Render Unto Caesar Quotes

The words were a paraphrase of the suggestion of Jesus: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's." Bokonon's paraphrase was this: "Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn't have the slightest idea what's really going on.

You can render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, but if you don't keep from Caesar that which is yours, Caesar will take some, and than take some more, and if you don't put a stop to it, though you won't lose everything - you can't lose everything; there's things he can't take, at least one or two - a time will soon come when you'll think you've lost everything, when you'll think all is Caesar's, and by then you'll be too weak to take what's yours back, too tired to remember what was yours to begin with, and you'll end up, perversely, scheming for his leavings and, even more perversely, grateful when you get them.

Let your voice be heard, whether or not it is to the taste of every jack-in-office who may be obstructing the traffic. By all means, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's -- but this does not necessarily include everything that he says is his.

You've been taught to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's". Unlearn that lesson. Free men would not permit Caesar to exist.

The words were a paraphrase of the suggestion by Jesus: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” Bokonon’s paraphrase was this: “Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s really going on.

Those who served both the Almighty and secular lords did their best to follow Jesus’s teachings and render unto Caesar the things which were Caesar’s, and unto God the things that were God’s, all the while praying they’d never have to choose between the two.

There was a quotation from The Books of Bokonon on the page before me. Those words leapt from the page and into my mind, and they were welcomed there. The words were a paraphrase of the suggestion by Jesus: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” Bokonon’s paraphrase was this: “Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s really going on.

To his Own Beloved Self The Author Dedicates These Lines" Six. Ponderous. The chimes of a clock. “Render unto Caesar ... render unto God...” But where’s someone like me to dock? Where’11 I find a lair? Were I like the ocean of oceans little, on the tiptoes of waves I’d rise, I’d strain, a tide, to caress the moon. Where to find someone to love of my size, the sky too small for her to fit in? Were I poor as a multimillionaire, it’d still be tough. What’s money for the soul? – thief insatiable. The gold of all the Californias isn’t enough for my desires’ riotous horde. I wish I were tongue-tied, like Dante or Petrarch, able to fire a woman’s heart, reduce it to ashes with verse-filled pages! My words and my love form a triumphal arch: through it, in all their splendour, leaving no trace, will pass the inamoratas of all the ages! Were I as quiet as thunder, how I’d wail and whine! One groan of mine would start the world’s crumbling cloister shivering. And if I’d end up by roaring with all of its power of lungs and more – the comets, distressed, would wring their hands and from the sky’s roof leap in a fever. If I were dim as the sun, night I’d drill with the rays of my eyes, and also all by my lonesome, radiant self build up the earth’s shriveled bosom. On I’ll pass, dragging my huge love behind me. On what feverish night, deliria-ridden, by what Goliaths was I begot – I, so big and by no one needed?

To understand what Jesus accomplished and how he paid with his life, we have to understand what was happening around him. His was a time when Rome dominated the Western world and brooked no dissent. Human life was worth little. Life expectancy was less than forty years, and far less if you happened to anger the Roman powers that were. An excellent description of the time was written—perhaps with some bombast—by journalist Vermont Royster in 1949: There was oppression—for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar … what was man for but to serve Caesar? There was persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world? Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s. And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God … so the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe that salvation lay with the leaders. But it came to pass for a while in diverse places that the truth did set men free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to put out the light.

In the present situation of the overt Russian Orthodox Church in the U.S.S.R., which has the bishops and patriarchs and metropolitans, the leadership has to make concessions to the Soviet government. On the other hand, through making those concessions, certain churches in Moscow and Leningrad and Kiev remain open. Beautiful services are made available, the very beautiful words of the Gospels are read aloud. In these matters you have to weigh the relative advantages and disadvantages. You can't take a definitive position about it. The solace of those services is so great, the importance of those words being kept alive and in circulation is so important, that the sacrifices, the compromises that are made must be accepted. But it's a very difficult equation to work out. It's the equation with which our Lord himself left us, that we must render unto God the things that are God's and unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. He neglected to tell us what proportion we owed, so that of course people like myself can hope to get by with offering Caesar very little. [...] The cleverness of that reply was of course that it didn't specify exactly how much was due to Caesar and how much to God. He left us to work out.

Always follow the money; rendering unto Caesar what is his may not be pleasurable, but the records are great.

I am indeed happy to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, especially since I know you will all burn that second death in the lake of fire.

In Jewish tradition, we find the cautionary adage “Be in the world, but not of the world.” In the Gospels, Jesus says: “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s” (Matthew 22:21). Michelangelo was deeply troubled by a Church that was trying to imitate the grandeur of the Caesars while ignoring the humility and poverty of Christ. He recognized that the Vatican had become a place of unbridled corruption, greed, nepotism, and military adventurism. No longer was spiritual leadership concerned with delineating the differences between the “One” and the “seventy.” And so Michelangelo dared to express his anger by way of the angry prophet Jeremiah, who predicted doom for precisely those who failed to heed this very message. Of course, it was an extremely dangerous and seditious statement.

Wait a minute!" you say. "Didn't Jesus answer, Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's when the Pharisees tried to trick him into denouncing a Roman-imposed tax?" Yes indeed, he did say that. It's found first in the Gospel of Matthew, 22:15–22, and later in the Gospel of Mark, 12:13–17. But notice that everything depends on just what truly did belong to Caesar and what didn't, which is actually a rather powerful endorsement of property rights. Jesus said nothing like "It belongs to Caesar if Caesar simply says it does, no matter how much he wants, how he gets it, or how he chooses to spend it." The fact is, one can scour the Scriptures with a fine-tooth comb and find nary a word from Jesus that endorses the forcible redistribution of wealth by political authorities. None, period.

Roman authorities killed many early Christians because they would not say “Caesar is Lord” (whether this meant “king” or “God” to the Romans does not matter). They could not say “Caesar was Lord” because that was simply not true within the new language for politics they had been given in a communion that professed that “Jesus was Lord” to “the glory of God the Father.”[6] They were all certainly willing, as their Lord had told them, to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s,”[7] but none of the early Christian martyrs took Christ’s words to mean that they could render the kind of allegiance to Caesar that was being asked of them, nor could they separate themselves from the communion of love they enjoyed in Christ’s body.

Christians ended up compromising even more than they had already; learning to “play ball,” as it were, to live and let live, to keep silent when they ought to have spoken, to render unto Caesar the things that were God’s. Yes, the third-century Church had found a way to make peace with paganism—and it was proving deadly.

The cruel lessons of history, however, demonstrate that religions tend to assert dogmas as truth. When religious orthodoxies have been imposed as the sole basis for truth, the result has been intolerance, persecution, and atrocity. Religious truth is supernatural, accessible through faith; it does not reside in this world. Religion, therefore, must remain in the private sphere of personal belief. For personal liberties to flourish, bonfires of vanities cannot be permitted in public squares in the name of religion. The stories told in sacred texts, myths, legends, and epic tales should inspire our imaginations; they should not, however, be erected as doctrines that dictate our laws and actions. To quote the Gospel of Matthew: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” We must approach civic discourse in a spirit that, while acknowledging the existence of spirituality, excludes religious dogma from political discourse and collective action. We must also be vigilant about dogmatic secular faiths—from irrational identity politics to political correctness—asserted with quasi-religious fervor. They too inevitably produce a culture of intolerance and persecution.

The words were a paraphrase of the suggestion by Jesus: 'Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's.' Bokonon's paraphrase was this: 'Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn't have the slightest idea what's really going on.

He said “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s," and did not say “unto Tiberius the things that are Tiberius’.” Render to the power (potestas), not to the person. The person is worth nothing, but the power is just. Iniquitous is Tiberius, but good is the Caesar. Render, not unto the person worth nothing, not unto iniquitous Tiberius, but unto the righteous power and unto the good Caesar the things that are his. . . . “Give,” said he [unto Peter], “for me and thee to the righteous power and to the good Caesar, to whom according to our manhood we are subjects. . . .” For he knew that this pertained to justice to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. . . . In all that he fulfilled justice. For it was just that the human weakness succumbed to the divina potestas. Namely, Christ, according to his humanity, was then weak; but divine was Caesar’s potestas.

I believe our cause to be, as human causes go, very righteous, and I therefore believe it to be a duty to participate in this war. Thus we have a duty to rescue a drowning man, and perhaps if we live on a dangerous coast, to learn life-saving so as to be ready for any drowning man when he turns up. It may be our duty to lose our own lives in saving him. But if anyone devoted himself to life-saving in the sense of giving it his total attention--so that he thought and spoke of nothing else and demanded the cessation of all other human activities until everyone had learned to swim--he would be a monomaniac. The rescue of drowning men is then a duty worth dying for, but not worth living for. A man may have to die for his country: but no man must in any exclusive sense live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering unto Caesar that which of all things most emphatically belongs to God: himself.

The brothers, armed with wise and stringent examples, reminded him that Matthew himself recognized that one must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s; in other words, their souls were for God, and the Emperor could claim the worldly—and in some ways trifling—things such as gold. Upon hearing that rationale, the boy asked maliciously—and it is worth remembering that he wasn’t even fifteen at the time—whether the souls of the Indians who died unloading their gold from the earth’s depths were included in the tribute they owed the emperor. Here,

It had all seemed so simple: render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Render unto God what is God’s. As the fourth century drew to its close and the fifth century opened, caveats were added, complications brought to bear. What, asked some of the most powerful preachers, if God and Caesar both laid claim to the same thing? Well, said the great thinkers of the first Christian century, in that case God took precedence. As Augustine put it, if God’s law diverged from Roman law then the Heavenly City and its inhabitants were compelled ‘to dissent, and to become obnoxious to those who think differently’. Everything – man, law, and even bureaucracy – was now to give way to God. Or rather, to His Church. And if this meant some sticky moments on earth then so be it, for, argued another aggressive Christian cleric, the greatest wrong that one could do was not to disobey the law but to disobey God.

Because you can't redistribute anything to anybody if it's not created by somebody in the first place,

We Christians are in the world but not of the world. We belong to God, and our home is heaven. But we're here for a reason: to change the world, for the sake of the world, in the name of Jesus Christ. The work belongs to us. Nobody will do it for us. And the idea that we can accomplish it without engaging in a hands-on way the laws, structures, the public policies, the habits of mind, and the root causes that sustain injustice in our country is a delusion.

On one memorable occasion during the ministry of our Lord, the scribes and Pharisees dragged a woman they had caught in adultery into Jesus’ presence. They reminded Him that the law of God required that she be stoned, but they wanted to know what He would do. But as they spoke, He bent down and wrote something on the ground. This is the only recorded instance of Jesus writing, and we do not know what He wrote. But we are told that He stood up and said, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). Then He began to write on the ground again. At that, the scribes and Pharisees began to go away, one by one. I am speculating here, but I wonder whether Jesus wrote out some of the secret sins those men were zealous to keep locked away. Perhaps He wrote “adultery,” and one of the men who was unfaithful to his wife read it and crept away. Perhaps he wrote “tax evasion,” and one of the Pharisees who had failed to render unto Caesar decided to head for home. Jesus, in His divine nature, had the ability to see in a penetrating way behind the masks people wore, into the hiding places where they were most vulnerable. That is part of the concept of divine providence. It means that God knows everything about us.

You, judge, must render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, while I shall render unto God that which is God's.