In order to say Yes – in any meaningful way – you have to say No. That’s a venerable principle of rational discourse. If you only say Yes, you’re in effect affirming everything, which is, as it were, a distinction without a difference. Confused? Perhaps you should be.
Or let me speak biblically. In order to say Yes to Jesus, you’ve got to say No to Caesar, in principle. That, anyway, is how I interpret Jesus’ reference to the image of Caesar on that first century Roman coin, even though he himself seems to leave the question open (Mt. 22:21, Mk. 12:7, Lk. 20:25). Of course, we humans will always want to have some form of governing authority, for better or for worse. And we’ll want to make that authority work justly, as best we can. But when it comes to God and Caesar, which one should be our primary obedience? Question asked. Question answered.
But what if our primary obedience to the God and Father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ makes it impossible to obey Caesar at some point? That question arose already in the apostolic era, witness Peter’s statement that we should always obey God rather than humans (Acts 5:29). That was the situation that early Christian martyrs found themselves in, dramatically. They chose to die, rather than to say Yes to Caesar.
Likewise, that was the situation that Dietrich Bonhoeffer found himself in as a member of the Confessing Church in the nineteen-forties. Yes, Bonhoeffer’s situation was extreme, akin to that of the ancient martyrs. Bonhoeffer was faced with the issue of tyrannicide. His historic challenge, or so he interpreted it, was to decide whether to participate in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler.
And you and I? I’ve thought a lot about this in recent years. A number of others have raised this question too: are we not today in what has recently been called a “Bonhoeffer moment”?
Which suggests to me that the time may well have arrived for us to launch a public theological discussion about the principle of impeaching Caesar; forget about the historic issue of the tyrannicide that Bonhoeffer faced. Hasn’t the time arrived, for those of us who aspire to be committed followers of Jesus, to find a way to say a firm Yes to America and its promise only by also finding a way also to say a definitive No to an emboldened American Caesar who has shaken the foundations of the social order by releasing the shock troops of ICE?
Even more to the point. Hasn’t the time indeed come quite emphatically to “render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” not just with lip service, not just with discussions after church on Sundays, but, if I may say so, maybe even, as countless thousands have already chosen to do, with our feets on the streets?
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