| “This is also why you pay taxes…” |
| —Romans 13:6a |
No one likes to pay taxes! And yet, every April 15th (or this year April 18th)—“Tax Day” in the United States—we citizens pay our taxes. Most of you probably paid your taxes weeks ago. I paid mine last month. I paid the taxes. But, I didn’t like it.
I suppose I resent paying taxes because there is very little that the government does of which I approve. I think government is way, way, way, too big. I think far too much money is wasted. Almost every issue that has arisen in the last year, I vehemently oppose.
I want a strong national defense, pure food and water, constraints on financial game-playing, maximum extraction of fossil fuel-based energy, no money spent on so-called climate change, a return to freedom, opportunity, and self-determination, a color-blind society, and a rigidly strong adherence to the Constitution. I want strict control of our borders. But I also want a fair and welcoming immigration policy when people wishing to immigrate follow all the rules.
I am opposed to so-called “political correctness” because all it does is hamper free speech. I believe idiots have the right to talk idiotically. I do not believe you can legislate behavior because we are all sinners by nature. So, I don’t care what other people do unless, or until, their behavior endangers others—not hurts feelings or offends, but endangers. I think the church has failed miserably by abdicating social programs to the government.
I could go on, but what’s the point? The “perfect” nation in my head will never, never, never happen. Our political system is too corrupt. Many of our citizens are too uninformed to choose candidates who would move us back to the place where I could breathe a sigh of relief. Besides, I am a citizen of a greater Kingdom. And, the more I focus on the wishes of my King, the less time I have to ruminate on the state of our nation.
Which brings me back to taxes. Notice what the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 13:6-7:
This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing.
Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.
So, on this “Tax Day” I will pay my taxes and try to remember—though I find it very, very hard to do so—that “the authorities are God’s servants.”
Based on a blog originally posted on Friday, April 15, 2016
