Profound

Obligation

Am I my brother’s keeper?

Genesis 4:9

On the morning of October 2, 2006 Charles Roberts entered a one-room Amish school house in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania with a loaded hand gun. Fifteen minutes and nine rounds later Roberts had shot eleven girls ranging in ages from six to thirteen years, killing five of them. When police stormed the building they heard one more shot. As they entered the room they found blood and glass splashed everywhere and the assassin dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Evil of this magnitude was new to this Amish community. Amish are known to be peaceful, non-violent, kind people. While still reeling in pain from this tragedy, their thoughts turned to the shooter’s family. Charles Roberts left behind a wife and three children, now themselves confused, grieving and in financial difficulty. Within hours of the massacre, the Amish of Nickel Mines took up an offering – for the widow and her children. Relatives of the victims of a senseless shooting intentionally forgave the perpetrator and offered financial resources much needed by the murderer’s family.

Humanity’s first murder is recorded in Genesis chapter four. Two brothers, Cain and Abel, presented the fruit of their labors as an act of worship to their Creator. While Abel’s offering was accepted by God, Cain’s was rejected. Blind with furious jealousy, Cain attacked Abel while they were walking alone in a field, killing him. God came looking for Abel, found only Cain. God confronted him, asking Cain about Abel. Cain’s response is legend: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Two responses to human plight: Cain disowned it, the Amish owned it. Which reaction is the better one? It all depends. Was Martin Luther King, Jr. right when he said, “Life's most persistent and urgent question is, `What are you doing for others?’” Or is evolution correct in positing that humanity must disavow the weak in order for its fittest to survive? Beginning with either theism or atheism will lead us to one answer or another.

The currency of obligation

Jesus tackled this issue using a coin. Jesus’ opponents asked him if the Jews had an obligation to pay taxes to the Roman emperor. “Should we pay or shouldn’t we?” But Jesus, knowing their hypocrisy, retorted, “Why are you trying to trap me?”

Jesus then asks them to show him not a Jewish, but a Roman coin, a denarius. This is significant. The big difference between Jewish and Roman coinage was that Roman coins had the emperor’s likeness stamped on them. For Jews doing thus would have been an affront to the second commandment: “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below” (Exodus 20:4). The Romans considered the emperor to be a deity, something the Jews categorically rejected, for there was one God, and Yahweh was his name. In their mind emperor-worship was tantamount to blasphemy.

The enemies of Jesus, themselves Jews, produce the Roman denarius that Jesus asked for. “They brought the coin, and he asked them, ‘Whose image (Gk ikon) is this? And whose inscription?’ ’Caesar’s,’ they replied. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. And they were amazed at him’ (Mark 12:16-17).

Why the amazement? Coinage and statues were two prevalent ways in which a Roman emperor made known his presence and, by virtue of his presence, his authority. Statues of the emperor were placed in Roman-occupied territories communicating to the populace that the emperor was in charge. The same thing applied to the coin. The denarius, with the profile of the emperor, was the property of the emperor. To give the denarius as tax money was to give back to the emperor what belonged to the emperor.

“Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” If the coin is the image of the emperor, what is the image of God? We are! “So God created mankind in his own image (Gr ikon), in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). God has a right to possess what is his, which we are. If the coin signifies an obligation to go back to the one who bears its image, how much more humans who bear the image and characteristics of God! In the way that the denarius made the emperor known, so too we humans are to make known our Creator. For, to use the metaphor of the coin, He has stamped himself upon us.