Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) bashed former President Trump online and said Christians who support him “don’t understand” their religion.
“I’m going to go out on a NOT limb here: this man is not a Christian,” Kinzinger said on X, formerly known as Twitter, responding to Trump’s Christmas post. “If you are a Christian who supports him you don’t understand your own religion.”
Kinzinger, one of Trump’s fiercest critics in the GOP, said in his post that “Trump is weak, meager, smelly, victim-ey, belly-achey, but he ain’t a Christian and he’s not ‘God’s man.’”
No, he used the word difficult.
From what I understand, the wisdom at the time was that money was an indicator of favor from God, and Jesus went against that. However, I don’t think he meant that money was the issue, but merely a symptom of interests not aligned with God’s. Many wealthy people care more about their wealth and fame than God or those around them.
If you just said “Augustus,” people would think of Octavian, not the current emperor, so “Caesar Augustus” would’ve been used to uniquely refer to the emperor. After Tiberius, emperors typically had both titles, and the heir apparent just had “a Caesar,” so it acted as a dynastic name, even if the heir wasn’t a blood relation (e.g. Tiberius himself was adopted). So both the emperor and heir held the title “Caesar” and only the emperor also held the title “Augustus.”
It seems odd for Jesus to be referring to the heir apparent here, he would be referring to the emperor. To add to it, Julius Caesar was deified, so “Caesar” here likely has a double meaning to show the difference between a self-proclaimed god and the true God. He’s not saying you should pay taxes to benefit others, he’s saying you should pay taxes because that’s your legal obligation.
And yes, “Caesar” was symbolic, but I’d assume most would refer to the government as “Rome,” not “Caesar.”