Taxation, Liberty, and the Bible
By Martin G. Selbrede The Covenant News ~ January 25, 2009
Biblical tax and the various tithes
The Puritans and America’s founding fathers understood that
there is a biblical place for taxation, and that Scripture lays
out its purpose and amount. When the state expands beyond
biblical limits, the cost of supporting that bloat becomes an
oppressive burden that robs the people of their productivity.
Justice (civil government):
The civil government is biblically charged with administering
justice, not health, education or charitable work (Rom. 13:1-
7). A Scriptural civil government is supported solely by a
half-shekel poll tax that all citizens pay as a strictly flat tax
(Ex. 30:1-16), which keeps the size of civil government small
and gives all citizens an equal stake in societal justice.
Health, education & welfare:
According to the Bible, health care, education, poverty relief
and charitable work are personal concerns, not institutional
concerns, and are to be administered by individuals, not by
the state, through the various tithes. The 10% per year social
tithe of Lev. 27:30-33 and Num. 18:20-24 is to be individually
directed to education and health in the community, and the
prorated 3.3% per year poor tithe of Deut. 14:28-29 is to be
given directly to the poor without middlemen. When churches
and Christians fail to pay God’s tithes and ensure their proper
use toward fulfilling society’s needs, the state takes over with
disastrous consequences. Prior to state involvement in health,
education and welfare, churches built and ran hospitals
(Christian ethics were upheld and doctors were respected as
Christ’s servants), Christian families and communities
founded schools and universities and educated their own
children (literacy in America was vastly more extensive), and
Christian communities met the needs of the sick and poor.
The poor tithe and eradication of poverty:
The modern state, by waging a secular “war on poverty” while violating God’s laws, has only increased poverty, not reduced it. Deut. 15:4 points out that if God’s laws are obeyed, “there shall be no more poor among you.” Obeying God’s Law of the poor tithe brings God’s blessing upon the people and their productivity (Deut. 14:28-29; 16:12-15). The Bible calls neglect of the poor tithe grinding the faces of the poor (Isa. 3:15). (When Jesus said in Matt. 26:11, “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have Me with you,” He was telling the disciples that in their lifetime they would not always have personal face-to-face contact with Him but they would encounter the poor. Christ here was indicting Israel’s violation of the poor tithe, quoting from Deut. 15:11 that “there shall always be poor people in the land” because those who should pay the poor tithe were “hardhearted and tightfisted” [Deut. 15:7].) Jesus told the rich young ruler in Mark 10:19ff he had failed to keep this law, and called on him to pay restitution to those he had covertly robbed through disobedience (similar to the four-fold restitution that repentant tax collector Zacchaeus, in obedience to God’s Law, announced he would pay to those he had defrauded, an action prompting salvation coming upon his house). The young ruler did not covet: verse 19’s unique term defraud not (Greek: apostereseis) is used in Deut. 24:14, Mal. 3:5 and Ex. 21:10 in regard to depriving or withholding from the needy. The amount he had withheld from the poor over the years, after God’s penalties were compounded, amounted to all he had (as Christ’s instruction to him makes clear), so to obey God’s Law and make restitution for his moral failure, he had to sell it all and return the lump sum to the poor (Mark 10:21). As with the woman at the well (John 4:18), Jesus pierced the ruler’s lawlessness. Because God is not a respecter of persons, Jesus focused on a specific sin (sin = transgression of God’s Law; 1 John 3:4) that required repentance. When the ruler persisted in transgressing God’s Law, he continued grinding the faces of the poor. Shortly thereafter we meet a likely victim of such grinding, the poor widow (Mark 12:43ff) for whom two mites amounted to “all she had.” Two centuries earlier her need could have been satisfied because Israel had, despite economically difficult times, maintained on hand the poor tithe offerings for such charitable relief (2 Macc. 3:10 – 600 talents of silver & gold).
Tax exemptions for churches:
America’s founding fathers had both biblical and historical
reasons for establishing a tax exemption for churches. Current
threats to withdraw exemptions are the state’s device to
muzzle the church. In Ezra 7:23-24, King Artaxerxes of
Persia banned levying any tax, tribute, toll, or custom, upon
God’s house lest “there be wrath against the realm of the
king.” Against Rome, the early church fought for and gained
tax exemption by asserting it was a foreign power, an
embassy for God the King in the midst of the land. To tax the
church was to plant Caesar’s foot on God’s neck. Tax
exemption is not a state subsidy of churches but an
acknowledgement of God’s sovereignty. Emperor Julian of
Rome revoked the church’s tax exemption; consequently,
Theodoret reported Julian’s last words to be, “O Galilean,
Thou hast conquered!” Current allegations that churches who
take the state’s tax exemptions are “tax-dodging” and “rich”
are false: in 1980 the average pay for American pastors was
$10,348/yr, well below the U.S. poverty line of $15,000/yr
established in 1976, and it wasn’t until 2002 that the average
pastoral pay exceeded $40,000 (increasing 25% over ten
years, lagging behind the salaries of other professionals).
Taxation’s modern illegitimate guise
In 1819 the U.S. Supreme Court (McCullough v. Maryland)
held that “the power to tax is the power to destroy.” When the
modern state uses taxation for illegitimate purposes, taxes
morph into an engine for social engineering and wealth
redistribution. The Bible does not confer power to the state to
manipulate society, wealth and free markets via taxation.
Tax exemptions, incentives and debt:
Taxes, tax exemptions, and tax incentives perturb the free
market and affect economic actions. Saving is penalized by
taxing interest earned, while debt is rewarded by providing
deductions on mortgage interest. God’s law forbidding debts
that take longer than seven years to pay off (Deut. 15) was
applied to mortgages up until the early 20th century; the
current difficulties America faces involve precisely these
long-term mortgages that exceed what God’s Law permits.
Progressive taxation:
The Bible forbids progressive taxation: “the rich are not to
give more than a half shekel and the poor are not to give less”
(Ex. 30:15). Modern America’s progressive tax code is not
only biblically unlawful, it institutionalizes envy by asserting
that the rich deserve to pay higher taxes. Envy is internally
corrosive to a society for it “rots the bones” (Prov. 14:30).
Income tax:
In I Sam. 8:15-17, Samuel listed the evils Israel would suffer
in seeking a king to rule over them. On the list was the king’s
intention to take, through taxation, as much as God Himself took (10%). America today is a worse tyrant, extracting more
than 10% of its citizens’ income. When the federal income tax
was established (at around 2%), the proposal to set a 10% cap
upon it was scorned on the floor of Congress as unnecessary,
on the assumption it could never rise that high. That proposed
10% limit had its fundamental basis in I Sam. 8:15,17, the
litmus test for living under tyranny. God’s Word expressly
indicts our modern state as a bloated, over-reaching tyrant.
Property tax:
God owns the earth and everything in it (Ps. 24:1, Ex. 9:29, I
Cor. 10:26), so He alone can tax the land. He does so through
tithes, which are not the province of the state but of individuals,
the people. To tax property is to tax God, an idea understood
by America’s founding fathers, who denied Parliament
the power to tax real property in the first session of the
Continental Congress in 1774. Such taxation is an assertion of
the state’s authority over God, heralding a clash over
sovereignty between man and God. God, not man, is lord over
His creation; He is sovereign by right of ownership.
Inheritance tax:
God's laws on inheritance (Num. 27:8-11, 2 Cor. 12:14, Deut. 21:15-17) require capitalization solely of the family. State seizure of inheritance and property is explicitly prohibited in Ezekiel 46:18: “The ruler must not take any of the inheritance of the people, driving them off their property. He is to give his children their inheritance out of his own personal property, so that none of My people will be separated from his property.” Scriptural inheritance is not a mindless dispensing of capital: it is forbidden to give an inheritance to wicked children (Josh. 15:16-19, Judges 1:13-15). Inheritance tax is a violation of biblical law and an assertion by the state that it is the family's firstborn to whom the largest portion of inheritance is due. Marxists promote inheritance taxes to decapitalize the family and build a new Marxist social order. While the Bible gives the family and its God-fearing children the highest priority for a healthy social order, the inheritance tax is the state's assertion of its own priority over the family. The modern inheritance tax enthrones into law the disinheritance of God.
Hidden taxes:
Wealth can be transferred through direct taxation or through
silent taxes that operate when fiat currencies prevail, as is true
now in America where the dollar is no longer backed by gold.
As the value of the dollar drops, wealth is transferred out of
the hands of the people to the entities first in line to receive
newly generated credit. Money based on debt always creates
such hidden taxes. Art. 10, Sec. 1 of the U.S. Constitution
requires that gold and silver alone be legal tender for all debts
public and private. This was based on the biblical commands
against unjust weights and measures, which are an “abomination
to the Lord” (Prov. 11:1). The founders honored the biblical
precepts that forbid debauching a nation’s currency
through the kind of value dilution endemic to fiat currencies
not backed by specie metals (Isa. 1:22). People are forbidden
to even possess such forms of money (Deut. 25:13-14).
Unlike legal tender laws, the Constitution protected citizens
from being forced to accept bad money in lieu of good.
“Rendering unto Caesar”
The tribute money episode in Matt. 22:17-21 is not about taxes but about sovereignty. God’s Law forbids the use of graven images. In the days of Jesus, Jewish shekels were free of idolatrous images, but the Roman denarii were not. Jesus had to call for someone to produce a denarius because neither He nor His disciples used them. That the Jews used forbidden coins was evidence that theirs was a nation under God’s judgment, by way of Roman subjugation. The Jews’ inquiry about the denarius earned them Christ’s rebuke of being “hypocrites” (v. 18). Christ’s command was FIRST to the Jews to “give back to Caesar that which is his.” It was an indictment of Jewish apostasy that they used such coins at all. SECOND, Christ’s command was to Caesar to “render unto God” what was God’s due, for Caesar was not exempt from God’s demands. God and Caesar are not two equal authorities independently ruling different spheres with absolute power: rather, Caesar and all civil rulers are subordinated to Christ by God’s explicit command (Psalm 2:10-12). In Romans 13, Paul calls civil magistrates “servants of God” answerable to Him as such. Rome considered Paul’s command to pray for the king (1 Tim. 2:1-2) as blasphemous because Paul was expected to pray to the emperor, not for the emperor. Rome claimed sovereignty, which belongs only to God.
What’s at stake?
Hegel’s view that “the state is god walking upon the earth”
still shapes the American psyche. In all societies that entertain
demands for cradle-to-grave security, the cost to deliver such
“benefits” grows beyond limits. Socialism becomes its own
punishment. In Christ, men are free and enjoy liberty of
conscience to obey God’s relatively few and unchanging
laws, but under the totalitarian state and a church beholden to
it, liberty is infringed by an increasing number of evolving
man-made laws based on state prerogatives. Sweden’s tax rate
has been as high as 90%, and the taxes in some parts of Italy
have exceeded 100% (only government incompetence
prevented the collection of this impossible amount).
What should Christians in over-taxed America do?
Taxation is a religious matter that depends on where
sovereignty and the source of liberty lie in the minds and
hearts of a nation’s citizenry. Modern Americans have
unwittingly exchanged the true God for two false ones
(church and state), and helped to capitalize them. “If we
examine the landmark of God’s word, we find that we have
altered the landmarks greatly. The two centers of human
action are now church and state. In effect, the government is
now upon their shoulders [but] God places the basic tax and
power in the hands of the family. The sanctuary received a
tenth of the tithe, … and the civil government is limited to
half a shekel for each male from twenty years of age and
above (Exod. 30:11-16).” (R. J. Rushdoony) Abandonment of
God’s Law allows both church and state to become
superpowers with the end result being the tyrannical loss of
liberty described in 1 Sam. 8:11f, from which “there shall be
no relief unto you!” (v. 18) until God’s Law is re-embraced
by the nation’s individuals. The Bible doesn’t support tax
rebellions or revolution (keeping in mind that the American
War of Independence was not a revolution in the biblical
sense but a recovery of the guaranteed rights of Englishmen
that were lawlessly abridged). American Christians have a
biblical duty to take our medicine and pay the illegitimate
taxes currently imposed on us (ie, paying Christian school
tuition while also paying property taxes for public schools we
won’t use), while working within both church and state
systems to realign our laws and customs with the Bible, rebuilding
wisely on the theological legacy of the Puritans and
America’s founding fathers and thereby undoing the damage