FLAGLESS

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]

—————————

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.

Why do American Christians impose their own political beliefs on God?

By David McElroy

Jesus wasn’t an American. He’s not a Democrat. He’s not a Republican. He’s not asking you to vote for a “pro-family agenda.” He’s also not calling you to elect politicians to achieve “social justice.” These things are news to some people.

There’s absolutely no reason to think God even wants you to vote. You’re lying to yourself and to others if you superimpose your own political views onto God — no matter what your beliefs are.

It’s been common throughout history for nations to claim that God was on their side, regardless of what they called God and regardless of what the rest of their theological beliefs were. Whatever “our side” did was favored by God — or the gods or Allah or whatever they called their deity. If you’re a Christian and you’re doing this today, you’re engaging in blasphemy, because you’re claiming to speak for God — and you’re just making things up and claiming they’re from Him.

I don’t have the exact quote anymore, but I once heard talk radio host Ian Punnett say that for many people, God is simply themselves with a deeper voice. Sadly, that’s true.

For Christians who hold conservative political positions, they somehow manage to come to the conclusion that God believes exactly what they do. What a relief. God wants a strong government to control people’s morality, but He also likes invading foreign countries that have those dirty people who talk funny and aren’t much like us. (He obviously didn’t really mean those things about loving enemies, so it’s safe to ignore those things as we cheer people being blown up and prisoners being tortured by the U.S. government.)

For Christians who hold progressive liberal positions, they somehow manage to come to the conclusion that God also believes exactly what they believe. Who would have thought? This saves them the trouble of having to think about any conflicts between their own political goals and what God wants of them. God wants a strong government which takes things from “greedy people” and gives things to poor people. Jesus talked about helping poor people, so He obviously wants us to force other people to obey what He said. Right?

When you worship God in these ways — and define Jesus in these terms — you’re creating your own god. Whoever that is who you have in your mind isn’t the Jesus of the Gospels. He’s your own creation — and that god seems an awful lot like you — just with a deeper voice.

If you call yourself a conservative, I challenge you to find a single example in the Gospels in which Jesus suggested the use of force to get anyone to obey Him. (Hint: You won’t find such an example.) Jesus isn’t calling for the FCC to stamp out obscenity or for police to arrest gay people or use force to stop people from making porn. Those are your positions, not His.

If you call yourself a progressive, I challenge you to find a single example in which Jesus suggested that His followers use force to ensure that other people obeyed the commands He gave to His own followers. (Hint: You won’t find any.) Jesus doesn’t “love the public option” or favor universal health care or whatever else you want to superimpose on Him. Those are your positions, not His.

You do understand that government is simply force, don’t you? Without force, the coercive state couldn’t function, because it would have to depend on people’s voluntary co-operation. And if people are to be allowed to do what they want (so long as they don’t violate other people’s rights or property), well, the state isn’t necessary in the first place.

If you’re a Christian, God has called you to live in certain ways and be certain things. He’s called us to help the poor and to quit worshipping our own pampered and luxurious lifestyles. (On this particular subject, I highly recommend a book by my own pastor challenging Christians to live a “Radical” lifestyle instead of the modern American materialist dream.) God has called us to be holy and moral people. But you won’t find one single example of Jesus suggesting that a government enforce the commands that He gave to His own followers. No, that’s the part that you and your friends (and your enemies) have added all on your own.

A friend told me this week that his own pastor recently said during a sermon that people who don’t vote are “almost sinning.” This pastor believes that not voting is somehow a violation of the command to love our neighbor. In other words, we are supposed to show we love some of our neighbors by having people use violence (or threat of violence and punishment) to arbitrarily steal money from other neighbors. That’s not following God. That’s simply finding ways to pretend that God supports what you wanted to do anyway.

God calls Christians to do certain things with their lives. He never calls us to force other people to obey His commands. If you’re using the name of God to justify using the coercive state to achieve what you want, you’re not serving God. You’re falsely speaking in His name and adding things to the Bible that just aren’t there.

Stick to what Jesus actually said. We have a long way to go before we’re living as He called us to live. Even if it were legitimate to force other people to live in accordance with Jesus’ teachings — which it isn’t — don’t we have a responsibility to live it first? We’re a long way from obeying Him ourselves.

Let’s quit trying to pretend that we’re qualified to give people orders in God’s name. We’re not qualified to do that and we never will be.

David McElroy writes about the coming post-statist world from a secret underground bunker protected by armed flying monkeys. You’ll find him at davidmcelroy.org.