5TH COMMANDMENT (4)

A few years ago the Internal Revenue Service proposed that cattle farmers begin to keep track of how much feed each animal ate so that the profit per animal might be computed more fairly. No doubt, the bureaucrats inside the beltway must have seen an article or two about a small handful of large corporate dairy farms that had computerized their feeding operations to dispense the appropriate feed to each animal according to the sensitized chip chained around the neck of each milking cow. While it might be nice to know how profitable an animal is, most farmers could no more afford such an expensive system than they could give the time to record the necessary data wanted by the nit pickers in Washington! So, loads of lobbying money had to be spent to persuade the feds of the unreasonable nature of their demand. Thankfully, that especially inane idea did not reach the stage of taxpayer accountability.

As those of you who compute taxes understand, a lot of other rules, regulations and interpretations have made it possible for the long arm of government to make your life more difficult and taxation accounting increasingly expensive. I do think that the infamous Cardinal Duc de Richelieu would approve what our own IRS has achieved. The bad Cardinal was once quoted as saying something like this:

[give me fifteen words written by an ordinary citizen and I can find a legal reason to hang him].

Before I began hiring someone to do my taxes, I once spent five hours over three days getting through to an IRS hireling. When I asked my question, the answer was that the tax bite in question depended upon my financial situation. I knew that, and was trying to figure out what my particular situation was. The hireling couldn't help me because I didn't know enough. Wasn't that why I called him in the first place? Two days later, I called back and got a different hireling and explained my problem as best I could. I was given a completely different run around. To this day, I don't know if I filed my taxes right that year. Of course, it was only a matter of a few dollars, and in the grand scheme of government spending, it cost more for me to ask the two people than the amount justified.

It is the perfect week to use these examples, because the annual rite of spring has just passed. Shakespeare was only a month off in his advisory warning to Caesar: "Beware the Ides of March". In Roman practice that was the 15th day of the month! Now what has this to do with the Fifth Commandment? Well, everything really. You see, the Republic is coming to a crisis and while the Neronic orchestra in Washington tunes its fiddles, the very habits and attitudes that make the tax system possible are coming apart at the seams. One of the great strengths of the American Republic has always been the moral and spiritual climate in the country where the ordinary citizens could be trusted to prepare and pay their own taxes honestly.

Unfortunately, the very Fifth Commandment, which requires our subservience in these matters, can no longer be legally taught to those future citizens who will pay for the running of government in the Twenty-first Century. I am talking about the students and young adults who make up what is called Generation X. At least ten per cent of them already are unable to keep a pencil or writing utensil at hand. Another thirty per cent at, cannot keep track of any piece of paper for more than twenty minutes. This does not bode well for the future, where such people work five or six jobs as they feel like it, move twice and even ignore having a mailing address. Where and how will those W2's get to where they belong and then find their way back to the IRS? Many of us who used to teach taxes in school no longer do so because of the legalities of advising students in such matters. Besides, what was once teachable is no longer comprehensible!

Now I say all of this because we as Christians have an obligation to be subservient to the leaders ordained by God. Remember, we don't have to love them, but we do have to obey them in as much as were are able. Providentially we are not in Russia or China where the government has crossed over the line to interfere in the affairs of Christ's Church. In those countries, I would think that Christians are freer from allegiance to an apostate government than we are in this country yet. Thirty years ago, the church that I was serving received a demand from a government agency to hand out some printed materials in our weekly bulletin. With the approval of the elders, I sent them back and pointedly suggested that they reread our Constitution. Today, I would probably just throw the papers away so that I would not call undue attention to myself or our congregational organization. You see, as the Confession allows, there are lawful and unlawful demands of the government. Bulletin inserts as innocent as they may seem, are still under the control of a local session, unless they contain political advice.

A former PCA congregation in the South misunderstood these distinctions and tried to bring their Presbytery and the whole denomination into a conflict with the IRS and Federal judicatory. Most of our churches realized that, the demands in question were indeed lawful and that the particular congregation seemed to have an undue martyr complex for fighting the wrong fight at the wrong time for all the wrong reasons. Certainly we desire as a denomination to allow freedom of action to individual congregations so that they may meet the challenges of working and witnessing in their several locations. However, any one latitudinarian congregation that respects not the Westminster Confession, the Book of Church Order or even the Directory of Worship can weaken the whole body of Christ for years on end.

So far, this morning we may conclude several points. The first is this, even if we disagree politically with the current taxing policies, we must as good Christians make every honest effort to accord the right sum to our governing authorities. Second, there are in times and places unlawful actions of governments which we may resist.

Third, congregations under the authority of Presbyteries must be circumspect in their public actions. We are all under the authority of our religious system of government as well as that of the secular state. And last but certainly not least, it is in the running of the Church and the families of the Church that are still under our lawful authority where the Biblical warrant may be displayed for all to see. It is in this area that the Christian Churches have had the most effect throughout history. After all, very many aspects of Constitutional government are merely legislative or constitutional copies of the Book of Church Order. And that book arose from the honest regulation of the Reformation Churches as they endeavored to please the God of heaven in their government, discipline and worship. Would you see the promise of this commandment? Then you must apply it where the Lord will allow it in our present circumstance: in your families and in the ordering of this congregation.