Giving To Caesar

Mark 12:17 states:

Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

Anytime we enter the political season, we're sure to hear much about taxes, as well as what we use those taxes for. For those of you who weren't aware, the income tax is a relatively recent phenomenon in the United States, being established in 1912. Prior to that, the primary mechanism of revenue generation were tariffs.

We Christians don't claim that we shouldn't pay taxes, and a common misconception is that we all want some kind of theocracy established based on God. There have been plenty of occasions where this has been tried, and we read of one noble experiment that spanned from about 1040 BC-587 BC when the people of Israel had kings rule over them, and that didn't seem to end well. This begs a very simple question--just what IS "Caesar's" and what is God's?

In case you can't tell, what I'm now writing is being written about 9 hours after what I've written above, since my neighbor and fellow Trinity member Jeff Buck called me up and made me go golfing. So...

Imagine if the United States was truly a Christian nation, with Christian values embedded in all our laws and administrative policies. As soon as you all nod your heads vigorously and say "YES!" I'll ask one simple question--whose Christianity? We Christians disagree on so many points that I shudder to think what we would come up with as a "Christian" government. I suspect it would be so watered down from compromise that it would infuriate everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike. There was an old Mercedes commercial that used the statement "Compromise is a situation where both parties don't get what they want," and we'd just further that by not only trying to define Christianity, but what it would mean in terms of governing.

What is "Caesar's" in the end? It would be what it uniquely of this earth. Government is a human invention, so don't blame God and drag him in and make him fix what we broke ourselves. What is God's is much easier to explain--our hearts and our lives, and if we dedicate those to the Lord, the government part will take care of itself.

Scott