“Render Unto Caesar”

I was over at Cathouse chat, just checking in to see what has been going on in Kat’s life recently, when I stumbled across a comment that referred to Charles Chaput’s “Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life”. Now, I’ve not yet read the book, but I have some taste of the probable thrust from the title. I’m not Roman Catholic either, but again, I think I can infer a bit of the content from my knowedge of Roman Catholicism, as well.

Looks/sounds interesting from what reviews I’ve seen. If its content is anything close to what I can infer from reviews/title/current knowledge about RC thought, I may well find myself in substantial agreement with Chaput.

Backing up a bit. I grew up in a Southern Baptist subculture where Matthew 22:17-21 ws usually applied thusly: pay your taxes and pay your tithe. Now, that’s always–even from childhood–struck me as a particularly shallow exegesis (*heh* from long before I had an inkling of an idea of what the word exegesis even meant). As I grew “in wisdom and in stature” (and in girdth and breadth *heh*), I became able to put some meat on the bones of my disatisfaction with that shallow interpretation. And so follows my shirt tail exegesis… a group of Pharisees came to Jesus and said,

Matthew 22:17 Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not? 18 but Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, [ye] hypocrites? 19 Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny. 20 And he saith unto them, Whose [is] this image and superscription? 21 They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

First, this was a group of Jewish “lawyers” attempting to pull Katie Couric on Jesus. Roman occupation (and Roman taxes) were strongly disliked by the Jews of Israel, so, they thought, if Jesus did not denounce paying Roman taxes they’d have trapped him into an unpopular stand. On the other hand, the Romans really came down hard on anything that even smacked of fomenting tax evasion or revolt, so if he did choose the popular answer they more than half expected, they could have him up on charges before the Roman government lickety split.

Horns of a dilemma? Not so. Jesus simply invoked the very orthodox Jewish principle of the imago dei–the concept that we are all made in God’s image, and then turned the Pharisees’ challenge on its head. “Whose image” is stamped upon the coin? Caesar’s. But you see, when Jesus followed that up with both “render to Caesar” and “render to God” he directly invoked the principle of imago dei, essentially saying, “This coin comes from Caesar, so pay him with it, but YOU are stamped with God’s image and belong to Him, therefore, you owe Him yourselves.”

I like to ask myself further, “What does this image of God look like when stamped on a man?” Now, we can look all through scripture and nature to discern what God’s image might “look” like, but I think Jesus was talking about His image as to character and behavior, and probably no other description succinctly distills the imago dei like Micah 6:8

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

That is what the “coin” stamped with the image of God looks like: Justice; Mercy; Humility. Look for those traits in someone who’s “render[ing] untoi God the things that are God’s” and you’ll see someone who has internalized 2 Corinthians 5:17… and who exemplifies submission to Jesus command in Matthew 22:21.

Yes, “render unto Caesar” means much more than simply paying our taxes. It also–at the very least–means obeying those laws that do not directly contradict biblical precepts (see Acts 3-4), and in a representative republic (with democratic elements), it also means we have a responsibility to govern well. (Which in my experience largely means we ought to concentrate on throwing the bums out of office at every election, but that’s just my view, of course. :-))

“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”