Taxes: A Trap of Allegiance?

​In Luke 20, some teachers of the religious law try to entrap Jesus by asking him a tax question.  Now, I don’t know about you but I usually don’t go around trying to field everybody’s tax questions and I often will quickly laugh and change the subject whenever a tax-philosophy is shared.  Yet, these leaders wanted to put Jesus in a lose-lose scenario.  You see, if Jesus told the people not to pay taxes, then he would be in trouble with the Roman authorities who had successfully squashed any notion of not contributing to the government from other Zealots.  This would be the leaders best case scenario.  However, if Jesus tells the people to pay their taxes and be good citizens, then in the view of the religious leaders, this stance would forfeit the Messianic fervor surrounding Jesus.  He would be seen not as a rebel leader assumed in the notion of Messiah, but as a pawn of the Roman government that would be a far cry from the expectations of those following him. So, here is the story from Scripture, Luke 20:20-26.

20 Watching for their opportunity, the leaders sent spies pretending to be honest men. They tried to get Jesus to say something that could be reported to the Roman governor so he would arrest Jesus. 21 “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you speak and teach what is right and are not influenced by what others think. You teach the way of God truthfully. 22 Now tell us—is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
23 He saw through their trickery and said, 24 “Show me a Roman coin. Whose picture and title are stamped on it?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
25 “Well then,” he said, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.”
26 So they failed to trap him by what he said in front of the people. Instead, they were amazed by his answer, and they became silent.

So, which side did Jesus take?  If you’re confused then it’s okay, the teachers of religious law were too and it says they became silent!  Jesus doesn’t pick a side, which might help us navigate other either/or false dichotomies that we face,  but instead he presents a notion that there things reserved for Government and there are things reserved for God.  The reservation is made by the word “belongs.”  Therefore, we might notice that the trust of God is on our money, but the pictures are of our civc leaders and so Jesus is kind of saying that we must give to the government the stuff that bears the government’s image.  Meanwhile, we are to give to God the stuff that belongs to God because it bears the Father’s image.  And what we don’t want to do is give to the government that which belongs to God and think that God overly cares about our gifts of stuff that has the government’s pictures all over it.  

They failed to trap him…and often that is what Christians face is entrapment when we are met with a political philosophy or a dichotomy that asks us to choose between supporting A or B.  I pray that we seek the wisdom to be people of high standing in the Kingdom of God and be people who discern the proper images on our stuff.  Jesus asked, “Whose picture and title are stamped on it?”  May this not simply guide our tax payments, but may we think about this in all our life’s arenas.  

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