There's no secret that I'm a Libertarian and as a result very much opposed to high taxation and all of that, so it pains me to see people misunderstand a passage that talks about Taxation to justify tax rates.
The passage is of course Jesus' answer to the question of taxation:
Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies, who pretended to be sincere. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said, so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor. 21 So the spies questioned him: “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach what is right, and that you do not show partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. 22 Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” (Luke 20:20-22 NIV)
Jesus' ministry is reaching its climax and as a result the questioning is getting more intense, Luke describes these people as spies, they're pretending to be sincere, but anyone can tell that this question is clearly designed to get Jesus in trouble, if he says No, the Romans will kill him and if he says yes the Jews will kill him because they want to rebel against the Romans.
Jesus could just brush it off, but he responds:
He saw through their duplicity and said to them, 24 “Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
25 He said to them, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” (Luke 20:23-25 NIV)
Jesus sees that they're trying to trap him and knowing that Cesar's inscription is on the coin says "give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. And so the conclusion is, Jesus says we should pay taxes or Jesus says taxes are good. But that's ignoring one key detail, the spies (or Pharisees depending on the Gospel you are looking at) are satisfied with Jesus' answer, if Jesus meant "pay your taxes" wouldn't they have risen up a mob to kill him right there?
What Jesus was saying still rings true to us, yes we should be obeying the laws of the Land but that's not what Jesus is saying here (we should do it because it is mentioned elsewhere in the Bible, but not Luke 20). Jesus is saying that it all belongs to God and we should be giving all we have to God. Just look at the positioning within the Gospel of Luke, In Luke 19 Jesus talked about servants using their masters "minas" (a currency) for his good, Jesus has been talking about how we should be using everything we have for God. Most of us have money (at least compared to the global population, we're all in that 1%) but we also have skills and abilities, that's what Jesus wants from this discourse. He wants us to give everything to God because, after all, everything is God's.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
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