No one has any business poking about in your personal life who isn’t related by blood or covenant. Thus saith the Lord. This was His part of His intention in promulgating the Covenant of Noah, because the primary burden of settling disputes falls on those closest to you. Depersonalizing social and legal processes is an abomination before the Lord, and is a fundamental element in God’s wrath on Western Civilization.
Yet, even in this filthy cultural heritage, we find islands of sanity. When a judge in Florida recently ruled in favor of preexisting binding arbitration by a Sharia Law process, it was no different from a similar process binding in many Christian organizations. This decision is just before God; it’s consistent with the fundamental moral nature of the universe.
All the more so because it reasserts the ancient requirement to keep power decentralized and personal. Everything we seek to build in a moral and sane society must begin right there. That it defies the plans and purposes of the evil oligarchs is just an added bonus.
Didn’t your Jesus say that to my Father’s house what belongs to my Father and to Caesar’s house what belongs to Caesar? Isn’t this the mandate upon which Christian nations found their judicial systems? Shouldn’t the state determine (on this basis) the judgements in legal cases? Where does this all end? I follow the Law of Thelema but I cannot expect that any court in the world will respect my spiritual beliefs where they conflict with the statutes of the land so why should that be different for Muslims or Christians? I think that this has just added fuel to the fire rather than arriving at any lasting or precedential conclusions.
Specific to the context of Jesus’ comment was that using Caesar’s coinage requires paying his taxes. The Pharisees were greedy materialists who compromised their principles to carry money with a human image, generally against the Law of Moses. It was a response to their question about paying taxes to Rome as somehow treasonous. Meanwhile, they owed God their very lives.
The point of the article was to note a binding contract was already in place, and nothing to indicate anyone had signed under duress. Pharisaical Christians get worked up about the judge honoring that contract for a Muslim organization, but would demand vociferously the same courtesy for themselves. It’s a poke at standard church-folk hypocrisy.