Didn't Jesus say something along the lines of "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's"? Sounds to me like he was pro taxes.
Matthew 22:20,21: He said to them: “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said: “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them: “Pay back, therefore, Caesar’s things to Caesar, but God’s things to God.”
Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s
except that's not what taxes are - taxes are citizens money going in to a pot to pay for things citizens need.
Also doesn't sound like something Jesus would say (in the context being portrayed) considering how much he hated the rich and their greed (to be clear, I'm not even christian, but this is well known).
Either way, some rich fuck trying to claim them for themsleves (or whoever added it later to serve the ruler of the time) doesn't change what taxes are.I love people so deliberately missing the point.. Fuck Jesus and what he did or didn't say, taxes aren't for and don't belong to the ruler of a country/community/whatever, no matter what that ruler tells you, it really isn't that fucking complicated.
Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” He saw through their duplicity and said to them, “Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?”“Caesar’s,” they replied. He said to them, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Luke 20 NIV
It's pretty clear they're taking about taxes.
The Bible actually says to shut up and pay your taxes without complaining lmao. Wonder who wrote that?
Yeah, you can bet your ass the Pope wanted everyone paying up.
There is very specifically tax fraud issues in the Bible. Mostly by tax collectors themselves. Lots of other places where it says to follow the laws of government.
The meme does encapsulate the views of a crap ton of fake Christians though.
It doesn't really discourage rape or slavery either, though. It's not a good manual for modern society.
Wasn't JC kind of nice to slaves or sth?
Idunno, probably? Being nice to the downtrodden seemed to be more or less his thing when he wasn't telling people that he was his own imaginary sky daddy 🤷
Pretty sure he didn't actually FREE all the slaves or even told slavers to please do so, though. Spartacus is a much better role model than Jesus in that aspect.
For the time, maybe. But the few times slavery is mentioned in the NT the focus is on treatment of slaves, not abolition. And even then, for slave owners who didn't follow Christian teachings, slaves were basically told to suck it up and get back to work (1Peter 2:18). Paul appears to free Onesimus in the book of Philemon (although I can't tell if his intended meaning is literal), and it's also worth noting that Christian nations were the first to abolish chattel slavery, but it'd be a stretch to say the Bible directly discourages slavery.
Render unto Cesar that which is Cesar's.
Lots of people are mentioning the Caesar thing, but nobody has mentioned that tithe is also a tax, and there is plenty said about that. Malachi 3:8, for example.
ITT:
A lot of people that don't get the anti-Roman rabble rouser was sneakily saying Caesar isn't owed anything by Judaea.
Can you expand upon this please?
Not to an academically rigorous degree, lol, but basically speaking it is clear from the known history of the region under Roman rule and the fragments of early records in non-Roman churches is that when Christianity was still a Jewish sect it found such fertile ground because it was specifically a rebellion against Roman rule and heirarchy. A non-violent one under Christ, supposedly, but one that inherently criticised Jewish collaboration with Roman rule.
Keeping in mind at the time just refusing to worship the Emperor as a god was treason, which is a bit of a problem to a monotheistic religion that damns you for doing so, but in the time Christ was preaching and later when the Apostles were running around converting everyone in earshot Judaea was working itself up for a massive rebellion against the Empire that would come to a head in The First Jewish Revolt.
Very long and blurry story short, in the three centuries between the death of Christ and the spread of his cult in the Jewish diaspora and then the oppressed underclasses of the Roman slaves and plebiscite, and quite a lot of repressed revolts against Roman rule, the canonization process of what would become the most popular Christian dogma would cease to be so explicitly anti-imperial as the early Catholic Church centered on Rome chose to whitewash anti-Roman sentiment to avoid persecution and, with luck, become more broadly appealing to their neighbors, along with their embrace of syncretist practices such as the co-opting of Mithraist rites to help convert the Roman military arms.
And, of course, it worked. By becoming a force of the Roman heirarchy instead of a critic the religion of rebels would eventually become the state religion of Rome, and thus Europe.
TL;DR when a Roman asked a non-violent cult leader preaching a doctrine that was explicitly treason in at least one way whether he was rebelling against Rome, not wanting to be executed but also not wanting to lose his followers he answered with a dogwhistle.
You can hear the quote in two ways with two answers:
What is Caesar's to a Roman? Everything.
What is Caesar's, false God, conqueror, and oppressor to a Jew? Nothing.
omw to look at the comments to see if it actually does
Stealing is a sin and tax fraud is stealing money from the country you live in
Fraud also involves lies, so that a two for one.
It actually is in favour of tax fraud painting the tax collectors as evil
Matthew 22:20,21: He said to them: “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said: “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them: “Pay back, therefore, Caesar’s things to Caesar, but God’s things to God.”
Tax collecting and tax paying are two different things.
IRRC, tax collectors had a lot of power and not enough oversight.
Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get
The Pharisee paints the tax collector as evil, but the pharisee is the bad guy in this story. Literally the next two verses:
13 But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to raise his eyes toward heaven, but was beating his chest, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other one; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
