I believe that there is nothing wrong with the renumeration for those who have devoted themselves to the ministry of the gospel, although the support should be completely from love offerings and not taught as the tithe, which is NOT a New Testament principle.
Unfortunately, the tithe is taught as a required "payment" in order to support clergy, although it is foreign to the teachings of the early church fathers.
I can't read New Testament Greek, or Hebrew.
You no longer need to. All that is needed are a few reference translations for comparison and perhaps a E.W. Vine's expository dictionary or a Strong's concordance and you're in business.
If anything, we have no excuse any longer for not knowing and studying God's word, which is OUR responsibility.
I don't have years to spend studying Church history and where doctrine came from. I can't spend twenty hours a week studying a passage. My pastor can do all those things, and does, and then explains it to me.
And how do you know whether what your pastor says is correct? Perhaps his training in seminary was tainted and/or slanted to support a particular denominational position (as my training did) and not THE truth. Is that a possibility?
If I had to struggle on my own, or only with other people who know as little about the Bible as I do, how would I ever grow?
The same way the first believers did while hiding in caves avoiding capture: prayer, fellowship and the teaching of the apostles (the original ones, not the flakes we see today).
Some of the most spectacular heresies I've seen taught were taught by seminary-educated people.
But equally spectacular are the misrepresnations I've seen of people who claim to read the Bible without bias, and are proud of their lack of education.
>>the support should be completely from love offerings and not taught as the tithe, which is NOT a New Testament principle<<
Now, I think I understand...you carry a Bible that begins with the Gospel of Matthew - the Reader's Digest version of God's Word and Christian teaching. Do you not recall Jesus words, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets: I have not come not to abolish them but to fulfill them." Read the whole of Matthew 5:17-20 and then convince me that Jesus intended for you to ignore the Word of God as passed down to us through the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament. So you don't like that O.T. concept of tithe? How do you feel about the 10 Commandments? Just another one of those irrelevant principles from the Old Testament that you feel free to challenge or ignore?