Rendition: To Caesar & to God

Jesus said to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's."  I hope you have done your rendering.  I got mine done very early, about 1:30 this afternoon.  Actually I could have E-filed my return ridiculously early--I pretty well finished at 1:00 this morning.  I'll get back to that.  In that statement I referenced, found in Matthew 22:21, Jesus also said ". . . and unto God the things that are God's.

I haven't read the book by Ross Douthat,

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, but I did read an interesting interview with him here.  I find much with which to agree in the interview.  Much of my agreement has to do with that confusion of Caesar and God, which Jesus condemned.  I'll let you read the interview, or the book for yourself, but apparently Douthat is zeroing in on a principle that has been articulated in various forms throughout church history.  The monastics, and groups that radically separate from the world like the Amish, some Mennonites, and to a large degree the Fundamentalists of sixty years ago made the point one way.  "We believe," they said, "that what is supremely important has nothing to do with the world's power bases.  The concept is clear in the confrontational ministries of leaders like Billy Graham (after he learned some early lessons) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John the Baptist, the Old Testament prophets, Thomas More, Desmond Tutu, Chuck Colson, the host of martyrs in the early church, and many of the reformers.  These spokesmen for the Lord--though I don't necessarily agree with the positions all of them took--stood apart from the state and confronted it, sometimes facing not only a corrupt civil authority, but also a "church" in an unhealthy alliance with the state.  As the post World War I German church, learned too late, and as what is popularly called Evangelicalism* needs to learn, we are in greatest danger when we find something within Caesar's realm with which we agree.   We ought to rejoice in sound, righteous government.
"Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a disgrace to any people." (Proverbs 14:34)  But, but, but, we have to realize--and history is full of examples--if you get into bed with Caesar, you wake up with Caesar's fleas.  Or to use an even less flattering analogy, it is hard to speak truth to power when our mouths are full of junk-food the brokers of power have poured into the trough from which we feed.

Oh, about my 1:00am tax-form completion:  I was glad about my way early "Caesaric rendition," so happy that I retired in bliss, such contentment that I forgot to set my alarm.  I slept the slumber of one whose conscience is clear of any unmet obligation to the toga-wearing class, and awoke at 7:30, the beatific aura of my fulfilled obligation still hanging on my patriotic, ethical, much poorer person.  The glow lasted until I realized that 7:30 is an hour-and-a-half past the time I was supposed to be at a Bible study with some guys.

Render to Caesar, but let's not let it keep us from giving God the supreme place in our lives that He deserves.    

 It's STTA