What so many Christians get wrong is that they think government helping the poor is the same as a person helping the poor. They don’t consider that taxes are theft, misinterpret Jesus’ response to Pharisees about Caesar’s image on a coin and Romans 13. And misapply the laws of Moses.
They also forget that Caesar was divinity by government decree, and the coin was idolatry. The question was about taxes, but he wisely told them to pay to Caesar whatever actually belonged to him. But “The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”.
Plus in Matthew 17, where Jesus did indeed pay taxes, he told the disciples that it was a form of involuntary servitude, to paraphrase, by reminded them in a question that the kings and nobles and the people who tell you how much to pay up, do not put that burden on their own children. “Then are the children [of your taxman] free”.
They also forget that Romans 13 does not apply when any government does not meet the description as “God’s sword” to stop evil.
The anti-government campaigns of the earliest Christians against infanticide (by adoption), against gladiator battles (Saint Telemachus), refusing the decree to recognize Caesar as a god, against slavery (St. Patrick in Ireland), against aristocratic abuse (appeals in the Magna Carta to a divine natural law above kings), all these things are applications of the Christian Golden Rule.
The corollary subset of the Golden Rule known as the non-aggression principle is a natural law that binds all mankind, something that the growth in the libertarian movement today recognizes. Christians have been slow to recognize this but they are increasing in numbers. Their main obstacle to understanding is that Pharisees and control freaks and unbelievers are diluting the application of the law of love,along with the dilution of the message of salvation.
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