Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Is Paying Taxes a Christian Responsibility?
Is Paying Taxes a Christian Responsibility?
Jul 14, 2025 5:42 PM

After almost three decades of filling out plex tax forms, you’d think I’d be used to it (or at least resigned to the onerous task). But every tax season plain even more than I did the year before. Why do I have to do this?

Perhaps the problem, notes Daniel J. Hurst, is that I’m forgetting that it’s part of my responsibility as a Christian.“While we may have grumbled when filing our taxes this year,” says Hurst, “did we pause to think that giving the government part of our e is a way we honor the Lord and express our trust in his grand design?”

When we arrive at Paul’s words on taxes in Romans 13:6-7, we must recognize they fall within the larger teaching on God’s institution of the government’s authority and the Christian’s responsibility to live in submission to that authority. The simple principle presented in 13:6-7 is that believers in Christ are to pay their taxes, and this is regardless of what the state does with the money once it is received. We sometimes may hear the distress of concerned Christians who say that the government uses their tax dollars for all kinds of waste and even evil, such as abortion, which leads them to question whether they plicit in such acts and should pay their taxes. While such rationale appears e from a good motive (not using personal wealth to support acts one considers wasteful or evil), Paul says that ultimately such considerations are subservient to the principle of submitting to your governing authorities. Indeed, we can be confident that the Christian who pays such taxes does not have any need to feel guilt that they plicit with the acts of the state. However, the Christian who refuses to pay, regardless of being well intentioned, is indeed guilty. Simply because the state misuses funds does not release one from mand to pay taxes, nor does it make one responsible for what the state does with taxes once they are paid.

Read more . . .

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
The most dangerous countries to be a Christian
Today is the first observance of the “International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief.” The observance, as Alliance Defending Freedom notes, is considered by human rights experts to be an important step towards the prevention of religious persecution in the future. In May the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution A/RES/73/296 to add this observance and to strongly condemn continuing violence and acts of terrorism targeting individuals, including persons belonging to religious minorities,...
Adieu and thank you, Joe Carter
For nearly eight years, Senior Editor Joe Carter has been a mainstay of the PowerBlog. Not only have e to expect his daily PowerLinks but Joe’s numerous contributions (let’s enumerate: 4,400 posts!) on just about every topic we tackle here have been unfailingly helpful. Joe truly understands Acton’s “markets and morality” way of looking at the world and gave readers concrete ways of understanding often difficult concepts from economics, theology, social science and politics. On Sept. 6, Joe will post...
A Christian psychology, pedagogy, and anthropology
At the behest of one of the editors, we’ve included an appendix in the new volume in the Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology series, On Education, and called it “Lemkes’ Wish.” Here’s the background: Hubertus Johannes Lemkes (1828–97) was a teacher and a co-founder of the Association of Christian Teachers in the Netherlands and the Overseas Possession. In 1893 Lemkes writes a letter to Abraham Kuyper, requesting that Dr. Kuyper take up the challenge of writing a study...
Acton Line podcast: What is cronyism? Samuel Gregg on reason and faith in Western civilization
Cronyism is everywhere, affecting industries, entrepreneurs and customers and distorting the market through political advantage. So what is cronyism and how does promise genuine capitalism? Anne Rathbone Bradley, the current academic director at The Fund for American Studies, as well as the vice president of Economic Initiatives at the Institute for Faith, Work and es onto the show to explain how cronyism affects the market and how bat it. Afterwards, Acton’s director of research, Samuel Gregg, joins the show to...
Is wealth immoral? A Jewish view
At a public event earlier this year, when Ta-Nahisi Coates asked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez if any “moral world” ever “allows for billionaires,” she replied simply, No.” Earlier this month, Adam Roberts asked at Vox, “Is wealth immoral?” while, some time earlier, journalist A.Q. Roberts wrote inCurrent Affairs that “It’s Basically Just Immoral to be Rich.” Is wealth itself unethical? “On the contrary,” writes Ismar Schorsch, chancellor emeritus of Jewish Theological Seminary, “the Torah highlights [wealth] as a sign of God’s favor.”...
Video: Deltan Dallagnol on the fight against corruption in Brazil
On Thursday, June 20th, Acton ed Deltan Dallagnol to deliver an evening plenary address at Acton University 2019. A Harvard-trained attorney, Deltan Dallagnol gained international attention as the lead prosecutor in Operation Car Wash, one of the largest corruption probes in Latin American history. The Car Wash investigation implicated four former presidents and dozens of congressmen and high profile businessmen in Brazil. The case spread to nearly all Brazilian states and more than 12 countries, involving 14 presidents and former...
Italy’s usual political turmoil
I appeared on EWTN News Nightly yesterday to talk about the collapse of the Italian government. Such turmoil is nothing new in Italy. Discontent with the political class is the main reason there was a populist coalition government in the first place. What made this government unusual was bination of right- and left-wing populists together. Its failure means that the populist appeal to e ideology is not yet mature enough to rule. Matteo Salvini and the League were initially the...
Wisconsin Democrats want to hear your confession
In Wisconsin, Democratic state legislators are proposing the Clergy Mandatory Reporter Act (CMRA), which would require “that members of the clergy report any instances of child abuse, including sexual abuse, ending the loophole of unjust cover-ups and misreporting currently occurring in our state.” “As an Orthodox priest,”says Rev. Gregory Jensen in this week’s Acton Commentary. “I cannot accept any attempt by the state to re-define for its own purposes the nature of the sacrament of confession.” Catholic League presidentBill Donohuesaid...
The nation in arms: Drucker on government’s ultimate tool for social control
This is the third in a series of essays on Peter Drucker’s early works. As I explained in an earlier post, Drucker recognized that fascists were able to take advantage of the dissatisfaction that many experience in a society dominated by money. They substitute party organization as a parallel social existence and then elevate it into a superior status-granting mechanism. In this way, the party exploits anger over inequality. I also discussed Drucker’s sense that the church should have been...
Thanks, China, for your ‘foreign aid’ to America’s low income workers
Several years ago economist Bryan Caplan provided themost succinct and helpful statement about how we should think about free trade: “We’d be better off if other countries gave us stuff for free. Isn’t ‘really cheap’ the next-best thing?” As with any simplification, critics could find many reasons to grumble about what that leaves unstated (e.g., trade leads to offshoring of jobs). But it highlights an important point about why free trade matters. Free trade is about as close to a...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved