God, Empire, Taxes…Oh My!

Jesus Unmasked

In this episode, Lindsey and Adam discuss Matthew 22: 15 - 22. Pharisees and Herodians teamed up to entrap Jesus. After buttering him up, they asked him whether or not it was lawful to pay taxes to the Emperor. Jesus has them produce a coin, asks whose image it bears, and then tells them to give to the Emperor what is the Emperor’s and to God what is God.

This is mic-drop Jesus at his best! Adam and Lindsey discuss what is so badass about Jesus in this passage, including how he cleverly evades danger, what it means to be made in God’s image, and why Pharisees and Herodians teaming up = scapegoating. They also discuss the noncontroversial topic of the morality of paying taxes, taking care to point out the contrasts between Jesus’s context and our own.