Right in here with a question from Judson Zeisset." What should our response as kingdom Christians to a person that claims America was built on a purely Christian foundation?" For example, that Washington was an upstanding Christian. Yeah. Okay, so I think my first question to somebody, you know, assuming you're not wanting to be argumentative or, you know, just shut them off would be, what did Jesus teach about paying taxes? You know, pay back Caesar's things to Caesar.
These were Jews wondering if they should pay taxes to a pagan ruler who had conquered them. I mean, about the worst situation you could think of. You know, these are people who believe in the true God. They're being taxed by a pagan conqueror. And he says, hey, pay Caesar his taxes. Paul tells us the same things in Romans 13. He also, Paul also tells us to be subject to the governing authorities. So how can you possibly justify the American Revolution in light of just those two teachings?
I mean, nothing else involved, let alone taking lives, killing people because you disagree with their policies. Of course, there's a lot of other things that were unchristian about American history that I go into detail in the book in God we don't trust. I mean, like, you know, slavery, the kidnapping and importing slaves here from Africa, basically taking the land away from the Native Americans, things like that. I'm not talking about coming from a liberal viewpoint.
This is just coming from the teachings of Jesus, how we are to treat people, how we are to respect the government. And so I don't see how if anyone even basically looks at the teachings of Jesus, he could say, well, this was founded on Christian principles. It simply wasn't. Yeah, thank you for that. I appreciate the sentiment as far as trying to come from a Jesus perspective versus like a liberal or conservative perspective.
It seems like this is an awesome case to show that picking a political side doesn't exactly result in Jesus' teachings because you have to hold something from both perspectives to end up where Jesus is. Yeah, the irony is that if you had to classify the American revolutionists, you'd have to classify them as liberals. The conservatives were the ones who were labeled as Tories who said, hey, let's obey the government and all that.
And so, yeah, these were the, you know, radical liberals who now the conservative evangelical Protestants want to hold out as heroes, yeah, which is really inconsistent. Yeah, it's quite a bit of irony there. Think about it that way. All right, next question here by, did you have something else you wanted to add? Yeah, he asked about George Washington. And I spent a lot of time in researching George Washington just because of how he is presented as this ardent Christian.
I think everyone has seen copies of the painting of him kneeling in the snow, praying near Valley Forge. And so I wanted to know you know what was true. Now, just as a person, as a human leader, George Washington was a remarkable person. I mean, a fine example of what a Christian leader should be if you're just looking at that aspect of things, not at his beliefs. But I was able to actually find his journal, which would be his daily diary, which was, I don't know, 10 volumes or more. It was really lengthy.
And just spending days and days and days reading it. And it's obvious this man had no relationship with God at all. I mean, when he would get to Sunday, he never talked about what the sermon was about. Anything spiritual, it would always be who came for dinner that day on Sunday. Okay, we had so-and-so over and, you know, had a meal together. And then I showed him, you know, my plantation or this or that. I mean, that's Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. It's always the same.
Never a discussion about, hey, the sermon today was on this topic. There's never any, you know, mention of prayer in his journal, anything like that. And so when I tracked down, what's this? I thought, how could this man be out in the snow praying when he doesn't even pray in his own library at home? And yeah, that was the same guy who invented the myth about him chopping down the cherry tree and all of that just, yeah, totally made up. It doesn't fit the man at all. He was a deist.
He went to church, but he wouldn't even receive communion. And when the minister rebuked him for setting a poor example, coming to church on communion Sunday and then not taking communion, he thanked the minister for the rebuke. And thereafter, he didn't come to church on Sundays when they were having communion. I think they had it once a month. He didn't want to set a bad example, so he just didn't come to church. He would not kneel and pray in church.
And he was Episcopalian and Episcopalians kneel and pray in church. For some reason, he wouldn't. And when I saw that, I thought, no way, this guy's out in the snow kneeling when he wouldn't even kneel right there in church. Yeah, that's really interesting.
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