The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

The gospel of Matthew includes an account where a group of Pharisees approach Jesus in an effort to trap him by posing a no-win question. They asked: “Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar?” Today this seems like a pretty innocuous question. We might disagree regarding taxes and complain about them, but very few people question the morality of paying taxes. However, in ancient Israel, it was a bit of a hornets nest topic. You see, if Jesus said it was immoral to pay taxes, then he could be accused of encouraging rebellion against the Romans. The consequences for such an action were pretty...