Taxed, but Treasured
And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.
2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)
5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
Luke 2:1-5
Death and taxes, so they say, are the only two sure things in life. I might add a few certainties to that list, but it’s a solid start in any case. Joseph and Mary will hike the familiar but treacherous 90 mile trail down to Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem, a trip Mary has already undertaken once this year. Joseph will be enrolled in the Roman government’s latest taxation scheme.
For decades the skeptical historical critics have claimed this an inaccurate detail of Luke’s gospel, citing a lack of evidence per Josephus or other sources. Why wouldn’t Joseph just enroll and be taxed in Nazareth? They presume some fabrication of circumstance to fulfill the prophecy of Micah 5:2, that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Arguments from silence against biblical history are a fool’s errand and archaeology consistently bears out the facts. It turns out these enrollments had become a sort of hobby of the empire and requiring heads of households to return to their ancestral lands was a custom later found in documentary evidence from adjacent regions ruled by Rome during this period.
Justin Martyr, a Christian philosopher apologist writing in the second century, claimed that these census records were in existence in his day, and one could see the registration of Joseph in Bethlehem for themselves. Apparently, as early as 100 or so years after Christ, skeptics doubting the details of Jesus’s life had already arisen and the church was responding to them graciously with evidence-based arguments. Nevertheless, there are Wikipedia pages dedicated to citing Luke’s gospel as inaccurate due to errors born of silence, when silence is defined as the lack of an explicit statement from a properly agnostic historian, and with corroborating artifacts and all exculpatory evidence omitted, a standard required of no historical event… save those found in the Bible.
It’s all to say, people believe what they want to believe. You can add that to death and taxes. If we are masters of anything, it is self-deception and self-justification. Evidence has never been nearly as important as we wish it to be, because what we wish is our true priority. We want the world to be the way we perceive it. Our story, above all others, must prevail. Yet, it is this very projection of self-will which shall characterize hell for the wide-path pilgrims. The ultimate form of God’s judgment is when He gives people what they want. The soul which gets what it wants is enslaved to its own desires.
Dante intuited this truth in his depictions of hell. C.S. Lewis contended similar realities in “The Great Divorce,” where he asserted there are only two kinds of people in the end: Those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “thy will be done.”
We see this hellscape realized on earth in the book of Judges, when the Israelites were selling their own children into ritual prostitution and burning them in the fires of Molech. Every high place and baal-bedeviled hilltop was a scene of sexual debauchery, women were degraded to no more than material property, and the whole nation had divided itself into squabbling blood-stained factions of competitive godlessness. No one was safe, and no one was happy. Yet, everyone was given over to their own lusts and lordship,
“In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” -Judges 21:25
It is only the gospel which liberates us from such hellish deceptions. Liberation is never experienced in the fulfilled expression of our desires, but in submission to God’s dispensations. The longing of the lost heart is for wishes to be granted. The longing of the reborn is to serve a Holy master. It is regenerated and reoriented priorities which blaze the narrow path, leading us onward and upward out of the valley of vanities onto the high places of eternal realities which undeceive us.
The narrow path is not the pleasant, well-trod, and safe one. It leads past lonesome ledges and briar hedges, inclines steep and treacherous leaps. Yet, we find from such vantages the transcendent reassurances that allow us surrender further still. It’s a journey that begins with a simple but solemn yes, an oath of Lordship to a God who leads us beyond death and taxes, to life and testament.
As we remember that journey so canonized in the silhouettes of Mary on donkey with Joseph leading, may we also be reminded that we are on a journey of sanctification towards a New Jerusalem. If I can borrow from an old Waterdeep song, “It’s a long hard road, with a good good end.” We are dying yet enlivened, taxed but treasured.
Are your deep desires and aims consistent with a reoriented life? Or do they most resemble those of the imperiled pilgrims on the wide path?
Over the last ten years, has your life been characterized by increasing surrender to the Father’s will and ways?
Can you think of a time when your desire was fulfilled and your joy decreased? A time when your desire was thwarted, and joy increased?
