Some events in our lives function as mirrors, reflecting back to us the beliefs we hold closest to our hearts. 9/11 was like that. Each side of the political spectrum claimed the tragedy as proof that their worldview comprised reality.

Those on the right spoke of “evildoers” that we would hunt down and smoke out of their holes in an unrelenting war. Those on the left asserted that religious fundamentalism breeds terrorism and must be dismantled in all forms. We all wanted to diagnose the disease called terror. Armed with the correct cause of terrorism, we believed we could fight it, or heal it, depending upon our political persuasion.

For most of us, the tragic events of 9/11 did little to widen our worldview. Rather, we each screened images of the event through our particular lens of the world, and found within them evidence to prove the points we were already making.

The same can be said, I believe, of Jesus’ statement on the question of paying taxes. Both sides of the political and theological spectrum have claimed his statement as justification for their position on taxes. Most of us know how the story goes: a group of religious authorities set out to entrap Jesus by publicly confronting him with a tricky tax question. In an effort to discredit Jesus, they introduced a wedge issue: should Jews pay the annual tribute tax to the Roman Empire?

It’s a fascinating question. I imagine the burgeoning crowd of followers leaned forward with bated breath to hear Jesus’ response. Perhaps they knew the question was a set up. Jesus’ interrogators were not particularly interested in the ethics of taxation. They wanted to watch Jesus squirm. If he promoted paying taxes to Rome, he risked angering the masses disgruntled by Roman misuse of power. If he advocated tax resistance, the Roman authorities would surely catch wind of his public statement and punish him accordingly. These religious authorities weren’t looking for a right answer. They asked a question to which they believed there was no right answer.

But Jesus outmaneuvered them. He asked his interrogators to pull out the coin with which they’d pay such a tax. And in many ways, this was Jesus’ question to his questioners. You see, the Jews had a local currency, which had to be exchanged for Roman currency in order to do business with the Empire. Many devout Jews, according to theologian Marcus Borg, avoided using coins with a graven image, but the Roman currency was doubly blasphemous. It not only revealed a graven image of the emperor, but also had these words inscribed beneath: “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus.” The assertion of Augustus’ divinity was offensive to Jews, so when one of Jesus’ interrogators pulled out a Roman coin, he revealed the compromising position of these religious authorities. They did business with the Empire.

Jesus asked whose image was on the coin. The answer came, “The emperor’s.” Then he uttered the line that has baffled religious authorities and scholars ever since. He said, “Then render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”

At tax time, some argue that Jesus quite literally affirmed that we ought to give to the government that which belongs to the government—it’s our duty as responsible citizens to pay our taxes. Others claim Jesus’ statement suggested that nothing on earth really belongs to Caesar or to anyone, for all things truly belong to God—thus we ought to resist paying taxes that fund oppression, violence, or war.

Perhaps this is just what Jesus intended—to throw up a mirror with this obscure phrase, that we might decide for ourselves what we owe to Caesar and what we owe to God. Mennonite Dale Glass-Hess remarks, “We may refuse to serve Caesar as soldiers and even try to resist paying for Caesar’s army. But the fact is that by our lifestyles we’ve run up a debt with Caesar, who has defended the interests that support our lifestyle.”
We may vary in exactly where we draw the line.

Congress recently faced a similar debate over Bush’s request of supplemental funding for the war in Iraq. Some believe it’s our duty to continue to provide a funding stream for this war in which our soldiers are embroiled. Others, like Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, have flatly stated, “I cannot in good conscience vote for another dollar or another dime to support this war.” Many of us find ourselves in a frustrating fog of uncertainty. We know we want this war to end, but we don’t know what kind of exit strategy we ought to support as Congress squabbles over how our tax dollars will be spent.

With so many of our dollars going to fight a war so few of us believe in, tax time inundates us with an ethical dilemma. Some of us pay our taxes with a grumble, others are war tax resisters, and some pay taxes while advocating for a shift in federal spending priorities—but we each have to decide for ourselves how we will navigate life as a citizen of the empire.

When Jesus asked whose image was engraved upon the coin used to pay Roman taxes, he must have known that the image of the emperor represented the ideology of the empire and the priorities of its governing body. Likewise, our federal budget reflects our nation’s priorities—not our priorities as we wish they were or think they ought to be, but the actual way in which our tax dollars are allocated.

If you want to know what people value, look at how they spend their money. If you want to get a glimpse of the priorities of an institution, check the annual budget. As a person of faith, when I want to know what my congregation truly values, I keep watch during stewardship season. In particular, I listen for proposed budget increases. Will the increase go toward programming for our children? Will we finally give our staff the raises we could not afford to give them last year? Will we give to the greater community? I ask because I want to know what we value.

At WAND we are always finding that when groups examine the federal budget for the first time we all tend to experience a little shock. So few Americans know that over half of our nation’s discretionary spending is allocated toward militarism. For fiscal year 2008, the Bush administration has requested $502 billion for the Defense Department and the nuclear weapons portion of the Department of Energy, an 8% increase from the previous year and more than we spend on education, health, housing, veterans benefits, science, the environment, economic development, and international affairs combined. This does not include the $142 billion requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not exactly the national priorities you envisioned in a moral budget? It’s time for a shift. As citizens of the empire, we ought to question how our dollars are spent. As children of God, we each have to decide how we will render unto God the things that are God’s: justice, peace, and reconciliation in a gun toting, war torn world. Let’s begin this tax season by calling upon our leaders to find a way out of Iraq, and advocating instead for a moral budget that spends our dollars honoring our commitment to the “least of these.”

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