Discerning Now: To Caesar and to God

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The trap

The Lord's answer to the flattery and malice of the Pharisees is the key to everything on this page. But what trap were they setting when they asked him, “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” (Matthew 22:17)?

They were not simply after his permission to keep their money. Look at the coin they handed him. Around the emperor's head ran the words Tiberius Caesar, son of the Divine Augustus. The tax was paid in a coin that proclaimed a man divine. If Jesus said “pay it,” they could accuse him of honoring Caesar's claim to a worship that belongs to God alone. If he said “do not pay it,” they could hand him over to Rome as a rebel: one more would-be messiah promising a kingdom of this world, as if to say, “You no longer need to fear Caesar; I am here, and we will take over the world.”

Jesus refused both answers. The coin bears Caesar's image, so it belongs to Caesar. That much the Father permits for now.

Whose image we bear

But we bear another image. “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Christ himself is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15): “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The coin goes back to Caesar. We go back to God.

Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus shows that the Father's authority is absolute, even over him, the Son. On the night before he died he said: “I will no longer speak much with you, for the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me, but the world must know that I love the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded me” (John 14:30–31).

He put his words into action. In the desert, at the start of his ministry, he answered the tempter, “Get away, Satan! It is written: ‘The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve’” (Matthew 4:10). He lived those words to the day of his crucifixion. He did not overthrow Caesar or Pilate. He accepted the Father's plan for our salvation and in all humility died for us, and by rising he showed that God's power is greater than any Caesar's. When Pilate boasted, “Do you not know that I have power to release you and I have power to crucify you?”, Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above” (John 19:10–11).

The line to watch

The beast of Revelation 13 is a Caesar who demands to be worshiped. That is the line to watch. When an earthly power begins to ask for what belongs to God alone, Christians must answer as the apostles did: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Questions to ask now

We do not need to wait for the final trial to practice this discernment. Every day, something asks for our allegiance. These questions help:

1. Whom am I asked to trust as savior? The Catechism warns of a deception that offers “an apparent solution” to our problems “at the price of apostasy from the truth” (CCC 675). Any leader, movement or technology that presents itself as the answer to what only God can answer deserves our caution.
2. Am I asked to give honor that belongs to God? Respect for a leader is right. Devotion that admits no fault, and that treats a man as chosen beyond question, is something else.
3. Am I asked to say what I know is false? The Antichrist's work is a lie (2 Thessalonians 2:9–11). A Christian may never buy peace by calling a lie the truth.
4. Does this tie my livelihood to my conscience? The mark joins buying and selling to worship. Watch for anything that makes our daily bread depend on betraying what we believe.
5. Does this lead me toward Christ, or away from him? “By their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:16). Does it make me more prayerful, more truthful and more loving, or more fearful, more resentful and more contemptuous?

What this page does not ask

It does not tell anyone how to vote. Political choices belong to each person's conscience, formed by the Church's teaching. Faithful Catholics disagree about them, and I respect them. We need to go deeper, to a question no ballot can settle: to whom does my heart belong? If my reading of Sacred Scripture, of the theologians I have learned from, and of the times we live in is correct, then no Christian may give any person the allegiance that belongs to God alone. If my reading is wrong, these questions are still the right ones to ask, every day, of every power in this world.

“Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15–16).

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