Paying Taxes

Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?  Should we pay them, or should we not? (Mk. 12:14)

​We live in a world and in a nation where our government is becoming increasingly more evil at a blinding rate of speed.  They advocate for and are pushing through legislation which promotes the murder of over a million unborn babies every year in the United States alone, laws which seek to protect and promote abortion clinics, which promote and push for the homosexual agenda, desiring to teach homosexuality in schools to the youngest of children, laws which create racial tension rather than heal it, laws which seek to suppress religious freedom rather than protect it.  The result is that it is becoming more difficult for Christians to support our government through loyalty and finances.  It’s times like these that make Jesus’ words even more poignant.  In Mark 12 we read the story of the Pharisees coming to Jesus and asking him if they should pay taxes to Caesar or not?  Keep in mind, in first century Israel the Roman army was an occupying force who were using the Jewish tax dollars to maintain their army in Israel, to desecrate the Temple, and to stifle Jewish freedoms.  And yet Jesus says to them, “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it” (v.15).  When they do, he asks them whose “likeness and inscription” is on it?  They say to him, “Caesar's.”  And then Jesus says to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.”  He does not tell them not to pay taxes.  He does, however, essentially tell them they should worry less about their tax dollars, and be more concerned about how they spend their time and how they live their lives.  Give the government their taxes, as it has been instituted by God (Rom 13:1) and give God the whole of your life as you have been created in his image.