Chapter 21: How Do You Reason With a Mob? It's interesting how history repeats itself so often. I suppose it's because human nature doesn't change. As I write this book, the country of Greece teeters on the edge of chaos. For years, Greece has piled up an astronomic national debt, and the day of economic reckoning has finally come. The government has had to impose fiscal austerity measures, or else face total financial collapse.
However, when the government has tried to impose fiscal cuts, many of the public workers and unions have reacted with violence, riots, and lawlessness. A Greek reporter, Takis Michas, wrote the following article for the Wall Street Journal about what is happening. Greece's public debt may reach 150% of its GDP this year, an alarming possibility that has captivated outside observers. But in the final analysis, the major issue confronting Greece may not be its solvency but its governance.
The country is at the mercy of militant activists. With total impunity, their followers have taken to harassing citizens and destroying public property, even taking over whole villages. In one case last year, a group of militants badly beat a former center-right New Democracy minister in front of television cameras. No arrests were made. In another case, a group of thugs accosted a leading Greek journalist while he ate in a restaurant.
A similar incident happened last month, the victim that time being a minister of the government. No arrests were made in those cases either. Then there are the various movements of civil disobedience organized by Greece's hard left. These include the "I Won't Pay" phenomenon, which amounts to supposedly brave refuseniks lifting barriers at motorway toll booths and driving through without paying. This even as their co-ideologues destroy bus and metro ticket machines.
These acts of theft and vandalism have also gone unpunished, though to combat fare dodging on public transport, the government has dispatched a new team of inspectors. This week, one of them was shot twice in the stomach by a bus passenger, and he remains in critical condition. Last summer, the Communist Party organized hundreds of union members to block tourists from boarding ferries to Greek islands. Yet even after the courts ruled that the move was illegal, no arrests were made.
Is it any surprise, therefore, that there exist today areas of Greece where the government no longer exercises sovereignty? What stands out in all these incidents is the authorities' inability or unwillingness to enforce the law. "Even if we arrest them, they will be out in no time," a police officer in Athens told me on condition of anonymity. Their political patrons will see to it. What we are witnessing is not a descent into chaos, but a descent into organized lawlessness.
The real Greek disease is contempt for the law and the political failure to combat it. Now I ask you, the reader, what you think Greece should do. Should it let those lawbreakers take over the country? Should it appease the lawless mobs by repealing the fiscal laws it recently passed to keep the country from total economic collapse? Or should it crack down on the violent protesters and establish law and order? Greece today is in the same situation as the British government on the eve of the American Revolution.
Like modern Greece, Britain had a national debt that was 150% of its GDP. It could ignore the debt and collapse into economic ruin. Or it could practice fiscal discipline by taking measures to collect enough taxes from its citizens to pay for its expenses. Aftermath of the Boston Tea Vandalism. After the Boston Tea Vandals brazenly destroyed so much valuable property, the British government had the choice of either cutting Massachusetts loose or reestablishing its governmental authority.
Whatever happened in Massachusetts would likely affect the other colonies. After investing so much in the French and Indian War in both blood and money, Britain wasn't about to walk away from its investment in America, so it tried to reestablish its authority. To that end, in early 1774, Britain passed a series of punitive acts called the Coercive Acts in response to the Boston Tea Vandalism. The colonists called these acts the Intolerable Acts. Among the first of these acts was the Boston Port Act.
It temporarily closed Boston Harbor to all shipping except for smaller boats carrying necessary food, fuel, and supplies. The customs office was temporarily moved to the Port of Salem, 30 miles away. The act stated that the port would remain closed until the East India Company had been reimbursed for its losses and the king could be assured that peace and order had been restored. The Massachusetts colonists were experiencing the wrath that Paul spoke of in Romans 13.
But the government's wrath only played that much further into the hands of Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty. Cries rang out through the breadth of the colonies denouncing the tyranny of King George. Momentum kept building until it finally erupted into war. John Wesley Tries to Reason with the Colonies. Before the war broke out, John Wesley tried to reason with the colonists. Most of the colonists claimed to be Christians, so he tried to call them to their senses regarding God's laws.
He also addressed their political claims, exposing those claims as having no validity. "If Parliament cannot tax you because you have no representation therein, for the same reason it can make no laws to bind you. If a free man cannot be taxed without his own consent, neither can he be punished without it. For whatever holds true with regard to taxation holds true with regard to all other laws. Therefore he who denies the English Parliament the power of taxation denies it the right of making any laws at all.
But you have never disputed this power over the colonies. You have always acknowledged statutes for the punishment of offenses and for the preventing or redressing of civil wrongs. And the reception of any law draws after it by a chain which cannot be broken, the necessity of accepting taxation. But I object to the very foundation of your plea. You have confidently asserted that every free man is governed only by laws to which he has consented. But that is absolutely false.
In wide extended dominions, a very small part of the people are involved in making laws. As with all public businesses, this must be done by delegation, and the delegates are chosen by a select number. And those who are not voters, who are by far the greater number, stand by as idle and helpless spectators. But the case of voters is little better. When they are near equally divided, almost half of them must be governed not only without, but even against their own consent.
And how has any man consented to those laws which were made before he was born? Our consent to these, nay, and even the laws now made in England, is purely passive. And in every place, as all men are born the subjects of one state or another, so they are born passively, as it were, consenting to the laws of that state." The sad part about it all was that at the time of the Boston Tea Vandalism, the only tax being levied against the colonies was a three-penny tariff on each pound of tea.
And no further taxes were planned. Not only that, the Tea Act had lowered the price of tea so much that it completely erased even that three-penny tax. It's alarming that skilled propagandists could push an entire nation into war over a three-penny tax. It's even more disturbing that such people could inflame an entire nation of professing Christians to directly disobey their God, particularly over so little.
That the American church was inflamed that way is a sad testimony to a Christianity that had lost its moorings, its power, and its trust in God. Or am I being too harsh? After all, does Jesus really expect us to pay unfair taxes? Jesus and Unfair Taxes. Hopefully, I've helped you to see that the Stamp Act and Townshend Acts were neither unconstitutional nor unfair.
However, for a moment, let's pretend that the stamp tax and its replacement, the Townshend Acts, were as unjust and unconstitutional as the colonists made them out to be. Let's pretend that a three-penny tax on a pound of tea is oppressive. The question then becomes, does Jesus expect us to pay taxes that are oppressive, unfair, or unconstitutional? Interestingly, people brought up that very issue to Jesus when he was on earth.
During Jesus' ministry, Rome was levying heavy taxes on the Jews, and the Jews saw these taxes as oppressive and unfair. So they asked Jesus whether it was right or not to pay taxes to the pagan Roman government, knowing that this was a politically loaded question. Jesus replied, "Why do you test me? Show me a denarius.
Whose image and inscription does it have?" They answered and said, "Caesar's." And he said to them, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." Luke 20:23-25. So Jesus made it clear that his followers must even pay taxes that are unjust or oppressive. There was nothing fair about the Roman system of taxation at all. Most of the Jews were not even Roman citizens. The taxes they paid went to support the very armies and government that were oppressing them.
Furthermore, some of their tax money went to build pagan temples and idols to false gods. What about illegal taxes? "Okay," you may reply, "I concede on the issue of unfair taxes, but Jesus surely doesn't require us to pay taxes that are illegal." However, Jesus gave no exceptions whatsoever when it comes to paying taxes. Not only that, he carefully chose the precise setting and audience to announce his law on taxes.
The audience and setting were those of God's people being forced to pay taxes to a foreign pagan government that illegally occupied their land. Under what worse circumstances could taxes be levied? In what sense were the Roman taxes legal? Rome's only claim to legitimacy was that it had conquered the Jews. Judea had been Rome's ally for more than a century, but Rome conquered it anyway and then imposed taxes on the Jews.
If Jesus commanded the Jews to pay taxes to Rome, an occupying foreign power, then there never will be a setting in which Jesus' commandment does not apply. In other words, even in the worst situation imaginable, being ruled by a conquering enemy, Christians are commanded to obey the government. The only time it is proper to disobey our human governments is when they command us to do something that directly violates God's laws. Acts 5:29.
In the Epistle to the Romans, God goes so far as to say that the ruling authorities are his ministers, even when their own legitimacy comes from their having conquered another country. God wants his people to honor and obey governmental authorities even when those authorities are persecuting Christians and fighting against him, so long as Christians don't have to violate any of God's laws to be obedient.
In short, if God wanted first-century Christians to honor the pagan Roman authorities and to pay all of Rome's taxes and import duties, he certainly expected the American colonists to pay tariffs to a government that professed to be Christian. The colonial Christians were without excuse. They weren't merely disobeying Parliament; they were disobeying God. So what should the colonists have done?