But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
Defend this commie christcucks, explain how he is not saying the money is ceasar's private property because of a spooky drawing on it Lmao so "leave your possessions and follow me" or "a rich man has the same chances of going in heaven than a camel has to pass through the hole of a needle" are methaphors too and you actually agree with the catholic church or american televangelists. Pathetic.
It isn't Caesar's property, it's due to Caesar because Judea is an occupied country and subject to the Romans. He's telling people to just pay their taxes and not rise up in open rebellion, as other Jews would likely have advocated at this time, or as many Jews expected the promised Messiah to do. The reason for this was likely that he believed that God would intervene in the world within his lifetime to establish the World to Come. As he says in Matthew whilst speaking to his disciples, "Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." So he believed that the Biblical end of days would soon be upon them and God would right the wrongs of the world, which would render mortal troubles like Roman taxation rather inconsequential. Instead, one's focus should be on one's relation with God, as that relationship will soon prove decisive. Applying this Jewish preacher opinion on Roman imperialism to modern matters is retarded either way.
Anthony Ramirez
I hate having to keep answering this but here it goes.
To begin with, we can see what Jesus is doing here is circumventing a literary trap. If he simply answers "No, you should not pay the tax", the questioners can inform the Roman authorities of Jesus encouraging tax resistance and have him arrested, and interestingly enough he was accused at his trial for forbidding payment . However, if he instead answers "Yes, you should pay the tax" the questioners will have reason to bring him before the chief priests and have him publicly repudiated and renounced for supporting the tax. What he instead does is turn the question back around at the questioners by first calling them hypocrites and then asking them to produce a coin suitable for payment. When one of them produces a Roman coin of which we can assume is a denarius, a coin just entering circulation, Jesus asks them whose image and inscription are on it. When they answer Caesar, Jesus immediately rebukes them as they have shown themselves to indeed be trading in denarii, a coin both only just entering circulation (meaning they and thus the chief priest who sent them are helping in distribution of the coin making them hypocrites) and displaying Caesar as mammon (god of money). Not only that, but they are displaying such a coin in the temple precincts. What is Jesus is saying when he says "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" is that for Caesar to take back his blasphemous coin, for the questioners to the surrender using the graven currency of the Romans, and that you must give what is God's to God (which if you had paid attention before, is yourself). This is further built upon as a teaching with the apostles going on to form a collective commune and the whole couple incident. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananias_and_Sapphira
Charles Evans
Okay, OP, I'm not even a christian, but I'll walk you through this one. Who is more important: Caesar or God? Whose image is on the money? Do you think that God is going to care if you have a bunch of trinkets with Caesar's face on it?
Carter Myers
Also meant to ask OP as well, what translation is this?
Jack Sanders
Doubling down on this: Reminder that man is created by God. He's telling you to get rid of your money and turn yourself to God.
How is this even hard for you to understand?
Carter Sanders
Op here. Fair answers tbh. This was the only thing that made me strange about christianity and gommunism. Sorry for accusing tone.
Aaron Foster
Been a while since I've seen raptor jesus
Aaron Young
See you at church tomorrow, user.
Ethan Hernandez
Christianity is essentially deified socialism, with the "Kingdom of God" standing as a metaphor for a communist utopia.
Acts 2:34-37
Isaiah 1:17
2 Corinthians 8:13-15
Galatians 6:2
1 John 3:17
Matthew 6:24
Proverbs 28:8
Leviticus 25:35-38
Zachary Morales
Agh, so this is the thread that caused all that christian spam
Started a thread on /christian/ because I want a serious conversation on this
Elijah Sanders
this tbh fuck, now i have to find a rafiq screencap about this revisionism
Jeremiah Moore
Okay, it appears they deleted it: I was just trying to have a legitimate and serious conversation.
Cameron Ortiz
I always interpreted this as an example of the politico-economic apathy encouraged by the New Testament. The whole “concern yourself with spiritual salvation first, and deal with material society by going with the flow” idea.
Liam Perry
Always OP I think people later in history really did interpret it as this but I don't know if jesus meant it like that, it seems to me he was legit just trying to evade a trap.
Benjamin Mitchell
They have a dedicated christian/pol/ thread general to prevent politics threads from cluttering up the catalog.
