For the novice Christian, the first question about this article is what is a tithe? A tithe is 1/10 of your increase. God implores us to devote this 1/10 to him. Scriptural basis is found easily in the old testiment. Abraham gave a tithe of the spoil to Melchizedek. The tithe appears in the books of the law numerous places. The new testament teaching is that all we have belongs to God, but tithe is still used as a guideline. The book of Hebrews chapter 7 in the new testiment is probably the clearest new testiment teaching on the tithe. Clearly the act of Abraham offering a tenth of the increase to Melchizedek is the example we must follow to properly honor our Christ. This is the least of the honor we should pay to Jesus.
For those Christian that practice tithing, I would ask what you do to tithe your time. We don't normally think of tithing our time. But if we were to stop and think about it what would a tithe of our time be worth. A week has 7 days x 24 hours per day or 168 hours in a week. A tithe of 168 hours is 16.8 hours or approximately 17 hours. The average adult sleeps 7 hours per day leaving about 17 hours of waking time. Does it seem pure coincidence to you that a tithe of our time on a week happens to be equal to the waking hours of one day a week. Does it seem coincidental to you that one of the ten commandments is to keep the sabath day holy?
If you accept that the Sabbath teaching is a tithe of our time, then there are some lessons to be learned here. This answers the ago old question of whether we tithe on the net or the gross? The 168 hours of the week are not all productive hours. The hours we are asleep are necessary for good mental health, but do not contribute directly to our productivity, and yet if we look at the Sabath as a tithe of our time we are tithing on the whole week including those less productive sleeping hours. This should tell us that we need to tithe on money earned including that money that is less productive for us because it is removed from our pay check before we get the net pay. Money taken out of our pay check for FICA, Social Security and Medicare provide less obvious benefits just as the hours asleep have only a subtle benefit, yet the Sabbath is a tithe of the "gross" whole week and not just the productive "net" hours. Thus the tithe of our money should be a tithe of the gross amount.
There is a second lesson to be learned from the Sabath as a tithe of our week of time. The tithe on the week are the awake hours of the Sabbath, not the less productive asleep hours. God expects our best, not the culls.