Tuesday, 6/4/13
The Gospel
gives us Our Lord’s guiding principle for our dealings with our civil
governments.
What prompted Jesus to speak on this subject was a
conspiracy entered into by the Pharisees and the Herodians. The funny thing was
that those groups normally couldn’t stand each other. The Pharisees had been
founded two centuries earlier as a protest when their precious temple fell into the
hands of men like the Herodians.
Now, though, together they saw Jesus as a threat to the rich
living they made from religion. They figured that Jesus would either have to say
it was right or it was wrong to pay taxes to Rome. If he said it was right they
would say he was against his own people. If he said it was wrong they would
turn him over to the Roman authorities.
He tricked them by asking to se the coin. (He was so poor
that he had no coin of his own.)
He answered. “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to
God what belongs to God.” That meant there was no conflict between our duties
to Religion and our duties to the State. Ideally, the State guaranties our free
practice of religion, and the church encourages us to use our means and even
our lives for the upkeep and protection of our country.
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