As I see our state jerk radically left in the last election cycle, I’m feeling discouraged and apprehensive about what comes next. Our state’s left party has spent the last 4 years under our Republican Governor submitting hundreds of costly and radical bills that, thankfully, our Governor vetoed. In the 2025 legislative session, he vetoed 157 bills, amended 159 and signed 599 into law (making him the Governor with the most vetoes in the last 30 years). Now, our state is facing an impending constitutional amendment put forth by the Democrats that will make abortion a constitutional right. This goes to vote in the next few years, now under Democratic majority control. Republicans attempted to include in the amendment proposal provisions that required doctors to give life-saving care to aborted babies who were still alive. However, as you might have already guessed, the Democrats voted it down. So the amendment will enshrine in the constitution the right to abort babies and make sure they die even if they are still alive after the procedure.
Facing even greater egregious actions and laws from the newly radicalized Democratic Party, I’m sick in my spirit. Thankfully, when this happens, I have a place to go. After feeling despair and anger for a few days, I finally decide to look to God for answers. I know, I should have done that first, but my typical cycle is to wallow in my own self pity and anguish for a while before I do what I should have done first. So, in this spirit of redirecting my attention to things of heaven, here is what I found. I pray this helps you, too.
Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s
Mark 12:13-17 is particularly poignant to me because, as the Pharisees were asking Jesus their questions about paying taxes to Rome, they were a militarily occupied nation. They had a foreign ruler claim dominion over their nation and were asking Jesus to take a position on that foreign rule. Can you imagine how we would feel having Russia as our rulers and they demanded that we pay taxes to Russia? Not just taxes, but often onerous taxes. The Romans hired Jews to collect taxes. The Roman employed tax collectors would add their preferred profit to the Roman taxes which yielded a system of corruption, graft and extortion; making the taxation matter even worse (Zaccheus – Luke 19:1-10).
Jesus, when asked if the Jews should pay taxes to the occupying Romans, said to give to Caesar what is his and to God what is his? Let’s break that down. What is Caesar’s? To better understand the biblical lessons for that, I took a look at Daniel 2:19-21. There, Daniel is challenged to tell the King, Nebuchadnezzar, his dream and its meaning. Again, Israel is occupied and the Jewish leaders and their children are taken captive into Babylon. The King is trying to groom these Jewish leaders into the ways of the Babylonians and to lose their Jewish identities. Daniel is compliant with the King. He lives in Babylon but retains his identity as a Jew. He worships his God, he observes God’s law, but obeys the earthly rule of the King. He does this because he knows that God removes Kings and appoints Kings. God is in charge of the times and gives wisdom to the wise; no matter what country or party.
Application
So, it seems that God has a plan and that plan will happen. He will use all of us to his good purpose. He expects us to obey the earthly leaders that He appoints (whether we agree with them or not) but He expects us to obey HIM FIRST. He is the top of our kingdom and all other leaders and concerns are below Him. If earthly leaders expect us to violate God’s law and will, we respectfully disobey (just as Daniel did).
Esther
Working on this now