When your opponent admits they’d wear a pink tutu and ride a unicycle if the government told them to: you win; they lose. I know that’s in the rules somewhere.
To Obey or Not Obey?
The chickens are coming home to roost. The church has experienced weeks of ‘online church’, we face (pun intended) the possibility of forced masking in worship as well as vaccine passports for worship services. Look at the Bill of Rights. Our liberties have been stripped from us. Our right to refuse medical treatment is under threat, our right to freedom of thought, conscience, privacy and religion is imperiled. Our right to peaceful assembly is gone. As are the rights to freedom of association, movement and freedom from discrimination.
The time for decisions is here. The trouble is, our collective Christian minds are creaky and stiff from disuse. Our body, feminine, soft and nurturing in form, but lacking the complementary male strength and roughness of virtues such as courage due to a matriarchal dominance of the church (often in spite of male leaders), is frozen in a semi-recumbent position. What will we do? Well, the women of both sexes will bleat on their social media platforms about doing the right thing and rail at any Christians who awaken enough from slumber to question whether we are in fact in the beginnings of a living totalitarian nightmare. “Obey the Government! Romans 13!” exclaim these newly minted experts in theology who, with their theological position, could no doubt justify yellow stars with the word Jude written in fancy lettering vaccine passports.
Since our minds are seized shut from lack of use and no call of action will get us to actually do anything, we’ll resort to one of our favourite feel-good pastimes. We’ll sing. But we’ll avoid the old hymns of the faith. It’s a bit hard to sing “Stand up for Jesus” when that might require backbone. We’ll no doubt sing lustily some inane and trite modern evangelopop. How about “Who the Son sets free, Oh, is free indeed”? But we’ll do it from our living rooms wearing a mask hoping the State will set us free once the population has been compliant enough and buckled under the State’s loving#kindness.
Read MoreIncompetence and Waste
Those who are regular readers will know that we at The Sojournal are opponents of statism. We believe the state has a legitimate role. It is indeed a minister of God, but it has rebelled against God’s role for it and has arrogated more and more power. We have theological reasons for opposing much of its spending and regarding it as theft. However, we understand that not all Christians are yet theologically convinced of our position. After all, most of us have grown up in an environment of statism. It is only natural for us to assume it is normal and right. It’s an unquestioned assumption in our lives. It’s hard to see our cultural blind spots.
However, let me appeal to the pragmatists among you. State control of things outside what we at The Sojournal consider to be their God-given realm tends to be inept and incompetent. You know this. Accountability matters. And when you can’t take your business elsewhere, there is no accountability, and therefore there is always wastage. Today let’s consider the much-vaunted Ka Ora, Ka Ako Healthy School Lunches Programme.
On the Ministry of Education website, we are informed that school lunches will be provided at a maximum per child, per day cost of $5 per Year 1-8 student and $7 for high school students. Now any parent with a few kids living on a budget knows that you can feed your children a healthy lunch for under $5 easy. But even this amount seems mild compared to the actual cost to the taxpayer.
According to the Treasury budget at a glance document for 2021, we are allocating $527,000,000 toward the school lunches programme. According to the document which is dated 20 May 2021, there are currently 144,000 students receiving these ‘free’ lunches. Now let’s do a little basic arithmetic. $527 million, divided by 144,000 students should give us the amount it costs to feed one child lunches per year. Then let’s divide that number by the number of school days in a year (190 in 2021). This gives us a figure of $19.26 per child. Now let’s be generous and assume that there is going to be an increase in the number of children being fed. Let’s #be kind and assume that they managed to get this up to 200,000 students. That would reduce the cost to $13.87 per child.
What does it actually cost to feed a child? I feed my children 2-4 slices of bread for lunch, with their favourite spread and provide them with a piece of fruit as well. Sometimes they’ll get a homemade biscuit. How much does that cost? Around $1. I am almost 14 times more efficient than the government at feeding my children. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I am a grumpy old scrooge-like curmudgeon who is half-starving my children, and I ought to spend double what I do on their lunches. That still makes what the government offers nearly 7 times less efficient than me. Furthermore, because I know what my children like, they will actually eat the lunches I provide while “thousands of taxpayer-funded school lunches are being left uneaten by students each week.” Imagine for a moment the good that all this wasted money, confiscated from citizens through taxes, could be used for if its owners were able to choose how to spend it themselves.
Having thus appealed to the pragmatists, I urge you to consider why this is so. Why is it that the government seems to be so incompetent at as simple a task as providing a child with lunch? Why are its attempts at providing welfare, housing and education so bungling? Is it possible that God has so ordered the world that blessing tends to follow cutting along the grain, and cursing and difficulty follow cutting against it. God has ordained the world with different spheres of authority that are charged with different roles. It is not the role of the government to provide food for children. It is the role of parents. God has ordained that the family is to provide food for itself. The father is the God-ordained protector and provider of the family. He is to provide for his children (Genesis 2:15, 3:19). When the family is functioning as it should, it is going to be far better placed to provide food for children.
Render to Caesar What is Caesar’s
In yesterday’s article, we highlighted the general weakness of the church in its thinking on government. It is so weak, that when I use the word government, many Christian readers will automatically assume that I am talking about state government. Some will be unaware of any other God-ordained governments. This is because we live in an era where the state government has increased in power and usurped the power of other legitimate and God-ordained spheres of government causing these to atrophy.
In my experience, when one talks to Christians who have imbibed the statist culture about the immorality of the state’s involvement in education, healthcare and welfare or of the evil of redistributionist taxes, one does not have to wait long before one is told that Christians ought to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. What is most frustrating about these conversations is that what is Caesar’s is automatically assumed to be the status quo. It seems Caesar can never overreach his authority.
The Context
So today we will briefly look at this passage. Jesus was nearing the end of his earthly ministry, and he had aroused the envy-ridden ire of the religious leaders. Jesus had just not-so-subtly condemned them for their unwillingness to submit to him and celebrate him as the son of God in a parable that ended in their destruction and the destruction of their city, a not so subtle reference to Jerusalem. In response, the Pharisees set about fulfilling the prophecy by plotting to entangle Jesus. They wanted to get rid of him. However, Jesus had not only made enemies of the religious leaders, but also the political leaders. Herod was not so fond of him either.
This led, as it has throughout history, to the odd alliance of secular power with religious leadership. Some of the disciples of the Pharisees and some Herodians joined together in an attempt to trap Jesus. The Pharisees hated the idea of Jews paying taxes to some foreign overlord. The Herodians, like Herod, were cosied up to the Romans and wanted the status quo to remain. So this unusual alliance comes to Jesus with flattering words. The attempted trap was a question. “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” The trap was laid and ready to be sprung. They thought they had Jesus. They knew his claim – to be the son of the king. They had witnessed the Messianic triumphal entry. They had rebuked him for not suppressing the kingly ascriptions of the crowd and children who entered the temple precincts with him. They knew the Scriptures. The Messiah would rule the nations and dash his enemies to pieces. But they did not believe Jesus was the Messiah.
So their trap was an attempt to force Jesus to make explicit what had been implicit up until this time or suffer the wrath of the people. If Jesus was truly the Messiah, they expected he would own it by saying everything belongs to me, and therefore Caesar does not have the right to take money from the Jews, my people. This would make him an enemy to Caesar who would brook no opposition to his claims to deity and rule. That would mean death. If on the other hand he wavered and claimed Caesar had the authority to tax the Jews, he would lose the popularity that so provoked them.
Jesus Reply and Its Meaning
So this is the context of Jesus’ reply. It was a trap. Jesus knew his time was very near, but it was not yet. He must die when the times were fulfilled. He had to be the Passover lamb. So Jesus asks for a coin to be brought to him. He asks whose inscription is on the coin. Of course, it is the image of Caesar. Then Jesus says, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God, what is God’s.” The response of those who heard this was to marvel. Jesus had not been trapped and answered in an amazing way. Our problem is we don’t see how amazing his answer was. It was not an answer that ruled in favour of the Herodians or the Pharisees. If we don’t get that, we miss what we should marvel at. Jesus took the trap by its jaws and broke it.
First of all, his listeners are told to render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, or what is due to him. That means Caesar does have things that are due to him. Caesar can tax. Caesar does have a legitimate realm in which to exercise authority. The Pharisees, whose hatred for the Romans caused them to reject the tax, hated authority in general. Their king had come, and they plotted how to take his authority. To them, Jesus says, “There are things that you must render to Caesar.”
But there is more. And this is what our modern secularised statist Christians fail to understand. Too often, Christians assume that Jesus is saying that government has carte blanche on what Caesar owns and ought to be rendered. When they tell us to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s they leave the very question of what belongs to Caesar unanswered. They assume Caesar is due everything he claims he is due. Why? Because their secular education with its idol of state and demos has trained them in worship well.
However, as Douglas Wilson often points out, one of the things Caesar is not rendered is the right to determine what should be rendered to him! Jesus’ answer was not simply “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” He finished by saying, “and to God what is God’s.”
The very coin that Jesus asked for, the denarius, had an inscription of Caesar on the coin, and would have had the words “Tiberius Caesar Augustus Son to the Divine Augustus” and on the other side, “Highest Priest”. Do these titles belong to Caesar? Should the early Christians have rendered them to him? Well considering he lies dead to this day awaiting the command of Christ to come out from his grave….of course not. Caesar thought he ought to have these titles rendered to him but they belong to Christ.
Furthermore, his first-century audience, well-versed in Scriptures would have been reminded of another image on something more valuable than a cold dead piece of metal. Man was stamped with the very image of God. Thus each one of those men in front of Jesus ought to have been rendered to God. The Pharisees, who stood in the way of the king ought to have bowed down before him. The supporters of the immoral Herod ought to have given themselves to Christ. All men ought to be rendered to God. All positions of authority ought to be rendered to God. All things ought to be rendered to God, because they are all his.
What does this mean? It means Caesar ought to render himself to God, by governing according to God’s laws, and not arrogating to himself what God has given to others. If he refuses to do this, he is not following Christ’s dictum here. In these very words, Jesus signaled the coming of the end to all totalitarians and self-aggrandizing powers. Nimrod in the days of the tower of Babel, the Pharaohs of Egypt, the kings and rulers of Assyria, Babylon and Persia and Greece, and yes, the Caesars of Rome were totalitarians. They abused and oppressed their citizens. But now, Christ has come, and he sounds the warning to all would-be oppressive regimes. Their end is nigh. Christ is king. He rules. Rulers and enemies who take counsel against him will be dashed in pieces. For he reigns. His yoke is easy and his burden light. And he shall have dominion, not they.
As Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, it conquered in a slow and gradual way. Even Caesar eventually rendered himself to God. As this took place, and as the fruit of Christianity gradually spread over the ensuing two millennia, where Christ’s kingdom has held sway, tyrants have been toppled and a Christian view of government has gradually developed and influenced society giving freedom to citizens. It is because of Christ’s words here in Matthew, and elsewhere that absolute monarchy was abolished. It is because of his words that the Constitution which granted rights to the individual became the founding document of the United States of America. Christ’s rule and reign brings freedom from the old way of tyranny. Unfortunately, as nations turn against Christ and embrace the idol of statism, they will once again suffer tyranny. If we will not render ourselves to God, He will hand us over to the not-so-tender love of our false gods.
In our current setting, we are really in little danger of refusing to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. This is not a problem many of us have. But in what seems a common danger, our leaders will use verses like these ones to challenge us on a sin that few of us are likely to commit while neglecting to highlight the very real danger almost all of us are in. “Make sure you give Caesar his due,” they remind their law-abiding congregations as we struggle to support our families on one income under exorbitant redistributive taxes that reward idleness and immorality. We will rail against a sin that we are unlikely to be committing because it’s more comfortable that way, and our religious leaders can remain ‘respectable’ in the eyes of the secular elite. Once again, just as in Jesus’ time, our religious leaders and secular leaders seem united in their opposition to Christ’s claims of universal lordship.
Let us not settle for that uneasy truce. Let us remember the things we ought to render to God. First of all, we render ourselves to God, not Caesar. We belong to God, not our rulers. When our governments try to tyrannise us or threaten us as if we belong to them, we should tell them in no uncertain terms that they ought to render themselves to God, and that we most certainly will never render ourselves to them. We will say as one, “I will never render complete and utter obedience to you, because I belong to God, and therefore I am not your slave. I was bought by Christ and I am now free.”
Secondly, we will never render our children to them. My children have the very image of God stamped on them. Of course they do not belong to the government! Therefore I will not let an out-of-control and self-aggrandizing government take my children and brainwash them in their overweening attempts at control through education. That would be idolatry on my part. So I say to the state, “They are not your children, they belong to Christ.”
Thirdly we will not render our work to the government. Sure, because they are bigger than us, and can unjustly take our money from us to give to their pet idolatries, we might be bullied and forced to give up the fruits of our labour. But we will recognise that this labour and its fruit does not belong to them. God has called each man to the task of dominion. As God enjoyed the fruit of his work, and blessed it, so each man ought to enjoy the fruit of his own work. It ought not to be confiscated from him and its blessing be transferred to another. This is unjust, and the God of justice will judge such wickedness.
Fourthly and on a related note, we will remind them, and our fellow citizens that the role of the state is a minister of the sword. God appoints the state to administer justice. They are stewards of the authority he gives them. Christians who are not naive realise that despite allowing the state to bear the sword, Christ does not authorise it to kill indiscriminately or make up its own standards of justice. This same logic applies to the role of the state. Yes, Christ commands us to render tax to Caesar and Caesar can lawfully tax. But that does not mean he cannot unlawfully tax. When Caesar taxes to usurp authority that Christ has not given him, he is in rebellion against Christ. Christ has given the state a particular role. It is not the minister of welfare. Nor is it the minister of education. And it certainly isn’t the minister of economics. It is not minister of the Word and Sacrament. Whenever the state steps outside of its God-given bounds, it is rebelling against its king, Jesus Christ. We will do all we can to encourage our fellow Christians to reject the idolatry of statism and to worship Christ alone. We will encourage them to reject the easy, but almost always idolatrous answer to all problems that begins with the words, “The government needs to…” We will work to see the state reject its idolatry and fulfill the calling Christ has given it. This means we need the gospel of Christ’s lordship to be preached and accepted in the hearts of our fellow citizens. Repent and believe. Christ is Lord, not Caesar.
Government and Incompetence
It was recently revealed that the government (or should I say we the taxpayer) forked out $50 million on a Maori Trades and Training Fund which since June 2020 has had the effect of providing 4 jobs. That works out at 12.5 million dollars per job. Admittedly, only $11.4m has been committed to approved projects and just $1.8m has been paid out. Nonetheless, this excels even the usual incompetence we see from the state.
National’s answer is to do a better job of spending the money. Well, I guess that’s a step in the right direction. Achieving some good that is not your responsibility while wasting less of someone else’s money is better than wasting that money and achieving next to nothing. But why should we settle for this?
When will we as a people stop worshipping this false idol of state? It cannot do what it promises to do. It cannot save us. It is given to us by God not so that it can create jobs, or educate our children. It is given to us by God to protect us from the evildoer and punish him. How many times do we have to see a government step outside its God-given role and make a complete cock-up of things before we throw down our idol and advocate for limited government? I can guarantee that an entrepreneur with $50 million could have provided a lot more than 4 jobs.