Ep #11: Rejoice in God's Provision When you Pay Taxes

Episode Transcript

Austin
We're so glad that you have decided to continue listening and continue joining us as we journey through this idea that God owns at all, that we are his stewards, that he owns everything, and we get to respond to him in faith with our money. And as we think about it right now, where we've been, is we're looking through this framework of Live, Give, Owe, and Grow, the ways that we can use our money.
So we can either use it to live: our daily expenses, our food, our clothes. We can give money away. And we are confronted with that reality. When we think about giving money away, that giving breaks, the power that money has over our life, which we simultaneously have to think. Money has power over my life. So it's constantly a challenge that I need to give my money away, give it back to God to be used for Kingdom purposes.
Because it reminds me that it was God's in the first place. And it's a it's a sacrifice that I get to give it back to him. And it's a joy that I get to give it back to him. But then we talked about another challenging part of money, and that's that owning debt makes us a slave to the lender.
Like Proverbs says, if I am borrowing money from somebody else, I am chained to pay that person back. So we've gone through those first three uses of money Live, Give, Owe, we'll get to grow in our next episode. But today we're going to talk about owing taxes. One of everybody's favorite subjects, something we can't avoid, but
Spencer, do you want to talk us through this a little bit?

Spencer
So what we're going to do is go from a provocative angle that actually we need to rejoice when we pay tax. Are you sure? Rejoice is in all things, but rejoice also in paying taxes. As we do that, it's really no more than just a recognition that God has provided for us. So as He provides for us, we pay taxes.
And that is a sign that we have had income. That we have had God's provision. So, Austin, can you unpack a little bit of kind of the cultural perspective on taxes?

Austin
Would love to. The man is out to get your money. You know, we laugh about that. But, you know, if you turn on Fox, if you turn on CNN, if you turn on MSNBC, any news production, you are going to see that the government is bad. The government is using your money for bad things. And do whatever you can to avoid giving money to the government.
Because they're going to use it to do some horrific thing that you disagree with. And I think part of that is comes back to that advertising sells and those media companies need to keep you watching. But I think there's this innate fear of the government that I think a lot of us have, and maybe for good or for ill.
But when we think about paying taxes, we immediately start thinking, well, it must be bad. And the government's never going to do anything good with it. They're not good with their money. You know, last week we looked and we saw the last episode. We saw that the federal debt is 121% of GDP. Doesn't necessarily signal fiscal responsibility.
And so, you know, I think that's the angle that is most often taken is that taxes are bad because the government is bad.Or taxes are good for certain things. Like, I like roads and I like to go flush my toilet, and it not end up in my drinking water, you know, like I'm okay paying those taxes.
But there are things that I don't like paying for. But I think we have to wrestle as we live in a society that taxes are a part of life. But how do how do we think about that in a Christian worldview? In such that you were saying that we get to rejoice when we pay our taxes.
So how do we get there?

Spencer
And I think one of the things that we want to do as we frame this episode in this conversation is not to take it from an angle that there isn't abuse and waste and all these things in the government. There is, but there has always been. This is a sign of the fall.
It's not going to be a perfect institution. There's no perfect institution, whether it's a nonprofit or corporation or government. So we want to frame this from an angle of, well, what does Scripture tell us about the respect of government and paying taxes? And we look at this in Romans 13 from where Paul was. So we don't know exactly when Romans was written, when Paul's letter to the church in Rome was, but probably somewhere in the late fifties, probably in the time when Nero was just coming into power there's a good chance.
And so it was far from a perfect government. In fact, you could say the government may have been much more hostile to Christianity and to Christian principles than what we find today. Right. And yet, this is what Paul says in Romans 13, beginning with verse one, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.
Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.”

Austin
Just some, I think, really wise words, but also really challenging words. And, you know, like you're saying, Nero was coming into power. And I think, you know, I've heard this before, that Nero would burn Christians in torches. And so this is the government that Paul is writing about, like a very hostile government. You know, Spencer, the last time I paid taxes.
Whether it's sales tax or income tax. I don't think that the current government is persecuting Christians to that end in our country.

Spencer
And, of course, we don't know exactly what the circumstances were historically. Nero, the first part of his reign was not visited by such intensity, although there were more minor skirmishes among his officials with Christians. And then he uses the church as a scapegoat in the Great Fire of Rome many years later. So we don't know exactly. But what we can say is that there were plenty of times and you look at the Book of Acts, there were plenty of times that the government had zero desire to help Paul, to help any of the Christians be able to just function as normal people.
You know, they were Paul would end up beaten even though he was saying nothing that was really incendiary or deserving of a beating. But Paul still has these words in Romans 13. Again, the key verses there with respect to taxes being in verse six, “For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing.”
“Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed” So you know, we come back and it's a point by comparison. Our government is imperfect. We do a lot of things that we object to in some way, shape or form. Yet there is plenty of misuse of funds. And yet on the balance, is it worse than what Paul was facing in all likelihood not.

Austin
And similarly, Paul says in verses one, in verse one, there's no authority except from God. And so he is realizing that in verse one ends, those that exist have been instituted by God. And so I think we take government and taxes in this: We are a broken, sinful people. And yet God still puts leaders in front of us.
Because he knows that we need them. And we we can still pay our taxes in faith, even though we may disagree with it. Because “For God...” He is the one that instituted them. He is the one that put them there. And I think that's just such a challenging perspective to take because it's so different.
You know, we're told don't pay. Try to avoid as much tax as you can. And albeit. Yeah, we want to not be reckless. We don't want to give the government a 0% loan. But I think it's to move away from animosity. I think that's the thing that I'm challenged by, is we don't need to be have animosity towards paying taxes.
Because God has set them up. God has appointed them to rule over us for this season that we call life.

Spencer
Well, and one of the guys that we really respect, Ron Blue, suggests that each of us, when we write that check to the government, we get on our knees and we thank the Lord that we have the capability of having that income then to pay our taxes. Which is such a different approach. And, you know, Ron is funny.
He's often asked different questions, but one of them that comes up frequently is, well, should I be tithing on those elements that I'm paying to the government is in essence, if you know my income is a certain amount, should I be tithing on that which I pay taxes on? And he says, well, do you want the blessing to also go towards your taxes?
Do you want to honor God with those funds that you're paying taxes with as well? And of course, the answer is yes. I'd like for those funds to be used appropriately. Okay. Well, let's tithe on the whole thing there. So that whole perspective can if we let it invade our mindset, we can be praying for the government, not just that the leaders that we'd like to see elected are elected, but we can pray for wisdom for our leaders. We can pray for them to be wise stewards and to care for all kinds of different things that they need to as officials.

Austin
Well, it brings up that scripture, like you were saying from Proverbs 3:9, “Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce” If we're going to honor the Lord with the first fruits of our produce, the first fruits come before taxes come. Whether I see it or not, it's still.
That's the first thing that comes. And whether I like it or not, whether I've seen it or not, it is that opportunity to say, God, you have so richly blessed me. Whether it's $1,000,000 or whether it's $10, like. We get to see that God is the one that provides. And so our faith says, Yes, I will give back.
I will celebrate that God you have provided abundantly for me. And like we talked about last week in some of those debt mentalities. If God is our provider, then we can trust him. We don't have to go seeking and grabbing for ourselves. And I think that similar with taxes, I can trust that God through what He has provided for me, is going to be empowering the people that he has raised up to lead in such a way that at some point some of those moneys are going to go to people that need it.
And so, you know, we looked a little bit into how some of the ways that our governments are spending money. So you want to take us off there a little bit.

Spencer
And as we do this well, first go back to, you know, the Roman government and again position our government against the Roman government because I think it's helpful when we think about Romans 13, you know, the Roman government, essentially the biggest expense that they had was paying for the army. You know, and making sure that they had enough to give to the Army to continue to expand territory. Now, the Army was ruthless.
You know, crucifixion was invented by the Romans. Perhaps the most horrible way that you can die that's ever been known. That was invented essentially by the Roman army to be able to show what happened to people who opposed them.
So not at all a Christ like way to deal with your adversary. So that was the biggest expense. They also paid for the governing authorities lifestyle sometimes were lavish. You know, you think about the emperors, you think about the different folks like Pontius Pilot in the scriptures or, you know, King Herod. And just the way that they live now our authorities are paid for their work.
But if you look at the payment that we make for a House of Representatives or Senator or even the President, we pay them well, we don't pay them anything like a differential that Caesar or one of the high officials would have received at that time. So much more. On a percentage basis, you would see their lifestyle supported.
They also had gladiatorial games. I mean, they're organizing games to kill people in front of others. Now, on the other side of things, they did build roads and bridges and canals and all those kinds of different pieces. And there was an amount of order that was maintained by, you know, the soldiers who were equivalent of policemen at the time.
So there's some good things there as well. But as Paul is writing this and as he's telling the church in Rome to pay their taxes, he's got to have all these pieces you know, in the background. So as we pivot and we go towards what we see just from the high level of research in the stats that we'll share, I think you'll see that there's actually a lot more opportunity for God honoring activities, redemptive activities than, you know, what the government in Rome, you know, was instituting.
So, you know, maybe I'll hit the federal budget and then, Austin, I'll kick it over to you for the state side of things. But federal budget in 2022 spent about $6 trillion. Now, if we break that down about $400 billion in interest payments on our deficit, about $4 trillion of the $6 trillion. So about two thirds of it was in funding mandatory expenses, and these would include Social Security $1.2 trillion.
Medicare about $800 billion, $600 billion for Medicaid, and then other welfare programs like SNAP and some that focus on making sure kids from low income families get enough to eat made up a lot of the rest of the balance there. But again, about $4 trillion if you think about half of that being Social Security and Medicare, those are two remarkably popular programs.
Now, again, is it are they perfect? No, but they do a very good job of helping us to take care of our elders. On the health care side of things and then on the income side of things, could Medicare be better? Absolutely.

Austin
But it's very biblical to care for our elders.

Spencer
So we've got, you know, those elements. There's about $2 trillion then in discretionary spending, a little bit less than that. It's actually closer to $1.6 billion, you have about $700 billion in military spending on an annual basis. So that amounts to a little over 10% of our budget. And then we've got all kinds of other programs from education to housing, Health and Human Services, Department of Energy, so on and so forth, which makes up a much smaller fraction of our federal budget.

Important programs, especially, you know, in our neck of the woods in East Tennessee, the Department of Energy, you know, spending pours billions of dollars into East Tennessee each year through, you know, Oak Ridge National Lab, Y-12 security complex and some other institutions there. So, you know, there's a lot to that. But when we look at it, I tend to think at least I hope $0.50 on the dollar is spent to things that are really redemptive and that I can get behind. Whereas if I'm a Roman citizen, I think that number would be far less.

Austin
And I think about, you know, as you mentioned, we're going to look at the state of Tennessee budget as well. And there's all sorts of trickle down because the state of Tennessee, 41% of the state's budget from tax revenue goes to education. I'm okay with $0.40 of my dollar that I pay in tax to Tennessee going to my kids education. My kids are in the public schools and I'm fine with that.
24% goes to health. Probably some of those Medicaid revenues. Again, the reality that $0.24 of my dollar goes to a low income family that can then receive health care. I am okay with that. I'm actually great with that. I will sign that off every day. Law safety correction. That takes up 9%. General government aid, transportation 7%. Cities and counties 5%. Regulation 4%. Business development, 2%. A lot of those things it's very easy for me to get behind those programs. I like having law enforcement that keeps me safe. Believe it or not, I don't want to live in a lawless society. Are they all good all the time? Is there are there things that are broken? Yeah. But when I think about 65% of my taxes in Tennessee going to education and health care. I am okay writing that when I go get my groceries. And when I go pick something up from the store.

Spencer
So, you know, again, there are ways that we could look at the amount of misuse of funds or graft or other things. Those have been around since the fall, since the first government. Sadly.

Austin
And they'll always be around. There's no way until Christ returns. There's never going to be a way that we get away from government corruption and misuse of funds.

Spencer
But by God's grace, it seems that our funds are being used, generally speaking, better than the Roman funds. You know, we're used where the primary goal is protect the emperor, expand the kingdom, and throw some games together to keep people entertained every now and then.

Austin
It really reframes what Paul says, that there is no authority except from God. Those that exist have been instituted by God. So because of this, pay your taxes for the authorities are ministers of God. I mean, it just reframes all of that when we think about that.

Spencer
And of course, you know, this raises a whole different can of worms. There are governments that are incredibly corrupt. And, you know, if we were living in North Korea right now, then, you know, the view that we would take would be maybe we do need to still pay honor in some ways. We need to recognize that there are leaders in place or we have to pay taxes.
But we could, you know, vigorously object to a lot of the ways that those funds were used. And that's a little bit different circumstance. And authors and scholars have grappled with how we deal with Romans 13 with respect to, you know, who God puts in place. But we do believe still Romans 8:28 and following that, “God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
And particularly in our culture, in our country, we have a lot to be thankful for. Despite all of our our challenges and our problems that we see day to day. So we come back to that idea. Again, it's a provocative idea that we can give thanks for the capacity that we have to pay taxes. And, you know, again, I don't love writing the check.
Do I think that I could give charitably to an institution that could do better than the government? And I'm not going to leave the IRS with a tip, if at all possible. At the same time, I like to believe at least $0.50 on the dollar. And maybe, you know, far more than that, you know, is going towards purposes of caring for neighbors and doing things like improving roads and other core functions.

Austin
Well, you know, as I think about this, the one thing that keeps coming back in my mind is what is my posture? Because I am one person of 300 million in the United States. I'm not going to be able to make wholesale changes. So either my posture towards the government and towards paying taxes can be very standoffish.
Keep it at arm's length and just be constantly bitter and disgruntled about it. And I don't see anywhere in Scripture where God says, let the root of bitterness rise up. I'm fairly certain that it says let no root of bitterness take root. You know, and so I don't think it does me any good to hold that at arm's length and just get frustrated and upset.
I think we live in a tension and we say, I don't like everything, but I can still celebrate that God is good, He is generous, He is kind that He has provided abundantly for me. And so the posture of my heart needs to be one of thankfulness and submission that God is God. I am not.
He owns it all. And that one of the ways that I get to use my money. Not that I can use my money. I get to use my money is that I get to pay taxes. And I get to celebrate that Jesus is still king.

Spencer
And as we open our hands and as we release our lives and our resources to him, it strikes me as well that we can chafe against the regulations. We can chafe against the requirements sometimes, even, you know, in our home here. We wanted to add on and wanted to add a room and a bathroom. We knew that we were going to be adopting a child.
Or it felt like that was the reason that was the direction that the Lord was calling us. And so we live in a historic district here, and so we had to go through some extra hoops to get the architectural plans approved. A friend, who's an architect, Matthew Cox, had drawn up some plans, and we originally planned to have two rooms where they came back and they said, this isn't going to, you know, work with the historic area. You need to have a smaller footprint. And at the start, I just chafed at that. I said, “Why are you telling me what to do?”
So I wrestled with the Lord. I remember for a couple of days on this and just wanted to still just plow through and figure out a different way. But as I came back and had the conversation with Matthew, what we realized was we just needed to combine two rooms, make the footprint a little bit smaller. Go back to the planning commission and so what the conversation, what that regulation actually the outcome was, was that we were more efficient.
It probably saved us about $20,000 in terms of the build. And it really didn't slow things down in a material way. It slowed it down a couple of weeks, but it was for our good. And so sometimes even when we have things like taxes or regulations or things that we've got to interact with the government and we don't think that necessarily God is in it.
Sometimes he's using those institutions to say, “Let’s just slow down and release this, open your hands, release it to me and we'll see where things go.” But that posture of humility as we pay taxes, as we interact with the government, I think is a critical one to help us to grow.

Austin
And I think that comes back to this idea of stewardship. In stewardship, God owns it all and we are simply stewarding. We're managing the resources that he's given us. And so that requires of us the posture of open handedness. So to close out today, we're going to read a quote from John Wesley, and he says “He who governed the world before I was born shall take care of it likewise when I am dead. My part is to improve the present moment.”
And I think that just summarizes what we've been talking about so well. God is the one that governed the world before I was born. He's going to take care of it likewise, when I'm dead. And my part I play a very small part while I am here.
But improve the present moment. Be the light of Christ to those around me. Show a different perspective about taxes and debt and giving. And God is still on the throne. And that gives me great comfort.

Spencer
Rejoicing in the Lord always, you know? We go back to what Paul says as just a general posture for our lives. Well, thanks again for joining us. The next time we get together, we'll talk about the last part of that Live Give, Owe, Grow framework. Grow what it is to set aside resources, save them for future goals. And still doing that as stewards, still thinking through that as part of God owning all that we have. So until then, hope you have a great next couple of weeks.