Give to Caesar What is Caesar’s

If you were giving me a letter grade on my understanding, reading, and quoting of The Bible, I’m probably a C+ student at best. In fact, when it comes to paying attention in Church, I probably deserve a C there, too.

But when I pay attention, I really pay attention and there’s a Gospel I like and think about often. It’s a great lesson in time management and how you spend your time. Which I know is not Jesus’ intended message, but let me explain.

In Matthew 22:21, the Pharisees asked Jesus what they thought was a trick question or, as we say these days, a “gotcha moment.”  They asked Jesus if it was OK to pay taxes to Caesar and waited for him to say “yes” or “no.”  If Jesus said “yes”, they’d say he wasn’t loyal to his fellow Jewish people and he’d start to lose his followers. And if he said “no” then they could show him as treasonous against Rome.

Gotcha!!!

But instead, Jesus said…

“So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

Whoa. This blew their mind and the Pharisees went away.

Now, here’s where I take this lesson in spirituality and twist it to apply to modern life. I pay my taxes. All good there. I give at Church. Cool. But it’s the formula I like…

Give to X what is X’s, and give to Y what is Y’s.  I really started pondering this while sitting in Church and thinking of a million other non-Church things. Thought about work. About my kids. About the lawn I’d have to mow later and some other chores. I would think about football.  It occurred to me that if I’m going to carve out an hour each week to go to Church, maybe I should quiet my mind and “give” my full attention to God and prayer and reflection on my behavior and other religious-like stuff.

Give to God what is God’s …which at Church would be me giving God my attention.

Then I started thinking about how this could apply to me in this crazy hectic world where we’re always trying to give A, B, and C to X, Y, and Z all at once and, hey, while we’re at it, let’s add giving D, E, and F and doing L, M, N, O, and P …and let’s do it all at once, all at the same time and then we’ll just keep adding letters of the alphabet (“letters of the alphabet” = “tasks”) and we’re driving ourselves crazy.

I’ve observed. I’ve reflected on this. I’ve started to apply what is “Caesar’s” to a great many things.

It’s proving to be a useful philosophy and I use it to keep me focused when in specific situations.

Work (Give to Your Employer What is Your Employers, and to your Family what is your Family’s)

This is a big one and one that some people might think means I’m lazy. I’m not. I was raised by a father that worked in a factory. He was either (a) at work or (b) not at work. There wasn’t much grey area. In fact, until the Internet, with the exception of lawyers and doctors, not much “work” was done at home by anyone. Some worked long hours and stayed late, but work happened at work. Home and family happened at home. That line has blurred to a point that there’s almost no line at all.

Think about your “work week.”  Let’s say you work from 8:00 a.m. until 5:30 p.m.  That’s 9 1/2 hours per day. That’s 47.5 hours per week. Let’s call work “Caesar” and let me ask you – is 47.5 hours per week enough time to get your work done? I hope so. If not, there’s only 3 possibilities…

1. You are a slow worker and you need to figure out how to work faster
2. You don’t actually “work” for those 9 1/2 hours
3. You need to talk with your boss because expectations are unrealistic

I’m OK if you bump that up to 60 hours per week “at work”. It’s not exactly healthy and it means you’re working something like 7:30 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. on the daily and not taking lunches and not making small talk. Hopefully you don’t have a long commute or you’re including that in your “work hours.”

I’m saying, whatever you’re “giving to Caesar” (aka “to work”), you and I need to ask ourselves …are we giving it our all? Or are we chatting with co-workers about the weather while on the clock? Are we looking online at Amazon? Are we texting our friends in the middle of the day? Did we take a long lunch? Stop into Starbucks? Did you talk with more than one person about the game last night, your vacation, or your kids? What I’m getting at is this …when you’re at work, and you’re solely focused on work, doesn’t it seem reasonable that 47.5 hours should be enough?

“Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God”

Family & Friends (Give to Your Family and Friends what is Your Famly and Friend’s)

Now that we’ve figured out your work week and work = Caesar, now let’s talk about giving to something else. In my case, it’s my family. If I “work” every day from 8:00 a.m. until 5::30 p.m., shouldn’t I be able to give myself completely to my family in the small amount of time I see them in the morning? And then again in the evening? My house wakes up around 6:45 a.m. There’s bleary-eyed showers, breakfast making, a few chores, packing lunches, and getting out the door around 7:30 a.m. If we’ll all home together by 6 o’clock, and my bedtime is 10:30 p.m., that’s a total of about 4 1/2 hours each evening.  Those 4 1/2 hours include some homework (if you’re a kid). Household chores. Sometimes errands or activities. But it made me wonder …should any of those precious 4 1/2 hours (plus the 45-minutes in the morning) be spent “working?”  Back to my original thought on this. If I truly and honestly give 47 1/2 hours each week to my employer, I should be able to spend my evening with my family and addressing personal things, right?

Give to work what is work, and to my family what is my family.

And what about our phones? And what about our hobbies? And social media? And ourselves (exercise, for example)?

Give to your iPhone what is your iPhone’s, and to your knitting club what is your knitting club’s.

Give to social media what is social media’s, and to family-dinner what is family-dinner’s.

“Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”

This is an idea. I’ll be working on it in 2025. I don’t believe in multi-tasking. I like the Time-Block Planning idea where I look at my day and I assign each minute a task …which always makes me scratch my head and ask myself, where would I put “looking at my phone?”  What minutes will I give that task?

In 2025, I want to make each minute count and remind myself that “time” is the one thing we can never get more of. It’s finite.

And giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s will be my guide.