So they watched him and sent spies who pretended to be honest, in order to trap him by what he said, so as to hand him over to the jurisdiction and authority of the governor. So they asked him, “Teacher, we know that you are right in what you say and teach, and you show deference to no one, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But he perceived their craftiness and said to them, “Show me a denarius. Whose head and whose title does it bear?” They said, “The emperor’s.” He said to them, “Then give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were not able in the presence of the people to trap him by what he said; and being amazed by his answer, they became silent.
(Luke 20:20-26)
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
There’s always been a bit of a tense relationship between the state and the church, and – in the life of individual Christians – between being a Christian and being a citizen. The problem of the relationship was played out in the news just a couple of weeks ago. Confronted by the uproar over the images of children being deliberately separated from their parents on the US-Mexico border by US immigration and border control officials, the Attorney-General of the United States – Jeff Sessions – appealed to Romans 5 to try to tell people that they should stop criticizing the Trump administration for this policy, because the Bible, he said, told Christians to obey the state and its laws. I’m not going to get into an in depth discussion about Romans 5 except to say that it is one of the most tragically misused and abused passages of the entire Bible. It’s a passage that was used by Hitler, for example, to tell Christians in Nazi Germany that they should go along with the Nazi regime because the Bible demanded obedience to the state – and many Christians in Nazi Germany did, in fact, knuckle under to Nazism. In the case of Jeff Sessions, it was heartwarming to see condemnation of his use of the passage coming from a whole variety of sources, and when you have everyone from Roman Catholic bishops to liberal Protestant leaders to someone like Franklin Graham condemning both the policy and the scriptural justification Sessions used to try to quell criticism of the policy, I think it’s probably safe to say that there’s a solid consensus within the broader Christian community that the passage was being used out of context and improperly interpreted. And that’s a perfect and recent illustration of the tension involved with being both a Christian who belongs to the Kingdom of God and a citizen of an earthly nation. There is always the temptation to replace the cross with the flag, to replace God with country or leader and to replace faith with patriotism, to the point at which it’s easy to start to make country and church indistinguishable, no matter how much we might talk about the so-called separation of church and state.
As a citizen of a country whose national anthem makes explicit reference to God and asks for God’s protection over the country, I am nevertheless uneasily aware of the fact that when country and church become too intertwined and when patriotism and faith start to co-exist as equals in many people’s lives, church and faith are generally the losers. Many Christians allow their own personal political ideologies to shape their understanding of Jesus’ teachings, rather than the other way around. We see that being played out quite openly in the United States right now, but it does happen in Canada as well. When Christians begin demanding that the state basically do the church’s job or that the state start to enforce any particular Christian group’s understanding of morality, then the church has lost. If we reach the point at which we need the state to enforce Christian values, then Christianity has started to resemble the Taliban of Afghanistan rather than reflecting the grace of God and the love of Jesus. And yet, as both disciples of Jesus and as citizens of Canada, we do need to find some way of reconciling those two calls upon our lives. That’s why I wanted to look at this passage from Luke’s Gospel today.
The convergence of Canada Day with our day of worship offers us a perfect opportunity to reflect upon how to live with the reality of what we might all our dual citizenship: Scripture tells us that we are citizens of heaven, but most of us are also citizens of the country in which we live. We have obligations – both confirmed by Scripture – to obey the laws of the land but also to be faithful followers of Jesus, and sometimes Christians are faced with the dilemma of what to do when their government crosses over that line and asks its citizens to accept a policy that simply can’t be reconciled with Christian faith. Devotion to God and loyalty to country aren’t mutually exclusive, but they can be in conflict. Reconciling the two requires thought, and so I wanted to speak on this Canada Day about how as Christians we reconcile our loyalty to both God and to Canada. How do we live simultaneously as both citizens of heaven and citizens of our country? The passage we heard from Luke’s Gospel offers us perhaps the most practical issue any of us have to deal with, because we deal with it virtually every day: is it right to pay taxes to a government that might sometimes take positions that are inconsistent with and possibly sometimes even anathema to Christian faith?
In Luke, the context of Jesus’ words, of course, was the Roman Empire. It was the scribes and priests who came to Jesus on that particular day with this question – and this was a group that had no love for the Empire. They saw the Romans as an occupying power and they yearned to be liberated from it, but hypocritically they were willing to use the power and authority of the Roman Empire to achieve their ends. Their question was whether the people of Judea should pay taxes. That wasn’t a simple question with an obvious answer. By paying taxes to the Empire, the people were – among other things – paying for their own occupation and for the pagan practices that the Roman Empire supported and paid for. Now the scribes and priests assumed that Jesus could answer only one of two ways: he could say “pay your taxes,” and the people would turn against him, or he could say “don’t pay your taxes” and the Romans would arrest him for inciting rebellion. Either way, they assumed, they’d be rid of him. But Jesus answered enigmatically: “... give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” So the people were confronted with a dilemma: what did they owe the Empire, and what did they owe God, and how would they balance the two? Two thousand years later, we still face that challenge: what belongs to the maple leaf, and what belongs to the cross, and how do we balance the two? Or you could ask: what do we owe the government, and what do we owe God?
I’m going to suggest to you that Scripture tells us that we owe the government four things. First, we owe the government respect. We might find it easy to respect government leaders who are honest, just and moral people. But there are leaders who lie, who pass laws for personal gain, who engage in immoral acts, who divide rather than unite. And the Bible tells us to give all government leaders our respect. The word “respect” here doesn’t mean that we have to approve without question everything that every government leader does or that we should never criticize them, but the teachings of Jesus suggest that we should always act toward every person – including our leaders – in a way that accords them personal dignity. Second – like it or not – we owe the government taxes. Someone once said that a person who enjoys paying taxes probably also enjoys hitting themself over the head with a hammer. But enjoyable or not, we are to pay our taxes – even if we don’t like what the government does with our taxes. In a book called “God And Caesar,” John Eidsmore wrote that
the Roman government of Paul’s day deified Nero [and sponsored his worship.] Rome certainly did not use its tax money as Christians would desire. The tax collectors of Jesus’ time … did not employ fair methods of taxation. Taxes were often excessive and arbitrarily imposed. Yet Jesus and Paul both spoke very clearly on the subject: the Christian ought to pay … taxes.
Withholding taxes (even when we don’t like how the taxes are being spent) or evading taxes by being paid “under the table” simply isn’t consistent with the teaching of Scripture. Third, we owe the government our involvement. Christians have a unique and important perspective to bring to the important issues of the day, and let’s let go of the nonsense that says that faith should be left behind in the church and has no place in political discussion. Anyone who is a Christian must be guided by their faith in Jesus as they make political decisions and discuss political questions. The church should avoid being partisan, but the church must be political if the church is going to be about the business of Jesus who so often confronted social issues that many sometimes demand that the church leave alone. Guided by faith we need to speak out – not to create a “Christian nation” but to ensure that the unique perspective of faith and the word of God is heard in national and international debates. And fourth, we owe the government our prayers. Sometimes in the midst of criticizing our leaders we forget that and if our candidate loses we find it hard to pray for the winner. But in 1 Timothy we see very clearly that “supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings [are to] be made for … kings and all who hold high positions.” Whether or not we think that our leaders do a good job, whether or not we think they’re honest, whether or not we think they’re moral, whether or not we agree with their policies – regardless of any of that, we owe our prayers to our leaders.
If that’s what we owe our governments and our leaders, what do we owe to God? In some respects we can answer this very simply: we’re required to love God with all our hearts, and this love for God should overflow and be expressed by love for all around us. But that’s just a bit too simplistic. We owe, I think, for more than simply love to God. We owe our primary loyalty and devotion to God. Love for God and love for country may not be mutually exclusive, but they also aren’t equal, and when they are in conflict and when Christian people, in good conscience come to the conclusion that they are in conflict – when the state, for example, does something or asks its citizens to do something that we feel conflicts with our ultimate loyalty to God – then Christians must, I would argue, stand against the state and even break the law if necessary to do so. The concept of non-violent protest and non-violent civil disobedience is central to the understanding that we are citizens of God’s Kingdom first, and only after that are we citizens of an earthly kingdom. I’ve seen in just the last week or so pictures of Christian priests, Christian ministers and Jewish rabbis in the United States being handcuffed, arrested and taken away because their faith compelled them to engage in civil disobedience against a policy that forcibly separated children from their parents – a policy that forced them to stand up and be counted; to say “NO!” and to face the consequences for doing so. And I say: God bless them!
The British Christian writer Jo Swinney wrote that “we can be patriotic Christians but our patriotism may look quite different to secular patriotism. … We can be Christian patriots, but we are Christians first.” Ultimately, each of us – responsible to God and guided by our own God-given conscience – must from time to time decide on a variety of issues when and whether the time has come to take a stand for God against either prevailing public opinion or even against the government.
Jesus’ reply to the question “Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” confounded his opponents for the simple reason that it provoked no confrontation. It left no room for an accusation of disloyalty to Rome, but it also stressed the need for true loyalty to God. Due and proper obedience had to be given to each; neither loyalty could be neglected. Too many Christians today spend far too much time worrying about the loss of Christian influence on government, apparently forgetting that Jesus himself said that “my Kingdom is not of this world.” In the light of those words of Jesus, perhaps we shouldn’t worry too much about trying to create Christian kingdoms in the world. Our call is to live as Christian people, accountable directly to God for our own actions. Christian faith and national patriotism are not mutually exclusive concepts, but Christian faith takes priority over national patriotism, and Christian people have not just a right but an obligation to speak out, to protest and in some circumstances even to disobey when the state acts outside the arena God has given it to act in, or acts contrary to the will of God inside that arena. The first and over-riding loyalty for any Christian must be to God over country. I believe that as citizens of Canada we have a wonderful country that should be celebrated. I believe we should cherish the freedoms that we have as Canadians – but I cannot forget that true freedom comes from my relationship with Jesus, and first and foremost, I believe in God. After all, the maple leaf may represent our country, but it’s the cross that gives us life!
No comments:
Post a Comment