Inform Your Conscience 5 – Taxation is not a fun topic. I’ve heard from family members and friends alike that taxation is legalized theft! Does anyone want to pay their taxes?
Part of the challenge for us is that almost everything in our society is driven by greed. Gordon Gecko from the movie Wall Street would try and tell us that greed is good! I would beg to differ. My God speaks of the danger of greed all over the place. A person’s possessions doesn’t determine his worth. In our extremely wealthy nation you might think that with all of our possessions greed wouldn’t be such a big deal because we don’t need anything more, right? I think all of us have bought into Rockefeller’s answer to when do we have enough. We just need a little more.
It doesn’t sound very good for us, but what about the government? God doesn’t give us any wiggle room on the topic of taxation. He says – give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. That’s a blank check! You mean the government can tax me anything they like? And I just have to pay it?! Yes.
That brings up the topic of the American Revolution. Is taxation without representation a good reason to revolt and overthrown the government? Absolutely not! Nowhere in Scripture will you find an admonition to revolt against the government. It’s not there. That means that the American Revolution was a godless rebellion. The Christian who was trying to follow God’s will was in an uncomfortable situation in 1776 when there was a new government established. At what point did the American Christian submit to the NEW governing authority? That’s not an easy question to answer.
Want to hear more? Watch this week’s study from our series Inform Your Conscience 5 – Taxation
Please click HERE for the Bible class slides.
Please click HERE for a very helpful paper on the topic.