Rendering unto Caesar

I am often tempted, as I am sure many Christians are, to chuck it when it comes to politics. After all, if you follow the MSM, and how can you not, we are losing on all fronts, be it gay marriage, abortion, the silly 2 years old attending our universities, or recently the issue of Syrian refugees. Many Christians, in fact, have given up on politics for exactly the reasons stated, and to avoid sullying their otherwise spotless reputations by getting down in the dirt. The old saying is that you never argue with a pig because doing so just gets you dirty and the pig loves it. But John Nantz, over at Townhall.com has a different take in his piece entitled Giving Caesar his Due. Nantz notes that when the pharisees attempted to trap Jesus by forcing him to declare that paying taxes to the Romans was a sin:

The Lord asked the Pharisees to produce a denarius, the principal Roman silver coin, and said, “Whose image and superscription hath it?” The priests responded, “Caesar’s.” Then Christ said, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s.” At this, the Pharisees were dumbstruck. The Bible says, “they could not take hold of his words…marveled at his answer, and held their peace.” With this Christ delineated two duties that are complimentary, codependent, not mutually exclusive.

This points to one issue many people have with reading the Bible in general, and that is that many times a simple statement contains within it multiple and layered meanings, which can only be ascertained by carefully thinking about them.  It is not enough that you do not murder, but you mustn't even think of murdering in you mind.  Christianity, correctly practiced, is hard. The ten commandments, correctly understood, are radical.  Jesus was speaking here of taxes, but it pertains to the entirety of our civic duties, including the duty to speak out, loudly and often, when corruption and anti-religious bigotry shows up in the public square.

Neither Christ nor Thomas Jefferson approve of the notion of “separation of church and state.” Liberals have been very successful in creating the false dichotomy of faith and politics. The separation notion is a thinly veiled fiction derived from an innocuous sentence in a letter drafted by Jefferson. One would think that the separation notion was engrossed in elegant cursive and set in the grandeur of The Bill of Rights. But, in fact, it is based on a throw away line, seized on by desperate minds, and swelled into morbid obesity by the hostile anti-Christian...

We have an obligation as Christians, to know and understand both the Bible AND the Constitution, and we must be willing to stand up for both. Remember that if you are doing the Lord's will, you have prayed and listened, and know what you are doing is right, then you can not sully your reputation in the eyes of the Only one that counts.