Faithful Disobedience: The Ethics of Tax Resistance in Clown World

Part 2 of the 'Misrendering Jesus' series

Welcome to part two, in which we will get more into the nitty-gritty of what to do about the unenviable position we find ourselves in regarding taxes. If you skipped part one, where I unpack some of the misunderstandings associated with the “Render to Caesar” passages, I’d highly recommend starting there before proceeding.

Bible interpretation is as much an art as a science. Since Christians are "people of The Book," it's tempting to expect God to reveal his will in plain words, preferably in straightforward, chapter and verse form. Such assumptions quickly get you into trouble trying to understand the Bible. Jesus frequently spoke in parables designed to hide the truth from the wise and reveal it to the pure in heart, including children. Professional Bible scholars put Jesus to death, and they did so quoting chapters and verses to support their actions. How could that be? It was possible because they had utterly lost the plot regarding the "weightier matters" of the Law.

These weightier matters are the Scriptural non-negotiables. They are timeless principles, superseding culture and covenant. These are the things that God requires of all people, regardless of their access to or awareness of the Scriptures. One such example is the moral obligation and need to seek wisdom, which consists of Scripture embodied and contextualized. Wisdom is knowledge applied in a fitting and timely manner. Wisdom is personal; it will frequently require different responses depending on the situation and/or the participants therein.

Here’s an example.

If someone asked you, "How does God want me to respond to a fool who brags about his achievements and mocks those who believe differently than he does?" it would make sense to turn to Proverbs 26:4.

"Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. - Proverbs 26:4 (ESV)

That seems straightforward: “Don’t answer a fool according to his folly.” And all God’s people breathe a sigh of relief and rejoice that God has made it so easy to know how they ought to respond to fools...until they read the very next verse.

Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. - Proverbs 26:5 (ESV)

In the verse immediately following what seems to be straightforward, crystal-clear counsel from on high, we are now presented with what appears to be an utter invalidation of it.

How can this be?

Some will read verse 5 and respond, "See, the Bible is full of error! Verse five can't be true because verse 4 says the exact opposite.” Others will repeat another error, beckoning us like an Odyssean siren to embrace moral relativism, the idea that all truth is relative and that there is no true, objective measure for right and wrong. Let’s bring back The Dude to put that in layman’s terms for us:

That’s not what we see in Proverbs 26 either. Solomon describes two appropriate ways to respond to fools; there aren’t unlimited ways to answer a fool. God has spoken.

So what’s going on? How do we make sense of what Solomon is saying, and what do we do with it?

There are multiple ways to respond to fools because there are multiple kinds of fools. The Bible contains wisdom, but wisdom dresses differently depending on the occasion. In the case of Proverbs 26, there are times to speak up and rebuke a fool and times when silence is much more productive. The condition of the specific fool we’re talking to matters.

Don’t miss the important detail here: the very actions that would demonstrate faithfulness in one case can demonstrate treason in another. Stated another way, sometimes wisdom requires doing the exact opposite of what it would require in other circumstances.

How do we know the difference?

We need wisdom from above to develop skill in theological and ethical triage to avoid losing sight of the big picture “weightier matters.” We need to know God, His will, and the other factors involved.

This is not an easy task, but one designed to produce humility, divine dependence, and respect for the experiences of those who have gone before us, both historically and through Scriptural revelation. Thankfully, the Scriptures don’t merely tell us what to do. They illustrate these ideas through the experiences of normal people, including the men of Issachar.

1 Chronicles 12 describes an Israel in transition. King Saul’s chaotic and sinful reign over Israel had drawn to a violent close. David had been anointed the future king years earlier, but his assumption of the throne wasn’t without controversy. Think about it: for years, Saul had deployed such an effective propaganda campaign against David that many of the same men who watched a young David kill the Philistine giant were compelled to chase him across the nation, going cave to cave to sniff him out and attempt to put him to death. That type of antipathy and confusion doesn’t magically disappear.

David calls on a number of groups of men to come to his aid, and the men of Issachar (one of the tribes of Israel) answered his call.

“…Of Issachar, men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do…”
- 1 Chronicles 12:32

The men of Issachar were commended for having exactly the type of wisdom described in Proverbs 26: they knew what Israel ought to do in that moment at a time in which many other people did not. They had specific, intimate knowledge that gave them confidence to take decisive action. They understood Solomon’s words in the book of Ecclesiastes.

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
- Ecclesiastes 3:1

There was a time to rally behind Saul, and there was a time (even while Saul was still alive, which would have been seen by some as treason) to rally to David. In other words, even rulers can be foolish, and the available responses in Wisdom’s artillery have the potential to be varied and even (seemingly) antagonistic.

What does any of this have to do with taxes?

The Scriptures (and especially the New Testament) contain a number of verses regarding the Christian duty to pay taxes. Romans 13:7 is one of the most illuminating and frequently cited examples.

Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. - Romans 13:7

Paul says that Christians are people that pay their debts, regardless of what they’re denominated in. In his mind, respect and money are both currencies to be stewarded in order to pay debts. On the surface (just as with Proverbs 26:4-5) these verses seem clear as crystal: pay taxes and honor government officials. In the immediate context, the Pharisees and Romans expected Christ and his apostles to abide by their straightforward understanding of honor: do what we tell you to do.

Unfortunately (for them), the New Testament understanding of honor isn’t that straightforward. John the Baptist was imprisoned and executed because he spoke out against King Herod taking his brother’s wife. Peter and many other apostles were imprisoned and eventually killed because they disobeyed governing authorities. Christ himself was killed because he refused to honor the Jewish religious leaders in the way they wanted.

Did Jesus and the apostles honor the governing authorities? Yes, of course they did. But their honor took the form of disobedience. How does that work?

Imagine you meet a morbidly obese man glorying in his obesity. We’re not talking eating one or two chocolate chip cookies (thank me later) more than they ought; we’re talking “forklift and platform truck required to get out and and about” obese.

The man argues that the only possible reason why anyone could object to his weight is fatphobia. You patiently outline a number of health reasons why obesity ought to be avoided, from how it will hinder his ability to provide for and serve those closest to him, to how difficult and expensive it will be for others to care for him, to the tremendous pressure that obesity-related health issues are having on the economics of the health care industry.

Have you honored that person? Yes. People are image bearers of God, and were designed and created to fulfill specific responsibilities and roles in service of God and others. Confronting someone who has embraced a pattern of life that prevents them from being able to carry out those responsibilities is loving and honoring to that person, in addition to both God and the rest of society.

The leaders of both Rome and Judea had embraced a similar lawlessness, setting themselves up as the final arbiters of truth over against God’s revealed will, evidenced most clearly in their willingness to kill their innocent, would-be Messiah. In refusing to indulge their delusions, our Lord and his disciples testified that any authority those leaders possessed had been stewarded to them by God, and that their authority had qualifications. When human authority comes into conflict with what God has revealed, the resolution is simple (if not easy).

We must obey God rather than men. - Acts 5:29

Just as fools require different verbal responses from non-fools, they also warrant different types of honor than righteous rulers. When wise, righteous rulers call their people to obey God, their people ought to hear the voice of the Lord in their voice and obey cheerfully. But when unrighteous rulers repeat words they first heard from the mouth of their usurpious father, the faithful are duty-bound to drive them from their minds as Adam ought to have driven him from the garden in (quite literally) The First Place.

If honor and respect are currencies, and honor and obedience look different with foolish rulers, how can we not subject fool-borne taxes to the same scrutiny? If obedience (children trusting and heeding their parents) and disobedience (the Hebrew midwives refusing to murder Israelite babies) can both be righteous, what basis do we have for believing that the same can’t be said for paying or refusing to pay taxes? Not all laws are equally binding, and if Paul is correct that honor and money are analogous, then neither are all taxes. Throughout redemptive history there have always been moments where empires forget the source and bounds of their legitimate authority and attempt to assert an all-encompassing power that belongs to God alone. It’s during these extreme situations that we find example after Scriptural example of the people of God acting in confounding (though, as we have established, wise) ways. We find patriarchs deceiving kings, midwives lying to Pharaohs, women entrapping fleeing generals and then pounding tent pegs through their heads, and a whole host more. The fact that “truth is treason in an empire of lies,” is not an invitation to stop telling the truth. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate the “surpassing value” of obedience to God by opposing empires hell-bent on rebellion.

People are never more free than when they are living faithful obedience to their God-ordained purpose. The fish that leaps out of the water onto land in an attempt to assert his freedom will quickly find that his was never meant to live on land. Such freedom leads to death. This is true of individuals, and it’s also true of corporate bodies like governments. It’s no more illicit to withhold that which is not owed to a government any more than to an individual.

But how do we know what taxes are legitimate and which taxes are illegitimate? By what standard is legitimacy measured? Is getting a majority of senators, congressmen, and a presidential signature enough to sanctify any tax? Any answer to these questions is necessarily premised upon an understanding of what government is and to what end it exists. These are theological and philosophical questions that don’t lend themselves to politically expedient answers. These are teleological questions that survey the scene from thirty thousand feet to figure out where we’re coming from and where we’re headed. Philosophy and theology are unavoidable, but are often ignored for as long as possible because of how divisive and inconvenient they are for would-be autocrats.

These definitional questions help us establish where things begin, where they end, and to what end they exist. They seem impractical, but in reality, philosophical questions are the most practical questions that can be asked in that they shape everything we think, believe, say, and do.

The world is at a point of definitional crisis. All the systems that have historically provided feedback to help us ground and orient ourselves in the world are being called into question and systematically dismantled. We live in a society that has, for generations and in the name of pragmatism, toleration, and liberalism, surrendered definitional authority to an antinomian mob. Rather than experiencing the stability, prosperity, and life we were promised, we have become slaves of indulgent children, unstable women, and self-regarding men willing to sacrifice anyone and anything upon the altar of their convenience in pursuit of an atomized "wealth,” “freedom," "change," and "progress.”

These words have become increasingly nebulous as they are used without reference to a standard by which to define where they begin and end.

Freedom by what standard?

Progress away from what? Toward what? Upon what standard do you base your confidence that you know the way?

We know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Modern “wisdom” and “freedom” have subjected the world to generations of endless war. This war extends far beyond a kinetic battlefield (though time would fail to describe the manifold abuses there). We see husbands and wives warring against one another, resulting in historic levels of infidelity and divorce. We see men and women at war with their children, the result of which includes but is not limited to a mountain of mutilated baby bodies all over the globe on the one hand and a generation of orphaned DEI-sciples catechized by teachers, university professors, and celebrities into hacking their bodies to bits on the other. We see men at war with women and girls, leading to a global trade of sexual slaves doing billions in business every year. We see huge industries at war with their workers (be they men, women, or children) in the pursuit of unrighteous mammon, resulting in more slaves today that at any point in world history. Record rates of depression and gender dysphoria are part of the reason for skyrocketing rates of suicide all over the globe, the most obvious example of individuals at war with themselves.

But the largest scale abuses are perpetrated by the largest and most powerful entities on earth: governments. Governments wage war on their citizens via ever-compounding legislation passed that nobody has time to read.

They wield selective prosecutorial enforcement as a weapon against their political opponents and their supporters. They passive-aggressively steal from their citizens via inflation and monetary debasement. They then impose capital controls to prevent their abused citizenry from seeking refuge elsewhere. All over the globe, including the “hallowed” halls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, governments have consistently demonstrated a willingness to submit their citizens to horrors that would make Goebbels blush in exchange for and in pursuit of absolute autonomy. This is literally the oldest trick in The Book.

It calls to mind Lewis’ famous line from The Screwtape Letters.

“The use of fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is in the least danger, and fix its approval on the virtue that is nearest the vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running around with fire extinguishers whenever there’s a flood; and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gone under.”

I want to suggest that one of the great tests of faithfulness faced by contemporary Christians is not whether or not they are willing to continue sending checks to the IRS with "Romans 13" written in the memo line. 

Everyone is already doing that.

Luther once famously said,

"If I profess with loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except that little point which the world and the Devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point."

The far more neglected and pressing question facing Christians today is something like, “How far is too far?” How much more bloody, perverse, and ridiculous do things have to get in order before we say, “Enough,”? We ought not to be afraid to wrestle earnestly with the Scriptures over first principles-based conversations to give concrete answers to that question. Our great need is to ask and provide Biblical answers to the following orienting and anchoring questions:

What are people, what are they for, and how do we know?

What is life, what is it for, and how do we know?

What is government, what is it for, and how do we know?

What is money, what is it for, and how do we know?

There are millions of people today who operate (if unwittingly) out of a utilitarian view of the world and want to slough off the need for such conversations in the name of urgency: "We don't have time to consider these difficult and divisive questions; we need action NOW!" There are also many utilitarian Christians who only see the danger in questioning the legitimacy of many of the taxes borne by people all over the world. Their intuitive and unspoken response is, "The Bible says to pay the taxes, just pay the taxes!" They don't recognize the danger of legitimizing governments perpetuating industrial-scale theft via monetary debasement, "wealth redistribution," and deficit spending. For some reason, they don't take seriously the threat to the advance of the Gospel and their Christian witness that comes from surrendering an ever-increasing percentage of hard-won, divinely distributed wealth from their own stewardship into the hands of lawless leaders.

There is a time for decisive action, but if you never take time to orient yourself and critically examine the grounding of your intuitions (those "obvious" beliefs you have about the world and the way it works), you will eventually find yourself with (to quote Francis Beckwith) feet firmly planted in mid-air. The same roots that give a plant life keep it from being dragged around.

A society content to answer foundational, existential questions with answers grounded in positivism loses a principled basis to object to (for instance) even the most comprehensive of tax power grabs.

Here's a test: if a government wrote into law that every citizen had to pay a 100% tax on all they owned, how should a Christian respond? What if the law was 90%? 80%? These aren't just thought exercises; tax rates in the US are already as high as 37%. In France, that number has climbed as high as 45%. Japan, Finland, and several others hover around 56%, and (as of 2021) the Ivory Coast had the highest tax rates in the world for their highest earners at a tax rate of 60%. Think about what this means: citizens of the Ivory Coast are forced to surrender close to two-thirds of the fruit of their productive labor to the State.

And this is only part of the picture, not including state taxes, property taxes, or (perhaps most perniciously of all, given that they weren't voted on) the devaluation of the currencies through the ex-nihilic creation of a exponentially-increasing number of new currency units. More than 80% of all the US dollars that have ever existed were created after 2020. If that doesn't seem like a tax, look at what happened to people trying to buy a house from 2020 till now. In 2024, tax receipts are expected to account for only 78% ($4.919 trillion) of the $6.3 trillion U.S. budget. Where does that other 22% comes from?

Debt, or what our sophist US monetary apologists would call “deficit spending.”

Solomon told his sons that a good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children. The ruling fathers of the US (and our would be stepmother) seem content to run up and leave behind an impossible-to-repay debt to their children’s children, to the present-day tune of nearly $36 trillion. What kind of return are we getting? Where has that money gone?

Is that faithful stewardship?

We have grown numb being governed by a murderous gang of warmongering vampires, sucking the life and productive output of billions of people who haven’t even been born yet. We aren't living in normal times, and it’s sinful to close our eyes and pretend otherwise.

Think about the logic of paying 50+% taxes:

That you possess life (primarily or entirely) to establish and sustain the will and reign of earthly rulers and their regimes.

The reason that the Bible can speak of the goodness of taxes is that it was written both by and to people who were "too foolish" to fall for the "obvious truth" that we can print our way to prosperity and bend reality to our will by putting colorful pictures of dead men on special paper. They were "too stupid" to comprehend that image-bearers of the Almighty God would willingly surrender half of their productive compensation to lawless governments that create money out of thin air to (for example) “aid” impoverished African nations in snuffing out the lives of their children. Life and prosperity issue from self-denying work. God has designed death to precede resurrection and there is no shortcut.

If all fools are not equal and wisdom can require antithetical responses, and if demonstrably foolish, bloodthirsty governments exist, won’t faithfulness eventually warrant a correspondingly antithetical reaction regarding the standard form and amount of tribute they are due? How did the Hebrew midwives honor Pharaoh's request to murder baby Hebrew boys? They lied to his face. How about the wise men when King Herod told them to return and tell him where baby Jesus was? They ignored him. How did Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego honor Nebuchadnezzar's command to bow down and worship him as God? They refused to bend the knee. 

Honor and obedience are tributes, and Christians are duty-bound to pay them unless they conflict with the tribute of honor and obedience due to God.

"If there is no God above the State, then the State is God." - Francis Schaeffer

Many wicked, power-drunk rulers down through history have tried to weaponize the Bible to enslave the consciences of ordinary, God-fearing people into unquestioning submission to their every whim. And for as long as there have been Christians, there have been men, women, and children who testified to the goodness and totality of Jesus' kingship by refusing to offer the tributes of truth and unbound obedience to authorities who wish to wield those resources in direct opposition to God's revealed purposes.

As it relates to taxes, such a refusal is ought to be examined and (if necessary, undertaken) for the same two reasons that motivate everything Christians do: love for God and love for neighbor. It isn't loving or kind to God or neighbor to indulge the fantasies of “puny gods.” We live in a world of scarce time, scarce energy, scarce lives and scarce resources more generally, and to pretend otherwise serves merely to subsidize their deific delusions. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego honored and demonstrated more care for Nebuchadnezzar than anyone else in Babylon through their unwillingness to simultaneously lie about who he was (and wasn't).

There is a God above the State, and continuing to justify the surrender of an every-increasing percentage of the money He has entrusted to our stewardship by quoting verses devoid of context is unfaithful exegesis and will continue to produce weak, unsavoury churches shepherded by nice men who are better suited for a different era than the one they actually exist in. The world desperately wants nice men who will allow it to continue to impress it’s image on them, but it needs steadfast, immovable men who fear nothing but Christ and are satisfied with nothing short of His glory.

It's the only reasonable response based on the provision of the Heavenly Father, who lovingly made the world and everything in it. If Caesar's protection and provision warranted a day's wage, how much does God’s divine provision and the eternal protection of eternal life warrant? The life stewarded to mankind exists to further His kingdom and thus cannot primarily serve at the disposal of a rival king. He has need of those resources to fund businesses and Christian schools, adoptions, disaster relief, care for orphans and widows.

But agreeing there is a theoretical limit to the taxes that a Christian ought to pay is not the same this as saying we have arrived at such a point. There are undoubtedly reading this who are thinking, “Ok, then what level of tax is legitimate, and by what standard? Let’s get specific.” Pastor and author Douglas Wilson has argued that governments have no right to demand more than what God himself is owed: 10%. Christian theologian Greg Bahnsen made a related argument that taxes can under no circumstance surpass 90%, given that God requires 10%. But Bahnsen goes on to point out that contribution the Scriptures provide even more clarity. Paul told the Thessalonian church that those who don’t provide for the needs of their own household ought not even call themselves Christians, meaning that taxes ought not infringe on the ability of a man to render resources to both God and his closest neighbors: his family. Paul also encourages believers to work to have enough to share with others who have needs, earmarking even more money to be entrusted to God’s care and purposes, not Caesar’s. Third John tells Christians to share what they have with missionaries who go out for the sake of The Name in discipling the nations.

It’s in viewing the situation through this lens that we find life-giving, sanity-restoring wisdom. Governments don’t get to set their own job description. God does that, and mankind’s responsibility is to hear His voice and submit themselves to what he has revealed. The stakes of debates about the level of taxation we’re experiencing can’t be compared with the situation Jesus spoke into at a number of points during his earthly ministry. In the passages that speak about the lawfulness of the temple tax (the passage where Jesus tells Peter to take a coin from a fish’s mouth) and the lawfulness of the Roman poll tax (the “render to Caesar” passages), Jesus exhibits what at first blush seems like a pragmatic, laissez-fare attitude toward paying them. Part of this response was due to how inconsequential the amounts were. The denarius, as outlined in part 1, was the equivalent to one day’s wage. A shekel, which we’re told was sufficient to pay the temple tax for both Peter and Jesus, amounted to about four days’ wages, or two days each. Jesus’ counsel to pay those two taxes was simple: it’s not worth dying over three days’ wages: there were far bigger fish to fry.

Is that the case today?

Increasingly, no.

Today’s tax rates effectively force citizens to render anywhere from a quarter to more than half of the fruit of their annual labor to federal governments. This is a much larger fish, and requires a far greater sacrifice of sources (time, energy, focus, and money) to wrestle to shore than the minnows Jesus was dealing with. This level of taxation represents a far more existential crisis than that which our Lord addressed in his earthy ministry. The Scriptures clearly articulate the importance of using just weights and measures, including as it relates to the hermeneutic used to apply Biblical wisdom to modern life. All rituals communicate foundational truths about reality, and tax rituals are no exception. We find ourselves in the middle of a war between two rival kingdoms making rival zero-sum claims upon our finite resources that includes us and our children. We can’t serve two masters, and the Lord tells us that we will either love and devote ourselves to his service or other lesser lords. Christ has called his people to be salt and light, and faithfulness to his command can take a variety of forms, including contradictory ones that we would never choose for ourselves. Modern rulers could care less whether or not their subjects literally bow their knees; they are far more concerned with whether or not the checks cash on April 15th.

It might be time they start bouncing, for the glory of God and the good of people everywhere.