On Christ, the Caesar Coin, and World War III
Christ says, “Why are you testing Me, you hypocrites?”
It is one of those Scripture passages that will eliminate any false notion of Jesus Christ being a nice fella to everyone, or that “He Gets Us” as that disgusting series of establishment media commercials poses. It is a Gospel truth I explore more in depth in “The Poison of Nice,” that Christ was good, in the truest, purest sense of the word, the most good to ever walk the earth in fact. But he was not always nice.
Especially to snakes that attempted to not just trick him, but trick him in a way that would cast doubt amongst his followers and lead them astray. That may be what he is most angry with here. And it turns out that one of the messages Christ has for us today in Matthew 22 is one I emphasize in my classroom and highlight at times in my articles.
It involves the binary trap. The ancient Greeks called it the fallacy of either-or reasoning. Yet one more terminology is tribalism.
The passage from Matthew indeed involves Christ’s enemies attempting to trap him. What makes this story especially insidious is that the enemies are two tribes in themselves–the Herodians and the Pharisees–two groups who hated each other in these tumultuous times. But as is the case in so many wars, sometimes alliances between enemies must be formed if they recognize a greater enemy in their midst.
Jesus Christ, the greatest good to ever walk the earth, was that greatest enemy. In their minds, they had to, at some point and in some way, make him out to be a liar, a deceiver of disciples. Here is one of the most pivotal passages in all of Scripture, from Matthew 22:
15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted together how they might trap Him in what He said. 16 And they sent their disciples to Him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that You are truthful and teach the way of God in truth, and do not care what anyone thinks; for You are not partial to anyone. 17 Tell us then, what do You think? Is it permissible to pay a poll-tax to Caesar, or not?” 18 But Jesus perceived their malice, and said, “Why are you testing Me, you hypocrites? 19 Show Me the coin used for the poll-tax.” And they brought Him a denarius. 20 And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” 21 They *said to Him, “Caesar’s.” Then He *said to them, “Then pay to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.” 22 And hearing this, they were amazed; and they left Him and went away (NASB).
They hated him even more after this. It was one of the many times he signed his own death sentence.
The binary trap, or attempted one in this case, is to force Jesus to answer yes or no. With either answer he gives, one tribe of his enemies is able to incite trouble among his followers and among the Roman rulers. I leave the details of the politics of this story aside here, for it is dense; however, suffice it to say that Jesus’ response not only spoke to eternal truth, but from a natural, human standpoint, exhibited incredible wisdom and cunning as well.
The Son of God was far smarter than these “learned” men. One adjacent lesson here is that we have to be as cunning as those prowling around who so cunningly try to destroy us. Faith can’t just remain in the “feels” all the time. We have to be smart, as Jesus was.
Christ recognizes the trap–the binary trap–they have set for him. They have clearly discussed this beforehand. They are so “nice” to him when they offer him flattering words: “Teacher, we know that You are truthful and teach the way of God in truth, and do not care what anyone thinks; for You are not partial to anyone.”
Ah, so nice. But are they good? You know the answer, and this is precisely what I was speaking on in “The Poison of Nice.”
Their approach to him is as phony and manipulative as it gets–and we experience people like this maybe every single day.
Instead of remaining relatively quiet and docile as he is when he is later accused by Annas, Caiaphas, and Pontius Pilate, Jesus here flips–quite cunningly–their false binary on top of them and creates a new one, one that does two things: 1) it handcuffs their devious hands and silences any of his disciples’ doubt that could have arisen from a potentially unanswered question; and 2) plainly, it speaks truth. For the only true binary that should exist is good and evil, God and not-God.
Image on the coin? Caesar’s. Then give the coin to Caesar. Image on your heart? God’s. Then give your whole heart to God.
God and not-God. It is the only binary that matters.
That’s it. All the other created binaries–whether they be what Christ’s enemies do here or Ukraine and Russia or Israel and Palestine or Yankees and Red Sox or all the other silly binaries we set up for ourselves (Team Edward and Team Jacob!)–are contrived by the enemy simply to deceive us into forfeiting our faith and our sense of loyalty to an arbitrary tribe when it is both tribes that are being eaten from within by corruption and sin.
Man is fallen. And so are the infiltrated governments around the world made up of them.
The binary trap by its inherent nature is meant to create, oftentimes arbitrarily and dishonestly, an enemy. It is a classic Saul Alinsky tactic, a radical socialist who worked his nefarious dealings under the label of “community organizer.” Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were more than fans. In Alinsky’s book Rules for Radicals, he discusses the importance of this contrived enemy as a thing to be triumphed over by the community in a goal of all goals scenario. In the film A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, Father Mitch Pacwa discusses a personal testimony about Alinsky arranging Mexicans, Blacks, and Italians–three antagonists–in a binary trap whereby the Mexicans and Blacks were convinced that the Italians were the true enemy. So they joined forces against them. Three (nuance) gets pared down to two (simplicity and easier to control) and a “community organizer” is hailed as a savior by one victorious “side” of the community.
It is yet another example of the Hegelian Dialectic, another sociological principle I have explored in my work.
Rule #13 in Rules for Radicals is “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” This is the foundation of the binary trap. Create arbitrary polarization, two tribes, and pit them against each other like dogs while the real enemy–who set it all up in the first place–watches with the achieved position of power, wealth, and, dare I say, pleasure.
Who is Alinsky’s hero, the being whom he celebrated as the first radical? None other than Lucifer himself. I explored this Luciferian trap of the binary in a recent article “To the American Government: Get Out of Israel’s Way,” using a personal confession about my fall for the trick back in the early 2000s with Bush, 9/11, and Afghanistan:
I was a slave to the tribe and a lot of Americans still are. I even have to fight it. Hence my delay in writing this piece.
So I trusted Bush. And twenty years later Afghanistan was still a money-making machine for crooks in Washington before the Biden debacle in leaving the country in 2021. When something like the Hamas bombing happens, our instincts practically force us to one of two camps, an arbitrary binary that has proven incredibly manipulative and dangerous to the American people. In other words, patriots who want justice are quick to automatically think that we’re “the good guys” and the other side is “the bad guys.” It is incredibly wrong thinking, and one need only consider how he or she feels about the administrations of Obama and Biden to realize that America isn’t always on the noble path. Why would it be so if these politicians we so distrust and despise are in charge? How can we separate them from the notion of “America” when these suspicious events continue to take place?
–When it is the Obamas and Bidens of the world who are the ones who keep these terrorist organizations strong in the first place?
The Deep State is inside America. It is the component of our beloved country that has been hijacked, and it is a globalist power subverting our patriotic efforts at national sovereignty. It is the termites to the wood. It does not give one damn about where the money comes from, as long as it keeps flowing into its pockets. Public support for the Ukraine war is over. Gone is the Speaker of the House. This tragedy in Israel is just the latest event–whether the Deep State knew about it or not–that it will set its sights on to capitalize on advancing both their wallets and their nefarious New World Order schemes.
Follow the money. Go back to the Iran Deal (Obama). Go back to 9/11 (Bush). Keep watching Ukraine and see if they start covertly packaging aid to it again under the cover of Israel.
Do you see the trap? This isn’t about Republican vs Democrat. This isn’t about America/Israel vs the world. Americans–especially ones who love their country–are caught in the unenviable position of wanting to side against the Hamas terrorists but of also having to admit that both the US and Israeli governments and intelligence agencies stink to high heaven and have stunk for a long time.
Just think of how corrupt our own government is as you consider how often this type of polarization must happen on the geopolitical stage. The Mockingbird government-media apparatus has frozen Russia into the boogeyman over the decades (admittedly, sometimes for good reason). They have personalized it because of the country’s Communist history and our distrust of it. And they have used this freezing and the personalizing to trick well-meaning Americans into thinking that if Russia is one pole (devils and demons!) then Ukraine must be the opposite pole–and therefore a country inhabited exclusively of angels and saints.
This couldn’t be further from the truth, as I have explored in a number of articles going back to the conflict’s early stages, analysis that has now become part of the mainstream. Ukraine is an absolute cesspool of corruption and sin.
Do we not think the same type of freezing, personalizing, and polarizing isn’t happening now in the Middle East?
What happens when China and Taiwan’s involvement gets more vocal and visible? What about the BRICS alliance? When all of these countries’ involvement in this worldwide conflict becomes more and more kinetic, do we think there are going to be clear-cut good guys and bad guys?
Did you know that Biden is beholden to both China and Ukraine? What happens when China sides with Russia, as is already happening? Who will be the Cowboys in our simplistic way of thinking? Who will be the Indians?
This is why we must prepare our minds now for the confusion, the cognitive dissonance, the inevitable schizophrenic posture that could cripple political discourse worse than it already is, when we either admit that we cannot stand by certain “allies” anymore or else go all in with whatever they stand for, whether that be evil or not–simply because our collective American mind cannot handle any more nuance than that. We must must must avoid going all in with either Team A or Team B, because it has long been more complicated than that, and it’s only going to get worse.
Not to mention, of course, that there will be this cowboy against that cowboy, and then we won’t know what to do with the raging internal inferno.
Let’s just go bomb the Indians!
That is how we handle cognitive dissonance so often in America. We let our emotions rule the day because we’re not smart enough as a society to think through the complexities.
We’re not smart like Christ.
Let us conclude with where we started, with the Alpha and the Omega….
In Jesus’ time, both the Herodians and the Pharisees were Jews, as of course was Christ. The Herodians supported Roman occupation, while the Pharisees hated it. But these two bitter enemies, like Alinsky’s Mexicans and Blacks, found a common enemy in Christ, like the Italians. The conflict apparently cannot exist beyond the pair, beyond the binary, and still allow the phantom menace behind it all to grow in power. The Herodians and Pharisees chose to join forces to trap the Messiah himself, and it ended up blowing up in their faces when Jesus juxtaposed the image of Caesar on the coin with the image of God in our hearts. We would be well served to be as wise as Jesus is here and obey him in his direction, for if we as a society don’t make the only binary that matters God vs not-God, then it ultimately doesn’t matter what countries we “Stand With.” In the end, God Almighty himself will continue to keep us fools and hypocrites confused and babbling around our meaningless towers, at each other’s throats as to what is and what isn’t the truth, while the real enemy lurks in the shadows laughing hysterically at our lunacy.
May everyone named directly or referenced indirectly ask forgiveness and do penance for their sins against America and God. I fight this information war in the spirit of justice and love for the innocent, but I have been reminded of the need for mercy and prayers for our enemies. I am a sinner in need of redemption as well after all, for my sins are many. In the words of Jesus Christ himself, Lord forgive us all, for we know not what we do.
