“Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” – Matthew 22:21

Today’s Scripture Reading (October 2, 2014): Matthew 22

Question: What do Henry David Thoreau, John Adams, Karl Marx, Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi all have in common? Answer: At some point in each of their careers they were tax resistors. Tax resistance is an ancient practice whereby those who are ordered to pay tax refuse because of their disagreement either with the government in power or with the intended purpose that the government proposes for the tax collected. The Quakers have been tax resisters during times of military conflict, not because they object to the government in charge, but rather because as staunch pacifists the object to their tax being used to finance war. Tax resistance has been blamed for the failure of several of this World’s Empires – including the empires of the Egyptian, Roman, Spanish and Aztec civilizations.

So Jesus is asked by religious leaders whether it was legal, in a Jewish political sense, to pay taxes to Rome. The question was not an arbitrary one. During the first century various parts of the Jewish population were active tax resisters. The hope was that they could make the occupation of Israel not financially feasible. In fact, the Jewish Zealots refusal to pay the Roman poll tax resulted in the First Jewish-Roman War.

But the answer that Jesus gives to the question of our remittance of tax is ingenious. First he strikes a blow against Christian tax resisters everywhere by declaring that the coin, which bears the image of Caesar, should be returned to Caesar. Essentially his ruling is that since the government provides the currency that is used in commerce by a nation, that that is the only rationale required for a government to demand taxes from its population. With this ruling it would seem that true followers of Christ are prohibited from following any kind of tax resistance policy.

But Jesus did not stop with this prohibition. Not only are we to give to the reigning government what belongs to them in the form of our taxes, but we are to give to God what belongs to him. If the coin used to pay taxes bears the image of the king, then our very lives bear the image God (after all, Genesis states that we created in his image), and we are to give what bears his image back to him. In the end, our finances may belong to our governments, but our lives belong to God. And while the governments of our world may use our money to tear the earth apart, God will use our lives given back to him to put it back together again.   

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Mark 12