From the mailbag

Reader CR chimes in on Ronald Houser's argument for a free market Jesus ...

The problem with Houser's argument is that Paul specifically makes it clear in Romans 13 that God himself institutes governments--the ruling authorities--to collect taxes, and specifically collect those taxes *so that* the governing authorities can reward those who do good and punish those who do wrong and *so that* the believer has a clean conscience about submitting to the governing authorities. Failure to pay one's taxes is "to resist what God has appointed."

There's no easy way out of this for someone who makes the argument that all taxation is theft. It clearly is not, or else Paul would not have used this argument to justify taxation or submission to the authorities. The entire context here is to *avoid* being a nuisance to one's community and appearing as a lawbreaker. Someone who is in constant rebellion to the government, who advocates refusing any payments, revenues, respect, or honor to it or the "ministers of God" who are the servants of God working in government, is someone who gives the body of Christ a bad name and is an embarassment or a disgrace to Jesus' own actions of submitting to the authorities who were over him (as in paying the temple tax as well as following legal and religious proscriptions even while demonstrating they were not explicitly the law of God), submitting even to death on the Cross (as Paul repeats the early church hymn in Phillippians 2).

Houser is simply wrong about what he thinks is the "justice of God." God's justice is challenging the ruling authorities to remember who is their own "overriding authority," but also to submit to it, just as Christ Jesus submitted to his own scourging and crucifixion.

Romans 13:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.