The Earth Mover Who Reversed the Tithe

In 1935, a Texas industrialist named R.G. LeTourneau made a decision that baffled his accountants. Already giving generously to churches and missions, he restructured his entire financial life so that he kept only ten percent of his income and gave away ninety. He called it "reversing the tithe."

LeTourneau had not always been prosperous. He had failed in business, lost nearly everything during the Depression, and buried a son. Yet each time darkness pressed in, his heart remained firm. He did not scramble to hoard what remained. Instead, he gave more freely, trusted more deeply, and worked with a steady confidence that unsettled those who watched him.

His company grew to become the largest earth-moving equipment manufacturer in the world. He held nearly three hundred patents. But colleagues noticed something remarkable: LeTourneau never seemed anxious about market downturns or competitors. When bad news arrived, he received it the way a man receives weather — noting it, adjusting, but never shaken at the root.

By the time he died in 1969, he had given away millions to fund universities, missions, and scholarships that still operate today. His generosity, as the psalmist writes, was "distributed freely" and "given to the poor," and his righteousness endured because it was never his to begin with.

Psalm 112 paints the portrait of exactly this kind of person — not someone untouched by trouble, but someone whose trust in the Almighty runs so deep that generosity becomes as natural as breathing.