Luke 20:25 “And He said to them, Therefore render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to God the things which are God's.”
What is the difference between what we rend to Caesar and what we rend to God? In order to put this into practice we need to understand what Caesar asks of us and what God asks of us.
First, what does Caesar ask of us? I think that everyone would agree that Caesar represents the Government. I am going to be talking about the government in the U.S.A. because that is what I am familiar with. For most western countries the basic issues will be the same. For short hand I am going to call our Caesar “Uncle Sam.”
What does our Caesar, Uncle Sam, ask of us? Uncle Sam asks that we obey the laws and he would kind of prefer that we vote. He is quite clear that we are to pay our taxes. Uncle Sam does NOT ask for our love and devotion. There IS pressure in the U.S.A. to love our country, stuff like “America, love it or leave it.” That does NOT come from law. For people that have been born into the U.S.A. there is no feeling or loyalty type stuff required of us by the government. For an immigrant who takes an “Oath of Citizenship” the rules are a little bit different. Here is a link to a copy of that oath: <http://www.nps.gov/elis/forteachers/upload/Citizenship%20Oath.pdf>. What I am getting at though, is that Uncle Sam, as contrasted with God, does not require our absolute love to Him. Uncle Sam does not particularly care if the U.S. citizen born here even likes him.
On the other hand, what does God require of us? God requires that we love Him with all of our being:
Luke 10:27. “And he answered, 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.'”
We can see from the Sheep and Goats passage starting with Matthew 25:31 that loving people is a subcategory of loving God; we are taught in the New Testament job description to love three kinds of people, our brethren, our neighbors and our enemies.
We have a serious choice to make in this. In Luke 16:13 Jesus tells us that:
“No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
That King James word, “mammon” hides what this is talking about. In the NASB and many other modern versions it is translated to the word “wealth” which is what most agree that it means. What Christians do not admit to is that in loving Uncle Sam, in loving the American Dream, what they are loving is wealth. But loving wealth is what it is primarily all about. We are a rich country and Christians want very much to keep it that way. But then again, Christians have been taught that serving the state is serving God since the compromises with Constantine the Great.
Of course there is also the freedom stuff that goes with it. I am talking about things like freedom of speech, religion, happiness, to own property and the Miranda. We lump these all into things that God has proclaimed that we must have. We claimed in the Declaration of Independence that certain “inalienable rights” were given to us by God. Most Christians believe therefore that this is a Biblical principle. I am not sure where these Christians get this idea as I am sure most of them have not looked at the Bible and what it says closely enough to decide for themselves what the Bible says about it. These rights ARE very much a part of how we should treat each other. They were a very good thing to be put into law.
These rights are not, however, something that we should love. They are part of the world system, and we must choose between loving God and loving the things of the world. As for these rights being inalienable? What is true about this is that the principles about God commanding us to love people has always been there. We are commanded to love people, period. What is not true is that these rights are inalienable. If we look at both Biblical and secular history we will see that people have frequently been alienated from this type of treatment. For most of history these have not been the law of the land.
These American rights were put into place in the U.S.A. by God using solders and statesmen as tools to get this job done. It is ultimately God who determines history, not people. These rights were tools that God has used for a period of time to do tasks that He wanted done in our culture. I believe that these tasks had to do with calling us to Him, and that we mostly did not heed that call. This fits in with Biblical history. These freedoms are tools in God's tool chest. Throughout most of history God has kept these tools in the tool box unused. If in our culture God decides to put those tools away and pull out other tools, like perhaps persecution, we need to welcome God's working in our lives and culture in whatever way God wants to work. If we decide to love the tools rather than God, the infinite creator of the universe and every one of us in it, if we choose to love freedom rather than God, we are idolaters. No greater love has any man than this, that he lay down his life for his idols. We should not lay down our lives for these tools, these freedoms.
Mar 8:35-36 “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?”
We SHOULD lay down our lives for Jesus and His gospel. We should NOT spend our time and other resources protecting freedom rather than loving people into the Kingdom of God.
Simple logic, simple two plus two equals four reasoning, then tells us that we cannot love both Uncle Sam and God. We must choose, are we going to love God like He commands us to, or are we going to love Uncle Sam, the American Dream and the things of the world? James 4:4 tells us:
“You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
A Christian has a choice to make. They must choose between loving Caesar, our Uncle Sam, and loving God. Uncle Sam does not even care if we like him let alone love him. God on the other hand demands, commands, that we love Him totally. This has been a principle of God from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eve through the kingdom years of Israel, through the exile of Israel, through the days of Jesus' earthly ministry, through modern times and will always be the commandment. We are to love God with everything we are and with everything we have. Everything about loving God is good. Loving God is not only the right thing to do but is totally desirable. If we have clear minds and clear hearts and we know God we will want to love Him. God is GOOD and WORTHY to be loved. Followers of Jesus understand this and are always doing their best to love God more completely and more accurately.
No comments:
Post a Comment