Tax Day Song

Amazing grace: an easy tax
Count ten and give God one
The IRS's laws of tax
Ten thousand pages run.

Amazing grace: God's tax takes just
One tenth of riches' growth
The IRS's taxes take
Two or three times as much.

Amazing grace: an equal tax
One tenth from everyone
No favors for the rich or poor
God says such breaks are sin.

Stupendous grace: we pay God's tax
To any priest we choose
No choice have voters but to pay
Guys that we hoped would lose.

Praise God because His tax plan is simple. The IRS could learn something from triune Jehovah.

I hope the song is clear enough; if you want to be confused and/or enlightened, you can read the explanations below if you want to.

Q: "Jesus is a libertarian"? How? A: In His life, for he did almost no violence, yet he let no one put him in a box; He lived as a free man in a not very free society. In his death, for he gave his life to pay for His own program--he did not crucify the taxpayers, he himself paid. In his resurrection, for He overturned the verdict of the only superpower of those days and of the religious system.

Q Why should I care about Jesus? A Because He's God--but if you haven't checked that out yet, Jesus must have been an interesting, intelligent, capable leader to be remembered and have followers 2000 years after he (He) walked the earth. Well worth checking out. Throw a brick through your TV set and read the "4 Gospels" of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and maybe "The Challenge of Jesus" by N. T. Wright.

Q Jesus is a libertarian? A Smile; that's an overstatement, but with something to it. I don't claim Jesus is of the "Libertarian Party," but a lot of what the LP is for Jesus is for--small government so people can freely pursue whatever good they choose within wide limits. I think highly of Republican Ron Paul, of the late Democrat Larry McDonald (died in early 1980s; I voted for him once), of the "Constitution Party," and of Ronald Reagan.

Also because Presidents Bush and Obama have both failed--not as badly as the atheistic and Muslim tyrannies fail, but visibly--so it's time to look somewhere else for a different approach.

Q Why look to Jesus Christ in connection with politics? A Well, He's God and He's my Lord and Savior; and he made no mistakes, which is more than can be said for any politician. A sound connection with God, Creator of the heavens and the earth, puts politics in perspective; the nations are as a drop in the bucket, like dust on a scale (Bible--Isaiah--read in the movie "Chariots of Fire.") So a sound Christian is not scared by politicians (even if they're murdering him--and like our Lord, thousands of Christians a year are murdered, often these days by Muslims; I regret to admit that SOME of the reverse also occurs); he's not overwhelmed by their successes nor driven to despair by their failures (or vice versa if the Christian disagrees with the politician); Jesus is the standard and the politicians are not. If the politician goes along with Jesus, fine; if not, pray and work patiently and pray. "Politics 4th" is a slogan of Gary North (author of "Unconditional Surrender"), often considered a highly political Christian. Can you imagine Mohammed or Marx putting politics that low? Jesus on earth gave politics a low priority, yet like yeast making dough rise after awhile, the people of Jesus have improved politics (compare Bush and Obama with Stalin and Mao; compare the US Presidents with Plutarch's Lives of the Greeks and Romans), and will yet improve it a lot more (compare Bush and Obama with the Institute for Justice, www.ij.org ).

Q Count ten and give God one? A You can make it more complicated--both the late R. J. Rushdoony ("Rush" before Limbaugh) and Gary North his (estranged) son-in-law wrote whole books on the Bible's doctrine of tithing and of giving--but the first mention in the Bible of giving a tenth, Genesis 14, which is also the last mention, Hebrews 7, is a place to start. Ray Sutton, REC bishop, said once he'd never known a tither (who gives God a tenth) to go bankrupt.

Q No favors for the rich or poor? A Exodus 23:2-3 "You shall not follow a multitude to do evil, neither shall you speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment, neither shall you countenance a poor man in his cause." Leviticus 19:15 "You shall do no unrighteousness in judgment; you shall not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty; in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor." The Bible encourages us to care for the poor, but not to show them political favors, especially in lawsuits. The "good Samaritan" (Luke 10) put the wounded man "on his own beast," not in a tax-paid ambulance, and paid the innkeeper to care for him with his own money, promising "I will repay you" if the bill gets bigger, not "HHS will repay you."

I suppose we're usually more tempted to favor the rich than to favor the poor, so the Bible may more often warn against the sin of favoring the rich (as both parties do, with some differences in which rich they favor) than against the sin of favoring the poor (as both parties claim to, though both with a loathsome, ineffective, wasteful paternalism instead of with freedom to earn and keep money and buy cheap), but favoring either rich or poor is sin. (Somewhere in Exodus or Leviticus or Numbers or Deuteronomy God gets the last of ten tenths instead of the first--if you have ten new sheep, you keep nine and God gets the tenth--so maybe a "standard deduction" would be parallel to that.)

Q We pay God's tax to any priest we choose? A Or pastor or church; I don't insist on "priest." That's one advantage of the business sector over the government sector, one reason to shrink the government and leave more to business. Schools? Harvard. Parks? Disney. Welfare? World Vision. Lighthouses? It's been done--read "The Theory of Market Failure," edited by Tyler Cowen. Some police? Paul BlartJ. Business offers a choice--burgers, pizza, tacos, subs, sushi...and every niche that's filled can be happy, instead of Democrats OR Republicans, losers OR winners.

Q Any priest we choose? A Theologically, the Church is inherently one, I think, since triune Jehovah ("God") is one, and Jesus Christ, God the Son, is the only Savior. We have "one Lord, one faith, one baptism"(!!!) Denominational differences are horrible--the New Testament has nothing good to say about divisiveness in Church--and we need to work on getting together (admitting that each other are true Christians might help), but any really Christian denomination is part of the Church. (There are fake churches, false cults, and all churches make mistakes, but mostly the government needn't concern itself about these, unless they go too far astray in what they do.)

My website, www.lohr84.com, expands on some of this, especially the section "How to improve churches, USA, computers..." and the tract "The zone of love in sex, politics, money, and religion," in the website section "Look to Jesus" (tract is also on Associated Content).