September 12, 2018 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
Jesus on Roman Taxation
Tonight we will see how these little
fictitious or perhaps semi historical stories in the religious scriptures which
seem to be benign and meant the greater good of humanity (if there is every
such a thing) can have far reaching consequences for people completely
unrelated to them either temporally or spatially.
According to the four canonical gospels
Pontius Pilate did his best to exonerate Jesus of the serious charges leveled
against him.
This was most likely so because he did not
see much of a political threat from this strange ascetic faqir who was claiming
himself to be the son of god and King of Jews.
To get a better perspective just imagine
how today some governor of one of the states of the United States or even Saudi
Arabia for that matter would react if any crazy nut with his even gang of weird
followers would claim something similar today.
In our great Hindu land such examples
abound in every nook and corner of every lane.
It is best to ignore them unless someone turns
dangerous or deadly such as the case of the Sikh faqir or missionary ‘Sant’
Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale who eventually went on to occupy and fortify the
Sikh shrine Akal Takht.
What followed thereafter made that decade
of the 1980s the bloodiest in the Indian history all of it beautifully captured
in the book of the well known BBC correspondent Mark Tully: ‘Tragedy of Punjab:
Operation Bluestar and After’.
Generally speaking such mystics claiming to
be gods or their derivatives are left alone by the governments and state
authorities.
Pontius Pilate had even found Jesus not
guilty of sedition and fomenting opposition to payment of taxes to Caesar which
was a serious offense carrying with it death as penalty.
It is true that the taxes imposed by Rome
on the province of Judea led to great unrest and even riots among the people.
Yet when Jesus was directly asked as a trap
to take an explicit stand on the issue of paying tax to Rome by the Jews
(people of Judea province) Jesus wisely asks them to produce a Roman coin.
When one of them does that he questions
them whose head and inscription do they see on the coin.
The crowd answered, “Caesar’s!”
Then as stated in the Matthew 22:21 Jesus
makes a statement that has become the corner stone of all democratic form of
governments in the Western world:
“Render unto Caesar’s the things that are
Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”
This classic statement has since then
become a defining moment of the ideal relationship that needs to exist between
the ruler, the state and its citizens.
This brilliant statement that would go on
to become legendary should have saved the wise faqir in a just-world which is yet
another delusion that even some atheists to some extent latch on to generating
a false consolation for an universe that in the unforgettable words of Dawkins has
“no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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