tahoe without blinking. the Bible has a LOT more to say about wealth than just tithe percentages and we conveniently skip all of it
Theologically speaking, the tithe in Leviticus was actually three separate tithes — the Levitical tithe, the festival tithe, and the poor tithe — which together came out to something closer to 23% over a three-year cycle. So the idea that 10% is this sacred biblical number handed down from Sinai is already a oversimplification. That said I dont think the answer is pastors pressuring high earners. The answer is discipleship and mature theology of money, which most evangelical churches in the South Bay are frankly not equipped to teach.
ok so i just moved here from rural Georgia for a SWE role and i genuinely cannot believe how much rent costs. my "six figure salary" after California taxes and a one bedroom in Willow Glen leaves me with like... not that much? people hear $130k and think im rich. im not rich. please stop assuming tech workers are all swimming in stock options
I actually asked my pastor at a church near Santana Row about this directly last spring. He said — and I thought this was wise — "the tithe is training wheels." The point was never to give 10% and coast. It's to build the HABIT of surrender, and then grow from there as God grows your capacity. That framing changed everything for me. I stopped thinking of my giving as a bill to pay and started thinking of it as a practice to deepen. Whether that means 12% or 18% is between you and the Lord, not between you and some pastor who sees your LinkedIn profile.
Hard disagree with the whole premise of this thread. Once you let churches start means-testing generosity based on salary bands youve basically invented a tiered Christianity where rich members have more spiritual obligations. That is a terrible road to go down. Every believer gives proportionally BY DEFINITION when they give 10% — the proportion IS the point. A nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital giving 10% and a FAANG engineer giving 10% are doing the exact same spiritually obedient thing. Pushing the engineer to do more implies the nurse is doing less. No.
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