Payback

Three years ago (October 2008), we had the same Sunday readings as today. At that time, world markets were crashing and big corporations collapsing. These days, unless we are able to build firewalls around Italy or bail out Greece or resolve the American fiscal mess, financial fires threaten to engulf the world once more. As we approach a dangerous turn to a possible double-dip (or W-shaped) recession, I find what I wrote on the same Sunday readings three years ago still timely. I pray that these words will not be timeless, or that I won’t have to recycle and reuse this reflection three years from now.

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The trap in the trick question of the Pharisees’ disciples is all about payback: is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? If Jesus had said yes, he would have alienated the masses who were then suffering under Roman rule. If no, the Romans would have gone off with his head, thus sparing the Pharisees the dirty work of getting rid of him.

The answer of Jesus is heaven-sent: repay to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. Noted teacher-lawyers like Fr Joaquin Bernas SJ would have given him an A. Good answer indeed, but does it tell us what to do finally with our BIR tax returns?

If you have an arithmetic personality, you might have understood this answer as a Venn diagram of your life with two sets in it, one belonging to Caesar and another to God. God knows perhaps this is the way you live your life right now. But this story is not about tithing to churches or remitting taxes to government. It is not about separation of Church and State or any of the difficult dichotomies we sometimes create to make sense out of earth and heaven.

What are we to make then of what is Caesar’s and what is God’s?

In a recent meeting on University finances, one of our investment bankers remarked how difficult it is to solve this credit mess or even predict what will happen next. It is so unwieldy simply because most laws and patterns that have been known to govern the financial system seem to have been breached.

In the financial universe, everything now seems confused and opaque. The volatility of the market is creating its own patterns and morphing its own laws. Stocks that crash today can rebound tomorrow; since trust and truth have been broken, who knows what will happen day after that?

At that finance meeting, on the side, this same investment banker asked if God was telling us something about the financial mess we are in right now.

Well, the crash is surely Caesar’s. I don’t think you can ever derive the derivatives from God. The avarice, the connivance, the delusion, the arrogance and indifference, the appalling hubris, the terrible and willful ignorance: all these are tragically Caesar’s. These are ours alone. The credit crisis is Caesar’s. Even the 700 billion dollar bailout will be Caesar’s.

It is too late in the day to recognize God’s prophetic voice in those who had been warning us for a good while now that we had it coming.

In the first reading today, God confesses that it is He who arms benevolent leaders like King Cyrus (585-529 BC) whose empire was even larger than that of the Roman Caesar. It was Cyrus who liberated the Israelites from Babylonian captivity. Cyrus did not even know it was God who was using him to liberate Israel.

“I am the LORD and there is no other, there is no God besides me. It is I who arm you, though you know me not, so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun people may know that there is none besides me. I am the LORD, there is no other (Is 45:5-6).” 

To anyone who would be Caesar then, pay heed to what belongs to God. It is God who arms those who would restore strength to the vanquished. He gives voice to those who would lead and speak on behalf of the voiceless. The vanquished and the voiceless are God’s, as are truth and justice and life.

Return thus to God what belongs to God. There is only one Lord; no other god or currency shall compromise and command our allegiance. They labor in vain, who with divided hearts build their house on shifting sand. They crash in confusion, those who build their towers out of arrogance, delusion, and greed.

We’ve seen this before in Babel. We’re seeing this now. It’s payback time.

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Fr. Jose Ramon T. Villarin SJ is President of Ateneo de Manila University. For feedback on this column, e-mail [email protected]