Debts to God and Caesar, both large and small
Then he said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” (Matthew 22:21)
This verse has come up before, in the midst of the 2008 US presidential election. Then, I suggested that obsessively paying attention to the election was giving to Caesar more than Caesar deserved. Obsessing about elections can be a besetting sin for me, so I was writing largely to myself.
Peter Riedeman, one of the early Hutterite elders, links this verse to Paul’s words in Romans 13 about paying what is due to the government, not just anything that the government asks for. The Hutterites refused to pay taxes that would go for warfare.
Riedeman’s application of these verses, and mine, are vastly different: mine, just a question of our attention economy; his, a matter of freedom and imprisonment, or even life and death.
Think: in what ways today, small or large, is God asking you to give to the System just what the System owes, and to God everything you owe to God?
Will
