Rendering Unto Caesar that Which is God's

 

Rendering Unto Caesar that Which is God's

© 2021 Ross Williams

I am continually amazed by the lengths to which socialists go in misapplying christian philosophy in their devotion to the Church of State, simply to try to guilt christians into knuckling under to their socialism. Jesus [nee Joshua bar Joseph] said to feed the hungry, right? so that means that all christians should be happy with the government picking the pockets of the masses to feed those who claim to be hungry.

No. It doesn't work that way. Go back and read the actual philosophy you are attempting to adopt for self-serving purposes. Joshua told YOU to feed the hungry, not willingly give your money to the government so that the government could employ two bureaucrats for every mouth to which it fed moldy cheese.

Joshua told YOU to give a naked man the shirt off YOUR back. Not make excuses for a government to rob its people to hire more bureaucrats to pester the population upon its haberdashery.

Doing good, to the christian philosophy, is independent of government involvement. That's what the whole Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, render unto God that which is God's thing is all about. Keep your politics out of religion, and vice versa. It's bad enough when atheistic socialists maul a religious principle to their own self-serving purposes. They're ignoramuses desperately searching for excuses to prop up a sociopolitical disaster. Their idiocy is understandable, even if not exactly welcome. But when a man of the cloth – someone who should know better – does the same thing, misapplying the religious philosophy he claims to espouse to further a political outcome, he is nothing but a hypocrite. A hypocrite who, if his philosophy is correct, is doomed to writhe in hell for eternity.

We all have our favorite examples of notorious christian hypocrites. Various Popes, Cardinals, the entire “liberation theology” thing, assorted clergy and other popular holy rollers. The one that recently caught my attention is some communist collaborateur by the name of Reverend Doctor Chuck Currie, a blogman associated with Pacific University and the United Church of Christ who seems to have forgotten all – and more than – he ever learned about his own religion.

Giving the comrade's writings a brief perusal, one gets the crystal clear impression that he is doing what so many other partisans do: pick and choose which of his required ideals he will adhere to in order to satisfy, in his own mind, a philosophical justification for his immediate political goals. Specifically and to wit: socialism. He ignores and denounces the rest of his required ideals as inconvenient to that end.

The boy has multiple essays in which he extols the virtues of Free Will for an individual's personal salvation. One must actively choose to do right; doing right by command or coercion doesn't count. That is apparently at least a portion of the reasoning behind his otherwise stilted defense of taking a pro-choice stance on abortion. Merely being outside the defined scope of government power is beyond his grasp, it would seem.

He has one essay I read in which he rejoices in the knowledge that he lives in a nation which prohibits religious tests for government agents. Ironically, it's in an essay in which he criticizes the result as it pertains to 'Climate Change' [nee, Global Warming]. But that seems to be as far as he is willing to adopt the Render unto Caesar/render unto God admonishment. He spends the bulk of his other writing excusing government involvement in every social and socialist feel-good measure he can think – and subsequently write – of.

To recap: socialism is the government control of the means of production of goods and services. Which is to say, all activities undertaken for profit. Which is to further say: the economy.

To the degree that communism is distinguishable from socialism, communism is, in practice, the adoption of socialism by dictatorial methods. The irreverable Reverend Doctor openly espouses socialism and turns a blind eye to those willing to use totalitarian means to accomplish it – thus becoming a commie collaborator. It is perfectly fine, indeed necessary, he says, for the Governor of his state of Oregon to command people to stay in their homes.

Rendering unto Caesar, though – in this nation – requires understanding the defined role and scope of government authority and prerogative. This nation has limited-power governance... extremely limited-power. If the power isn't explicitly granted by the Constitution, the government can't do it – period. The people, on the other hand, can and may to their heart's content. To render unto Caesar, therefore, requires – to a modern American christian – the acknowledgment that government is largely powerless to prevent self-serving asshole citizens from being self-serving assholes and inconveniencing [or worse] everyone else around them. If actual harm accrues outside of a strictly [and limited] criminal nature, it is the purview of the civil courts, only. The government has no other duty, obligation or authority in the matter.

And this is where Free Will enters the picture. The same commie hypocrite who excuses abortion as an individual's choice to do right-as-he-sees-it and leaving god with the final word on the matter, is more than happy to throw all that away when it comes to the socialists' current stable of social tropes.

To this non-christian reverend, Caesar is permitted to oversee environmental stewardship despite there being no defined authority for the government in the matter.

Correction, christian: Joshua told YOU to plant trees to suck up carbon dioxide, not submit to an endless array of taxes to hire bureaucrats to concoct a cockamamie schedule of CO2-balancing penalties.

Joshua told YOU to be as fuel-efficient in your transportation and home heating and cooling appliances as your pocketbook allows, not acquiesce to another fleet of bureaucrats who will regulate into oblivion the ability of a large [and growing, if eastern Europe of prior generations are able to serve as historical analog] class of people out of transportation and home comfort systems altogether.

Joshua told YOU to do it, not the government. If this form of asserted environmental stewardship is indeed within god's ineffable plan, then YOU do it. YOU do it, christian. Leave government and its authoritarian compulsion out of it. The moment you justify the government compelling “right”, you become...what was the citation you gave? OH right:

“For Christians to render everything to Caesar — their minds, their consciences — is to become evangelical nationalists. That’s not a distortion of the gospel; that’s desertion.”

Outright denunciation of his obligation to render unto Caesar, and further desertion the gospels, is also his position on gun rights. Caesar requires that the citizenry be as armed as it wishes to be. The vacuous vicar supplants that, though, with his own scripture once again. It is the obligation of Caesar to disarm the public, violating its own rules, because the public is too lazy and stubborn to be trusted with firearms and the Free Will necessary to do good with them, around them, or despite them. In the process he proof texts other clergy who point out the scriptural advice to arm yourself as needed, thereby pot/kettling those other clergy about proof-texting.

This, despite his emotional appeals to keep open theological minds about abortion where he trivializes, when he doesn't outright dismiss, the theological positions against it. “Good people can” – apparently – “come to different conclusions” upon abortion, but not upon the right to keep and bear arms. Free will shall apply only to one and not the other. Thus sayeth the Right Reverend Chuckles.

The newly-canonical Gospel of Chuck is rounded out by reminders that “good people” can come to different theological conclusions on all kinds of subjects, except when it comes to Donnie Combover and the Palace Coup impeachment. Such undertakings demand The Rule Of Law, even when the 'law' being strictly observed was made up on the spot and has no foundation whatsoever in this political system.

The Gospel of Chuck informs the faithful that Rule of Law does not include opposition politicians in the Oregon State Senate using established rules to deny quorum or use the filibuster to kill particularly putrid socialist dicta regarding “Climate Change”... which still is not a defined authority of government to make law upon. By the way.

The Gospel of Chuck completely rewrites the narrative of Easter, asserting against known history and accepted theology – both jewish and christian theology – that the Romans had Joshua crucified because he “preached non-violence” and “god over empire”, rather than the Romans crucifying Joshua because the jews wanted him crucified for being a pain in the jewish religious establishment's ass. The Romans were more than willing to commute the sentence.

The ahistorical revisionism doesn't end there, either. This fourth entrant in the Trinity avers that the Romans, in order to find and capture Joshua for the purpose of executing him for being a religious peacenik, embarked upon “a genocide” to do it.

Of course, no such thing ever happened. The only meaningful genocide of jews began some 1,910 years later in the territory the Romans knew – but could not conquer – as Germania. The Romans did, however, diasporize the jews a few generations after the crucifixion in question, because the same jewish religious establishment that saw Joshua as a pain in its ass was being the same pain in the ass to the Romans. Actually, the jewish religious establishment was a greater pain in the Romans' ass, but that's for an historical tract to discuss, and not for the denunciation of a faux-religious twat. The attempted genocide of the christians occurred several generations after even the Diaspora.

This self-righteous, holier-than-thouing is patently offensive. It's the reason I stopped going to church myself back in my youth. I was raised United Methodist as was most of the rest of my mother's side of the family. ...those who hadn't gone Mormon, that is. One summer in my late teens we had some kid from another church in our conference with aspirations to seminary come give us a guest sermon while the resident reverend was on vacation. The kid was a few years older than I was, and thoroughly misplaced in time – the very late 70s – with his 1950s haircut and clothing. He gave an impassioned sermon about judging not, about the proper place of The Church being a haven for the sinners of the world... except for those committing the sin of homosexuality.

Known homosexuals, according to this aspirant to the Throne of God, are to be rejected at all hazards and denied at every turn. I'd been only disinterestedly following his prattling up until that point – far easier to do in the balcony with the other teenagers, than down in the pews with the stern and scowling adults. Upon hearing his Grand Caveat I paid far more attention. Rank hypocrisy keens the senses. After the service as everyone was filing out the back past him I listened to far too many of my fellow Union Center United Methodists congratulating him on a succinct and well-reasoned excuse as to why some sins are more sinful than others.

Nope. Sorry. I don't do overt hypocrisy under the pretense of sanctity. It was the next spring that I went into the Air Farce and lost all guilt-imposed exhortations to attend church; I haven't missed the theological dodge and dance for a minute. And despite this young twat's obvious hyper-zealous faux-conservative attitude upon homosexuality [a good 15 years before I learned my younger brother was gay], and the cleric Chuckie's hyper-zealous “progressive” [ironic term] position, the two would seem to be far more alike than they are different. “Good people” can come to different theological positions on anything, except on what is seen by the asshole in the stiff collar as uniquely unacceptable. These positions change from one asshole in a stiff collar to the next. Homosexuality, a gas-guzzler or a semi-auto... same thing, theologically speaking.

Here's some good advice to the instant asshole in the stiff clerical collar: either be an actual, by-god christian, or stop calling yourself one.