Seeing through their duplicity...
He saw through their duplicity...
A continuing series on the separation of Judeo-Christian
religion and American civil government.
Faith Fellowship Church...PO Box 1586 Broken Arrow, OK 74013;
Terry Dashner
In Luke's gospel, chapter 20 and beginning with verse 20, there
is an interesting story recorded.
The NIV Bible reads, "Keeping a close watch on him, they sent
spies, who pretended to be honest. They hoped to catch Jesus in
something he said so that they might hand him over to the power
and authority of the governor. So the spies questioned him:
"Teacher, we know that you speak and teach what is right, and
that you do not show partiality but teach the way of God in
accordance with the truth. Is it right for us to pay taxes to
Caesar or not?"
"He saw through their duplicity and said to them, "Show me a
denarius. Whose portrait and inscription is on it?"
"Caesar's," they replied. He said to them, "Then give to Caesar
what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
The key to understanding this story is stated in the following
verse. "They were unable to trap him in what he had said there
in public. And astonished by his answer, they became silent."
(Verse 26, NIV)
Although this story has been used by some to support the notion
that religion and civil government should be separate, I don't
think the spies who were sent to trap Jesus were interested in
"separation of church and state." As a matter of fact to the Jew
of the first century, the thought of the Jewish civil government
separating from the Law of Moses was anathema.
The spies wanted to trick Jesus into saying something by which
they could condemn him publicly. The joke was on them, however.
Jesus' answer astonished them and moved them to silence.
When I here statements by groups such as the ACLU wanting to
separate religion from the civil government, I'm suspicious. I
think, based upon their history, they aren't really concerned
for the good of our Constitution and civil government. I think
they have a hidden agenda. My prayer is that other Americans
will see through their duplicity.
I think their real intentions are to elevate the civil
government of municipalities, counties, states, and the nation
above the Judeo-Christian heritage of this nation. I don't think
they want separation, I think they want to abolish religion
period. Although the First Amendment clearly says that the
government shall not abolish the free exercise of religion, they
still try desperately to purge American civil government from
any semblance of the Judeo-Christian religion.
The nineteenth century philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
once said, "History teaches us that man learns nothing from
history." Have we forgotten our world history? Each civilization
that chose to forget God came to its end abruptly. What about
America's history? Noah Webster said, "The moral principles and
precepts contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis of
all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evils
which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice,
oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or
neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible."
Again, Joseph Story (1779-1845), Associate Justice of the United
States Supreme Court said, "The real object of the First
Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance,
Mahomedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating
Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects,
and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which
should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the
national government. It thus cut off the means of religious
persecution (the vice and pest of former ages), and of the
subversion of the rights of conscience in matters of religion
which had been trampled upon almost from the days of the
Apostles to the present age..."
The argument by Thomas Jefferson who coined the phrase
"separation of church and state," was not meant to separate
civil government from the Christian philosophy but to keep the
national government from endorsing one "sect" or one Christian
denomination over another. That would have established a state
sponsored church such as England had and would have created
rebellion in the young nation; therefore, Jefferson--and rightly
so--concerned himself with the power of one influential
denomination overshadowing the civic affairs of the nation and
not with separating American civic government from Biblical
standards of righteousness. Why would anyone be against
righteousness and justice?
To be continued...
Keep the faith. Stay the course, America. Jesus' government
shall never end (Isaiah 9:6-7).
Pastor T.