Jesus Christ’s public remarks have been subjected to multiple interpretations over the last two millennia.
Some takes have been excellent, while others have been the exact opposite of excellent.
We’re fairly certain, for example, that the following interpretation from the Daily Beast columnist Jay Michaelson, who alleges Christ encouraged his followers to subordinate their religious objections to the laws of the state, falls into the latter category.
In an article published this week, titled “There’s a Simple Compromise to the Gay-Wedding Cake Fight. Does Anybody Want It Though,” Michaelson makes the specific claim:
[Jesus] said “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” clearly instructing his followers to obey the secular law even if they have religious objections to it. The horse has left the stable; the “war on religion” is now an article of faith.
It’s always amusing to read someone proclaim that he has made an ingenious discovery about Christ’s teaching that everyone else must have overlooked for 2,000 years. You can appreciate how coastal elites think Christians are especially stupid by the fact that their own understanding of the scripture is so much further advanced than that of the actual believers.
Then again, to set the sarcasm aside for a moment, this is definitely not what Christ meant. In fact, no serious reader of the passage in question has ever claimed that it is, and I’m not even sure whether anyone has put such an obviously wrong interpretation as this one into writing before now.
Here’s the passage, from Matthew 22:
And they sent to him their disciples with the Herodians, saying: Master, we know that thou art a true speaker, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou dost not regard the person of men. Tell us therefore what dost thou think, is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? … And Jesus saith to them: Whose image and inscription is this?
They say to him: Caesar’s. Then he saith to them: Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God, the things that are God’s. And hearing this they wondered, and leaving him, went their ways.
What is Jesus saying? He is telling a hostile crowd, whose question is designed to trap him, that everyone should obey secular laws that don’t conflict with their obligations to God.
There’s no sin in paying Caesar’s own coins back to Caesar, so long as one is also rendering unto God the more serious and important obligation.
Note that this doesn’t foreclose on the possibility that, in some cases, obligations to Caesar and to God might conflict. But it does (as St. Paul would later spell out in Romans 13) create a default expectation among Christians that they will respect and obey earthly authorities whenever possible. Christianity was never a mere rebellion against Roman rule — it was something deeper and longer lasting that would continue to have relevance when the Romans were gone.
There may be more than one way to interpret Christ’s response in Matthew 22. But claiming he suggested that man ought to subordinate his religious principles to the laws of the state is definitely a new one to us.
