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Submission NOT Endorsement: A Christarchist Primer on Proof Texts

By Ryan Day Thompson

Note:  I’m going to examine the following text in two palatable parts.  It’s long, and my tendency is to the essay (unlike, say, David McElroy, who can pack a punch in less than a thousand words), so I think you’ll served better by short pieces.  <tongueincheek>  I know most of you will be reeling by the end of the first paragraph, so I want to make sure I don’t lose you ;-) </tongueincheek>

Consider this the first part of a very long FAQ.  The name of the FAQ is “Submission NOT Endorsement,” because I am convinced from reading Scripture that the concept of submission from Paul is being horribly misinterpreted in relation to government.  Somehow, in the Christian vocabulary, the words “submit,” “honor,” and, “pray” in the Christian vocabulary related to government have come to mean, “endorse this political candidate,” or, “sign this petition.”  Jesus, Paul, Peter, and Titus don’t call us to endorsement, they call us to submission.  And, based on a tertiary reading of Acts, I have my doubts that they mean submission in the way most Christians mean submission.

Happy Reading!

Matthew 22:15-21 | Taxation and the Christian

A Personal Note

I HATE taxation.  I’m going to be forthright with you.  My natural, perhaps fleshly, inclination is that taxation is theft.  Think about it: you work hard, you deal with a boss or clients, you stress out, you earn a lot (or a little), you have bills to pay, you get your paycheck, and before you can even decide which over-priced necessity you’re going to use that check for, there’s the state with their hand out demanding your money.  For what?  The hard work YOU did?  Or worse, you deal in goods that don’t even have anything to do with the FRN (Federal Reserve Note; a.k.a. dollar bill) and the state demands payment from you of some sort (like they have a right to portion of the milk from the cow that YOU raised.)  It’s ridiculous.  The atrocities they commit with that money are abominable.  They kill children with that money.  They laugh at our poverty while drinking champagne and eating caviar with that money while the homeless starve and the hard-working person like yourself barely has the ability to pay his bills and feed her children.  They rescue financial criminals with that money.  They pay corrupt judges who work in a corrupt and indecipherable system of arbitrary law to imprison innocent people who have engaged in victimless crimes with that money.  They fight endless wars for which we have no money with that money.  They pay warmongers in their blue-uniformed standing army to spray innocent people in the face with pepper spray and beat homeless men to death with that money.   Every hour you work, 1/3 of your labor goes to immoral state programs.  The state parasitically leeches from “its” people in the form of taxes.

I know, some of your hackles are raised (for what reason I cannot fathom), but let’s face it, if any other person took money from your wallet at the point of a gun, you would call the police.  And that is exactly what the state does.  If you don’t pay your taxes, they’ll show up at your door with a gun, kidnap you, and take you to prison.  What gives them this right?  It’s “legitimate” because they’re the government.  Take off those blinders for just a moment and you will be appalled at this giant game of extortion, kidnap, and ransom.

And don’t even get me started about the “mercy” aspects for which taxes are taken.  Anthony Gregory aptly sums up the supposed “good” aspects of state action afforded by taxation like this: “When the State offers you a hand up or a handout, notice the blood dripping from its fingers.”  State handouts for medical or financial crises are just cleverly disguised games of bait and switch.  You take their money; you belong to them.  They own you for your sojourn on this earth.

This is my gut inclination.  It is realistic.  It calls a spade a spade.  What the state is doing is a crime.  It is anti-human.  It is immoral.  It is evil.  It violates the basic principles of Genesis 1-6.

If you didn’t pay your taxes, I wouldn’t blame you.  If you objected to the money that the state steals from you every day to kill children, I wouldn’t blame you.  If you go protest, I won’t blame you.  In fact, when the state takes the catastrophic fall it is about to take, I’ll probably write a song commemorating you when it’s all over.  If we all stopped paying our taxes, the state would be drained and die rapidly.

However, if you decide to pay your taxes, I won’t blame you either.  In fact, if you’re a Christian, I am going to encourage you to pay your taxes in full, and more.  Let me explain, from Matthew 22:15-21, why I won’t object to you paying taxes (and I why I begrudgingly allow these tyrants to steal from me when I work in their corrupt system of centralized banking and use their rapidly-devalued dollar bill).

The Text In Question

‘Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words.  And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances.  Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”  But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites?  Show me the coin for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius.  And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?”  They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away.’

The Interpretation of the Status Quo

Evangelical Fundamentalists or Theologically Liberal Protestants – the Fascist right-wing and Communist left-wing state’s greatest cheerleaders – interpret this text like this:  Jesus is calling for us to pay our taxes, to submit to the state in all things, and to never call into question what any of that money is being used for, because then we wouldn’t be pursuing peace or, “praying for or honoring the king,” as Paul later tells us to do in Romans and in his letters to Timothy.  The status quo demands that those who object to taxation SHUT UP, because this text tells them to pay their taxes and be done with it.  I have to object to this banal and short-sighted interpretation by the status quo.  Why?  Not because I think it goes too far, but because I don’t think it goes nearly far enough.

An Attempted Interpretation

There’s something that really bothers me about the status quo’s interpretation: It is usually used by people who are mindlessly entwined in the system and totally misses the heart of the text.  The heart of the text is not paying taxes, the heart of the text is giving to God what belongs to God.  I would argue that this text cannot be used to argue against taxation but I don’t think that it can be used to argue for taxation, either.  To take the text and use it as yet another proof for why we should be the greatest cheerleaders of the state is to blatantly disregard the meaning of Jesus’ injunction.  Just what is happening here?

First, allow me to make some observations:

(1)  The Pharisees want to find a way to kill or imprison Jesus.  They’re fed up with him.  They think that if they can trap him in his words to sound like a Pharisee (who despised Caesar’s face being imprinted on anything), they can claim him for their own and attempt to assimilate him into the greater thrust of their teaching; or, conversely, if they catch him saying it is lawful to pay Caesar, they themselves can discredit him for being anti-YHWH (because, again, the Pharisees were livid at the very thought of Caesar’s face being on anything.)

(2)  Jesus doesn’t give them the satisfaction of categorizing him so easily, because he more or less says, “You’re right but you’re wrong.”  The Pharisees, once again, are being “hypocrites.”  How so?  Well, in Jesus own words about the Pharisees elsewhere, they “clean the outside of the cup,” and remain “white-washed tombs.”  How?  They make this humongous fuss about Caesar’s face being on the coin as sinful, and then they worship their own image!

(3)  Jesus basically says, “Does it really matter?  Give God what belongs to God!”

(4)  Allow me to note that nothing belongs to Caesar.  That simple understanding should be your first tip-off that Jesus is probably not saying what the status quo is saying about this text.  It would be odd for you, as a Christian, to argue that anything belongs to Caesar.  Everything belongs to God.

(5)  Nonetheless, Jesus argues that if it has Caesar’s face on it, it should be rendered to Caesar.

So, quick question, if a coin bears Caesar’s image, what bears God’s image?  We do.  Oh, sure, it may be marred and not look like in did in Genesis 1-2, but remnants of it are still there.  We bear the image of God.  Let me suggest that Jesus is not primarily advocating that we give Caesar 1/3 of our paychecks, Jesus is advocating that we give ourselves to God and that it really doesn’t matter what we give to Caesar as long as it’s whatever Caesar asks for that bears his image.

My question for you now comes from one of our contributors: Why aren’t you giving all of Caesar’s stuff back to him?  Why do you insist on being wrapped up in Caesar’s idolatrous system?  If Caesar wants his money back - coins that he has wrongfully and sinfully put his own face on - why do you insist on using a currency of idolatry?  What makes you think you have a right to anything that bears Caesar’s image?  Give it ALL back!

The long and the short of what Jesus is saying is that the Pharisees are asking the question all wrong.  While they’re primarily frustrated with Caesar, they need to re-focus what they’re about.  What are they to be about?  Rendering themselves unto God.

So, you Christians who are urging me to pay my taxes for atrocities and tragedies, you Christians who demand that I play cheerleader for the state with my money, think very carefully before you use this text to support yourself, because Jesus isn’t saying what you’re saying.

Now, I know that the atheists are foaming at the mouth as they read this, and I don’t blame them at all.  “No Gods!” Anarchists just need to take a deep breath and realize that what I am saying is not quite what it looks like I’m saying.  My solutions to the problem of the seeming theft of taxation are NOT what you would generally hear from the Protestant status quo.  On the other hand, the Christians are wondering what on earth happened to my furious stance on taxation.  That is what the next part of this article will be about, and I encourage you to come back and see the solutions I present for the problem of taxation.  I’ll give you a hint: if you look really closely at the words “likeness and inscription” and consider the overall thrust of this text to render oneself unto God alone, you will see where I am going economically and practically.  You may like it, and you may not, but the solutions I’m about to present are good solutions, and they allow you to keep your conscience clear of having to be implicit in the atrocities of the state in taxation.

Check back next week.

[To Be Continued]

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Ryan Day Thompson is a Christian, husband, father, photographer, Christarchist activist, and sometimes writer.  He loves good conversations that take seriously real world issues.  He hates trolling.  If you want to contact him, email him at blogcon [at] gmail [dot] com.  If you want to troll him, click here and then click here.  Or, you can ask a question by clicking the “Have a Question?” button in the footer of this blog.

Has the American State Become Your Religion?

“You shall have no other gods before me.” (Ex. 20:3)

Before falsely using YHWH’s name, before the sabbath, before honor of father and mother, before murder, adultery, theft, or false witness or coveting, before all of these is this single command: “You shall have no other gods before me.”  It is unqualified.  Commentators have noted how the commands that follow this one command and every book that follows Exodus relate to it.  Jesus summed up the two tables and their Deuteronomical and Levitical reiterations well.  He said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and…you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” (Matt. 22:37-38).  Throughout the Old and New Testaments the command is clear.  When a king of Israel set up idols to Baal?  He got sick and died or got killed in battle.  When the Israelites themselves served Baal?  The whole nation experienced strife and suffering.  Israel was eventually conquered and destroyed for their idolatry.  When Ananias and Sapphira worshiped their stuff rather than their creator?  They died.  Moses made it clear.  The prophets made it clear.  The Psalmists made it clear.  Job made it clear.  Jesus made it clear.  Paul made it clear.  There is no God but YHWH.  You cannot serve YHWH and serve another god.

Whenever the followers of YHWH have ceased following Him, be it the church or Israel (if you choose to make that distinction,) and followed gods and systems who disdained human life, indulged in human sacrifice, and called for general immorality, the followers of YHWH have proven themselves not followers at all but, rather, idolaters who fall into many immoral pursuits.  The writer of Hebrews said it well, “For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief,” (Heb. 3:16-19).  This is one of those rare texts that connects disobedience closely with unbelief.  Those people who called themselves follower of YHWH?  They were no followers at all, they were unbelievers and they proved it with their actions of unfaithfulness to YHWH.

Imagine a god who calls for you to sacrifice your children!  Imagine a god who calls for you to slaughter humans on his altar!  Imagine a god who calls you to steal from your neighbor!  Imagine a god who demands that you devote yourself to it and no other.  “Baal!” you say.  “Moloch!” you say.  Why, yes, those gods did demand human sacrifice, theft, and pure devotion.  They are gods of aggression.  They are gods whose image we surely do not bear.  They are not YHWH.  They are not the true God.  If you worship them you worship nothing and show yourself to be an unbeliever.

However, I am not talking about Baal or Moloch per se.  I speak of the modern Baal.

Hear me out.

When you pay your taxes, the state takes that money and uses it to kill women and children both here and abroad in the protection of their own interests.  When you put on a uniform and wield a weapon on behalf of the state to kill, you kill the son of another father and mother and a creature created in the image of God.  When you vote, you perpetuate a system of democracy that is rooted in injustice (imagine using a majority of 51% to screw 49% out of their inherent right to something!)  When you take millions of dollars from the state you swear your devotion to it for life.  When you campaign for Rick Perry, or Ron Paul, or Michelle Bachmann, or Mitt Romney, or Barack Obama, or any human, you say, “This, I worship!”  “The state?” you say?  “HOW DARE YOU!?”

I am tracking a deeply disturbing trend: many Christians maddeningly refuse to hear “Christarchists” out when they decry the state’s protection of itself in war.  Many Christians virtually stop their ears and gnash their teeth before they will hear us out when we decry the use of your taxes for abortion and the killing of the Muslim (while they somehow still “oppose” abortion and murder.)  Many Christians refuse to hear us out when we decry the perpetuation of a system rooted in the injustice of the many oppressing the few.  Many Christians refuse to hear us out when we question the validity of an institution that calls them to murder, steal, and inflict poverty wherever they go.

It is as if we were decrying the worship of YHWH!  It is almost as if we used the very name of YHWH in vain!  I, personally, have been sworn at, accused of being “inconsistent” with my worldview, and told that I am a disgrace to to the concept of freedom.

Why?  Because I have chosen to live consistently with the Sermon on the Mount?  Because I have attempted to live as consistently as possible with the system of non-aggression that the Bible predominantly espouses?  Because I have expressed disdain for a Church that largely refuses to do its work and feed the poor?  Because I have called for Voluntary consent to all taxes and systems of government (imagine a world in which we may voluntarily decide where we want our money and efforts to go!  Is that not freedom?!)  Because I have asked you to actually do what you say you’re doing and read Thomas Jefferson’s hatred of centralized government and banking?  Because I have dared to point out that we in Evangelicalism and many Reformed circles are treating the Constitution as if it were God breathed?

Christians, the American state is the modern Baal!  The voting booth is the modern “high place!”  Politicians are the modern Asherim, the Constitution a modern Golden Calf, partisan politics the modern Marduk.  As Moloch asked the Israelites to sacrifice their children on his altars, the state demands that we fund its murder of children.  As Asher demanded immorality on her altars, the state demands at the point of a gun that we fund every immorality which we supposedly oppose.  As Nebuchadnezzar built a giant image of himself and demanded Daniel worship it, the state presents politicians of all colors who build an image of themselves through various media and demand that we worship them with our vote and consent (and, subsequently, our money, time, and lives.)

I am seriously uncomfortable in my church now.  Why?  Every time I look at my pastor (who preaches amazing, Biblical, Christ-centered sermons) I see the American flag directly behind him.  That’s right, the symbol of the modern Baal, proudly displayed for all to see and hear that we condone the murder of children, that we love war, that we adore theft!  That flag speaks so loudly I cannot hear my pastor anymore.  We may as well have a Pentagram on the wall!  Let us display the Asherim!  Let us build a high place!  Let us mold a golden calf and dance around it!  Let us bow down and worship Tiamat!  If we’re going to go this far we may as well “go the whole hog!”

Christians, the American state is dangerously close to being our religion if it is not already.  It is becoming hard to distinguish between the two for me.  Do we serve Baal, or do we serve YHWH?  Choose, and choose quickly, because this state is about to demand your total and complete worship.

If we bow down, we prove our unbelief.   YHWH and YHWH alone is God.  If we dance around this golden calf, we prove that we do not ultimately believe that Christ is the one and all-sufficient King. 

Do we serve YHWH, or do we serve Herman Cain?  Do we serve YHWH or do we serve the Republican party?  Do we serve YHWH, or do we serve the American state?  Has the American state become our religion?

We worship in vain before blocks of wood and dead pillars of stone wrought by the hands of men if we continue to serve America, the modern Baal.

There is no King but Christ!  Let us serve the King!

Ryan Day Thompson, Contributor
The Flagless Cooperative