Death and Taxes

I get my death and taxes advice from the same per­son. Any­one able to rise from the dead has my full atten­tion in all mat­ters. In Matthew 17 the story is told (writ­ten by Matthew the tax col­lec­tor) of some petty, ridicu­lous lit­tle tax (the Tem­ple tax…there was a tax for just about every­thing in those days). Jesus was under-employed at the time. Being an itin­er­ant preacher did not pay much — if any­thing. Luke said that women helped Jesus finan­cially dur­ing his min­istry. Still, he had a petty, triv­ial tax to pay and appar­ently did not have the money on him.

He told Simon Peter to go fish­ing, and that he would catch a fish that had a coin in its mouth — enough to pay the tax for Jesus and Peter both. Sure enough. The one fish Peter caught had a coin in its mouth worth enough to pay the tax for both of them. The story is a bit light-hearted. No big deal. God will sup­ply. Pay the tax. On another occa­sion, Jesus told the peo­ple to “give to Cae­sar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” That too is pretty simple.

It is tax sea­son in Amer­ica. It is on just about everyone’s mind — but not in the same way. Per­son­ally, I pay more than my fair share of taxes on pur­pose. I know I can­not take it with me any­way. Green paper with pic­tures of dead Pres­i­dents… If any of those Pres­i­dents rise from the dead, you let me know. Maybe then I will give it more attention.

Live sim­ply at what­ever income level you may have. We do not have much in this life for very long. Detach from the wor­ries of the fran­tic crowd. “A person’s life does not con­sist of the abun­dance of his/her possession” — nor is our worth deter­mined by the size of our tax bill. The tax col­lec­tor can get every­thing mate­ri­ally — but not your soul.

Sug­ges­tion: give your soul to God — the rest will find its own solution.

What I am learn­ing in life is about atti­tude. Most peo­ple are very focused on taxes but ignore the grave. Both are inevitable, but the sec­ond one is the real prob­lem. Deal with it first, and then every­thing else becomes triv­ial. So they gain the whole world but lose their soul…poor trade! I have cho­sen a dif­fer­ent approach — one based on the “Life” that beat death and taxes fair and square.