thinking out loud . . .

One of my (libertarian) Facebook friends posted this note the other day:

Christians might want to know that Jesus was an illegal-tax protestor.

With the note was a link to a PDF, with “proof” that Jesus not only taught that taxes were evil, but led his followers in a full-out tax-resistance movement. This was his text:

Then the entire assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate.

They began to accuse him saying, We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor. Luke Ch. 23, ver. 1

A few days before that, another of my friends (of a collectivist bent) offered me Acts 2:32-47 as a proof-text that God favors redistributive taxation:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Show of hands: How many of you see any element at all of coercion in this passage?

Yeah, I didn’t either.

As is made clear in the subsequent telling of the Ananias and Sapphira story, the property was theirs to do with as they wanted. What they wanted to do was share it with those in need. Nobody made them. And, as my libertarian friend, above, and his ultralibertarian friends will tell you, taxes are definitely coercive in nature.

The other point I only partly shared with my socialist Christian friend was that these were unique (though, throughout history, oft-repeated) times for the early church. It was under severe persecution. Humanly speaking, they had only each other to depend on. And it was for a very short time. The thing I didn’t share with my friend was that, given this “system” of selling property and using the proceeds to meet needs, the time had to be short. Extremely short. Because, with no property with which to produce ongoing income (the income-producing property having been sold), the only way to continue meeting the material needs of the community was to invite new people (no problem there!) who could sell their property and distribute the proceeds. In other words, a first-century Ponzi scheme. I don’t think so…

At least my collectivist friend was sincerely looking for answers in scripture that he actually believes in.

I wish I could say the same for the person who produced the Jesus was a tax-resister PDF. I suppose it could be a sincere mistake to have missed all the scriptural context for the passage at hand. But there is something else there that—how can I say this? There is no nice way. The man produced a 162-page PDF, “a refreshing, insightful view of Jesus as a man of impeccable character and integrity,” and he basically committed intellectual suicide by, oh, page 6. I actually continued to page 7 and realized there was no resurrecting this steaming heap of amateur “exegesis and hermeneutics.”

Yes, he used those words. Exegesis and hermeneutics. The word that came to my mind, though, was another six-dollar word: eisegesis, reading into the scriptures what one already believes. (Exegesis, on the other hand, is the act of reading out of scripture what the text actually says.)

I quoted above the author’s base text for his claim that Jesus was an “illegal-tax protester” (Luke 23:1). I’ll quote it again, this time in context (emphasis mine):

Then the entire assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate.

They began to accuse him saying, We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor.Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, “We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Christ, a king.”

So Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

“Yes, it is as you say,” Jesus replied.

Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, “I find no basis for a charge against this man.”

But they insisted, “He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching. He started in Galilee and has come all the way here.”

On hearing this, Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean. When he learned that Jesus was under Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at that time.

When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform some miracle. He plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the teachers of the law were standing there, vehemently accusing him. Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him. Dressing him in an elegant robe, they sent him back to Pilate. That day Herod and Pilate became friends—before this they had been enemies.

Pilate called together the chief priests, the rulers and the people, and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion. I have examined him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us; as you can see, he has done nothing to deserve death. Therefore, I will punish him and then release him.“

With one voice they cried out, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!” (Barabbas had been thrown into prison for an insurrection in the city, and for murder.)

Wanting to release Jesus, Pilate appealed to them again. But they kept shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

For the third time he spoke to them: “Why? What crime has this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty. Therefore I will have him punished and then release him.“

But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed. So Pilate decided to grant their demand. He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one they asked for, and surrendered Jesus to their will.

Our poor author uses big-time words like exegesis and hermeneutics, thereby hoping (I guess) to sound like a smart man who has done his studies, but he doesn’t realize there are procedures involved in actually doing them.

For instance, context. Whether Bible study or Shakespeare or an interview with a politician, context is everything. In this case, we find that the author’s assertion that Jesus preached against taxes and incited his followers to rebellion were spoken by…

His enemies.

Not impartial witnesses. And, as we see—when we look at the context—not the authorities. Neither of the authorities.

But there’s more. There is not only context, but the basic rule that scripture interprets scripture.

There are other passages that speak to this one. The first is a parallel passage, Matthew 26:57-27:26, which provides much more detail. Such as this (Matthew 26:59-60, emphasis mine):

The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death. But they did not find any, though many false witnesses came forward.

Finally two came forward and declared, “This fellow said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.’”

Another show of hands: Who is ready to believe these—how were they described? false witnesses?

That’s what I thought.

In a way, what’s even worse is the mealy-mouthed claim our author also makes on page 6 of his tome that the Bible “is rife with confusion and contradictions.”

If that’s so, then why bother trying to prove from scripture what Jesus stood for? How can you prove anything?

Now, you may think my beef is against this, um, author. But you’re wrong. My beef is against the number of people who fall for stuff like this. In and out of the church. Believers in Christ and nonbelievers.

And it’s not just amateurish misuse of scriptures—bad as that is. It’s this whole blatant laziness that passes for “research” in too much of our political conversation. People either don’t know how, or simply refuse, to follow simple processes for determining what happened, what somebody said, what something means.

And then we accept and/or assert mind-boggling internal contradictions and call them truth.

It’s a wonder we still have any kind of democracy in this country.