Scott Hord - The Next Julia Child?

“Julia Child wants you – that’s right, you, the one living in the track house in sprawling suburbia with a dead-end middle-management job and nothing but a Stop and Shop for miles around – to know how to make good pastry, and also how to make those canned beans taste all right. She wants you to remember that you are human, and such are entitled to the most basic of human rights, the right to eat well and enjoy life. “(Julie Powell, from Julie and Julia, Little, Brown and Company, P. 44, 45)

I bought the book!

I’m not going to tell you to rush out and buy it though.

It’s full of profanity. Also, it oozes with secular angst from a young lady born after most of the great events that molded my life and values.

Still, I had to read it. I think I am intrigued because young Americans without God are searching through aesthetic, sexual, and relational experiences to find solace for their soul and meaning for their lives. The book Eat, Pray, Love told the same sort of story.
What an opportune time to reach real seekers!

A seeker is someone whose soul is hungry.

This morning, as I walked into our church building, I heard the young students of Artios Academy singing. I stopped. I listened. Then I went to join them. My soul had been awakened by the sound of their tiny voices praising God. I doubt that they were as deeply moved as I was; most of them were just obeying their headmaster who wants them to sing every morning to begin their day.

But whatever their experience was about, I was moved.
By what?

By one small opportunity to feed my soul.

I had been hurrying to my office from my car.

Why?

Who knows? Perhaps because that is what responsible adults do; we hurry, rush, work at something that seems responsible all day and then return to our families speaking in short sentences until bedtime. Not much room for soul in all of that.

“All Thy works shall praise Thy name in earth and sky and sea,” the young voices sang.
Stop. Listen. Sing. Drink in the experience that may connect my soul to God and to His people. Take advantage of a moment that may remind me that I am a creature of eternity.

Julia Child doesn’t offer all of that. Julie Powell certainly does not offer it.

So what do they offer? They offer an opportunity to remember that we are not Homo-economicus after all. We are Homo sapiens. We think. We reflect. We create. We acknowledge meaning. We have a soul.

Julia child knew that working class people needed this knowledge. She knew that people are not created to sit hours inside some cubicle filling out forms. They are not meant to spend their lives churning a wheel like a hamster, day after soul-numbing day. They are not meant to be expendable economic units of Behemoth International Inc.

People are made in the image and likeness of God. They are creatures of infinite worth. They are made to commune with God and to relate to their fellow human beings. When they forget those things, their souls get sick.

It’s all in the 23rd Psalm: “He prepareth a table before me. He maketh me to lie down. He restoreth my soul.”

Rest. Eat. Feed the soul. Find renewal. That’s why the 23rd Psalm is the most beloved one.

Scott Hord will not be pleased that I compare him to Julia Child. I will admit that I am doing it partially to irritate him, which isn’t kind. But he’s tough. He can take it.

Scott Hord manages our physical fitness center. He works hard all day helping people find God through physical activity and conversation. He talks about basketball and soccer until the conversation takes a turn that reveals the soul. It takes time. Men are terribly afraid to reveal their soul. They often are even unaware that they have one. When it starts shouting for attention, they may go search for porn, or, if they are healthier, go watch big trucks demolish old cars. Men need noise, arousal, action and even conflict to drown out the cry of their soul. When that fails, they may use a drug to put their soul to sleep.

Soul hunger can inflict a lot of damage on men. That’s why, when Scott talks about basketball, he listens for that moment when the conversation turns to “life just sucks,” or “I can’t figure out what my wife wants; she’s driving me nuts.”

He hears the soul speaking. He then searches for a way to feed the soul, to strengthen it, to do something that will help the man he is speaking with realize that the soul is not dangerous – that it must not be denied or numbed – that it is our very being.
He shepherds men’s souls, in other words. And that is a very important thing to do.

Scott doesn’t cook, though, so I am struggling to find a way to fit him into a blog that has been about cooking for the last week.

Ahh, but he does roast coffee!

So what does coffee taste like when it has been roasted by a man who shepherds souls? Well, for one thing it tastes very, very good! There are two reasons why; he started roasting coffee because he wanted a way to support orphans in Africa. However, Scott also studied how to roast coffee. Had he not learned how to roast coffee from people who know how, he would have had to resort to emotional manipulation to sell bad coffee. A few people would have bought the coffee out of a sense of guilt. Then they would have sworn at him behind his back!

Compare Scott for a moment to Julie Powell. She sounds like a smarty-pants spoiled little girl who took a long time to grow up. Her book reveals this even more than the movie. Also, she is not a believer – she makes that clear from the start. That means she has no Bible.

However, she does have a soul and her soul is perishing from neglect. It is numb from the battering of modern urban life. She has forgotten that she bears the image and the likeness of God. She is soul hungry.

The Art of French Cooking is not a sacred text. Julia Child can’t save her soul. But Julia Child can remind Julie that she has a soul. Julia Child knows that an artful and meaningful meal with friends is good at awakening our souls. That’s what the oohs and ahhs are all about when we eat good food. The soul is being noticed. It responds like a neglected child who is suddenly noticed. It perks up with a sense of anticipation that perhaps it will be restored after all, even in a go-nowhere job, or on an every day journey to work through traffic jams.

Julie’s mitzvot, her commitment to cook for a year through all of Julia Child’s recipes, awakens something that had been asleep in her for a long time. That is the reason I enjoyed this movie: I was delighted watching her soul awaken.

However, when someone takes on a mitzvot like Scott Hord did, something even deeper occurs. Scott’s coffee feeds hungry children. That’s a big deal. It is also growing the effectiveness and leadership abilities of a good man. That’s another big deal. It is developing a business that I believe is going to go very far indeed. That’s another good thing. Finally, Scott offers a moment of relaxation with a cup of coffee that possesses the sort of quality we used to expect from YOUKNOWWHEREBUCKS.

“AHHHHH!” the souls says, “ Life is too short to drink swill.”

How can I end this blog? Oh, I know: why doesn’t someone think of cooking one of those soul-awakening meals from Julia Child’s cookbook?

Then, that blessed person can serve ABBA Java coffee with a small French pastry?

Wouldn’t that be nice?
I would support such a person with my presence and my wholehearted participation!

www.abbajava.org

More About Julia Child

I never, ever thought I would be writing about Julia Child, and certainly not twice in one week!

However, so many of you wrote me about my last blog, I knew that I should to do a follow up.
So I began thinking last night about all the chefs and cooks I have known. In fact, I called a couple of them yesterday. I wanted to thank them for the attention they have shown to food preparation and what that has meant to my life.

Food must be important; the Bible certainly talks a lot about it.

Just think: the first thing that goes wrong in the Bible is when someone eats the wrong food. Adam and Eve caught cosmic food poisoning and passed it on to all of us.

Then, the last thing that goes right in the universe (according to the Revelation of St. John) is a great meal with all the saints of all time.

Now, in between those two events the Bible talks about hundreds of generations divided into two great spiritual eras – the Old and the New Covenants. The most intimate and holy ceremony in both of those covenants is a sacramental meal. Passover and Holy Communion are invitations to human beings to eat a meal with God!

All this has made me think about how a fine meal relates to our awareness of ourselves as creatures made in God’s image and likeness.

We can, after all, survive as animals, just eating crap out of cans. We may not stay very healthy doing it, but we could actually survive on dog food. Then we wouldn’t need forks, spoons, napkins or butter dishes. We certainly wouldn’t need candles and crystal.

The fact is, we don’t carefully prepare our food or worry about its presentation because of our physical needs. We fuss about food because we are spiritual beings.

When we rush about stuffing junk in our faces as we run out the door, we are forgetting that life is about much more than surviving. We forget that we are creatures of dignity. When we forget that, we get into all sorts of dysfunction and grief.

(This is not the time or place to talk about spiritual fast food – about worship reduced to on-the-run funny stories by clever preachers and fuzzy worship songs. I won’t even try to address the unbearable flip top communion cups with their attached wafer thingamabob, from which one guzzles reconstituted grape water and devours pressed hydroflorinated reprocessed monosodiumcrapanate mash into one’s mouth while the preacher mumbles something sweet and we all rush to the parking lot. One day, if you will actually read it, I will write about all of that “worship” foolishness…but not today.)

This issue for today is that quality, reflection, attention, and respect for one’s self and one’s colleagues does not naturally occur. Please read this again: these attributes do not naturally attach themselves to anything or to anybody; they are deliberately (and usually incrementally) developed by some person who cares.

Someone like Julia Child. Seriously!

Moses and Christ both wanted worship to require our time, evoke our attention and provoke our transformation. Both of them would have been aghast by our “fly-by” worship. We know this because of the two sacramental actions they instituted. Neither Passover nor Eucharist can occur quickly or haphazardly. Likewise, the things Moses and Jesus wanted to occur in our lives can’t actually happen unless we do the spiritual services they both asked us to do. Modern substitutes just don’t deliver the same spiritual life.

Julia Child longed for Middle America – or “servantless Americans,” as she put it – to have the same opportunity as Parisians to enjoy quality cuisine. She wasn’t against our hamburgers or hot dogs; she just wanted us to experience something that took more time, more attention, quality ingredients and so forth. She knew that experiencing fine cuisine would enrich our lives.

People like Julia Child, who champion quality -- particularly aesthetic quality –, have an uphill climb. Many people will even ridicule the quest for the aesthetic qualities of music, food, clothing and so forth. They think aesthetic quality is frivolous and vain. Indeed, the pursuit of aesthetic quality can become idolatrous, as can all human endeavors, including religion. However, aesthetic quality is one of the ways that human beings separate themselves from animals.
Without aesthetic life, we sink into barbarism and social chaos. So it is important – vitally so – to our emotional and spiritual health to recognize and celebrate quality.

There are some ‘Julia Childs’ in my own life, people who have tried to show me respect through the way they prepare food. Will you take a moment and read a sentence or two about each of them?

Denise Palma cooks Italian food; great Italian food. She should open up a restaurant. Someone should invest some money so she can do just that! She unites people with her food. She invests time and talent into a meal, just like Jesus and Moses asked us to do. Her house is like the house of God (because we know that God probably lives in Italy). Go eat there sometime – if she invites you!

Robert Hill did some research about my life. That’s why he decided to make Ecuadorian cerviche when Trish and I went to visit him and his wife Maren. I appreciated his efforts. However, I figured it wouldn’t be authentic. Americans just can’t make Ecuadorian cerviche. I was wrong! He prepared cerviche just like it would have tasted in a good restaurant in Quito. Then we ate fennel. Fennel! What the heck! Not fennel seed, some exotic garnish. Full blown fennel! And then… trout. Not just regular old trout. Oh, Lord have mercy. Trout that he had caught and prepared himself! Finally, he served grilled pineapple and covered it with some sauce that is evidently a secret recipe from some distant ancestor. (I made that part up, but I want to keep you reading my stuff.) All of this effort and care produced a magic meal. And to think, the man who did all of this serves the immigrants of our church with his time, love and prayer for untold hours every single week.

Barbara Dyson, the high priestess of Martha Stewartism, is a force of nature. She is the queen of the kitchen. If she ever invites you to her house for dinner, go. Yea, I say unto thee again, go thou with haste! She prepares her home, her food and herself to make wonderful evenings for all her special guests. There will be great conversation, well-seasoned and interesting foods, and regionally appropriate beverages. (Also, her husband John will catechize you as you eat, unless she makes him stop.)

Maria Maciuk has an Argentine/ Ukrainian heritage. Her unique background deeply affects her mouthwatering cuisine. Her presentation leaves you wondering whether it would be a sacrilege to actually eat her food. Then you do and burst forth into tongues of men and of angels. Her pastries have made grown people just break down and weep. Her food is an altogether spiritual experience, may her tribe increase.

Finally, my sister-in-law, Lisa. She can cook from Julia Child if she likes, and she does sometimes. However, in the last few years, she has poured her talents into preparing the traditional foods of the American Southeast and making them available (and affordable) to the people who keep our city alive. She and Marty run a restaurant called The Sweet Tea Dinner. They serve catfish and fried chicken there that will ruin your diet but bless your soul. They learned to cook by preparing midweek dinners for poor people in their church. When the season of working on a church staff came to an end and God delivered them, they opened their diner. But the lessons they learned in the church about community and relationships flowed into their business. They serve home cooking with a heart – and a soul.

Julia Child wanted to teach – and Julie wanted to learn – what constitutes the soul of cooking. All the people I have mentioned in this blog have been life-long students of that certain something.
What does one do to nourish the souls of those who eat the food one prepares?

Indeed, how does any work touch a soul? Can sheer business structure and bottom-line thinking do that?

It’s a great question.

I wish more pastors would ask it.

Julia Child, Good Food, and a Mitzvot

This will be a longer blog than normal.

I promise, this one is worth it. It might even change your life.

(I know that’s manipulative. But I’m a preacher. Without manipulation, how could we do our work? Give me a break!)

My daughter, Talitha, wanted to see a movie the other night. Julie and Julia, a chick flick if ever there was one! I agreed. I love her and wanted to spend some time with her.

I prepared to be bored.

“At least it is a true story,” I said to myself.

The advertisements and trailers all had their time and then the chick flick began.

A young lady named Julie is turning thirty. She compares herself with her friends. They all have promising and ego-enhancing careers. She doesn’t.

The weeks go by. She moans to her husband: “Life isn’t going anywhere. I have no focus. I’m a failure.”

One evening, as her husband oohs and ahhs over her beef bourguignon, she begins telling a story from her childhood. Her mother, in a panic about what to fix her husband’s boss, had prepared a recipe from Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking. Julie remarks to her husband how proud she was of her mother that night, how delicious the meal had been ,and how much she loves Julia Child.

Suddenly, she gets an idea: she will work her way through every single recipe of Julia Child’s book. She will also blog about her experience.

So she begins. Each day she prepares a new dish.

The weeks go by.

Her only reader, apparently, is her mother. Her blogs are going out into the blogoshere without provoking a response. Her workday has become difficult because of her self-inflicted burden. Her husband is eating Tums and angry because of the diminished quality of their sex life.

Meanwhile, we are treated to flashbacks from Julia Child’s life. We watch her trying to convince first the French, then the Americans, that anything good will come from sharing the culinary delights of Paris with Middle America.

For Julia Child the years go by without acclaim or recognition. The same thing is evidently happening to Julie.

Bored yet?

Well, watching Julie and Julia waste their lives on such trivia without a sex scene, a car chase or some gruesome destruction of a human body to break the monotony– that is a tailor-made movie disaster! How can I expect you not to be bored with this blog about such a movie?

Ok, then. The punch line.

Gradually, Julia Child trains Julie how to cook. The task Julie flippantly undertakes in order to have a subject to blog about, teaches her how to become a real cook.

A. J. Jacobs did this same thing, twice. First, he decided to read the Encyclopedia Britannica – all of it! The notes he took while reading became a wonderful and very funny book, The Know It All. Then, after a rest, he decided to read through the Bible, obeying literally every single commandment and teaching of the Holy Scripture, Old and New Testaments, for a year. His notes from that experience became The Year of Living Biblically.

So there’s something going on in our culture about people assuming tasks and experiences that promise to expand their lives in some way.

The Jews call it a mitzvot. It is a path or a discipline one undertakes for a season in order to “put on” some new habit, skill, or knowledge.

Now that I think about it, I have had some experience with this.
The year was 1979. I was 26.

I had not completed high school and was wondering around the world speaking to little churches in North and South America. I was married. I had a young child to support. I had to find a job for a few months, make some money to tide me over until my next preaching appointment.

My father had once sold insurance. Maybe I could do that too. However, the woman at the office said that I needed a high school diploma.

So, I went to the Kanawha County Board of Education building. I talked to some woman there dressed in a pant suit and pearls about getting a GED. She told me where and when the next test would be administered.

I don’t remember the taking the test. I just remember how nervous I was the day I returned to get my score. I wondered if I had passed. The woman with the answers didn’t help me at all. She just stared at me and shook her head.

“Did I pass? Did I get my GED?” I asked her.

“Sir,” she replied as she glared at me over the tops of her glasses, “these scores tell me that you should be in college. Don’t waste your life doing menial and low-paying jobs! Do what you have to do and go back to school!”

“College? Me?” I wondered as I went home to tell Trish.

Anyway, the main thing was that I could now sell insurance!

A few days later, Trish showed me an article in the Reader’s Digest. It was about adults who had earned college degrees through self-study. The University of the State of New York had a program for people like me.

“You should do it,” Trish said. “The woman at the Board of Education said that you should do it. You read all the time. Why not try?”

But where would I begin?

A few days later, I saw an advertisement in a magazine from The Book of the Month Club. They were offering Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization in 11 volumes for only twenty-five dollars. All I had to do was agree to purchase a number of books over the next few years.

That was a good deal. I bought tons of books anyway! So I filled out the card. I dropped it in the mailbox. Then I waited.

When the volumes arrived at my house, I just stared. The huge, thick, heavy volumes just stared me in the face, mocking me, just as Goliath must have taunted David in the Valley of Elah.

(Ok that’s a bit of melodrama. It’s just to keep your attention.)

Sometime that week, I began volume one, Our Oriental Heritage.

Several months later, I began volume two, The Life of Greece.

We moved to Montreal. The books went with us.

I kept reading.

Nearly four years later, I finished volume 11, The Age of Napoleon.

By that time, I had also passed a GRE subject examination. The University of the State of New York rewarded forty credit hours for that accomplishment. I was well on my way to earning a B.A with an emphasis in History.

In 1982, I received my B.A. I had earned 210 credits. The University had to send me a registered letter asking me politely, “don’t you ever intend to graduate?”

I had only needed 120 credits for my degree.

Oh, well. Now I had specialties in History, Sociology and Spanish Literature!

The following year, I began my M.A. The California State University was offering a Masters in Humanities for people like me, who studied on their own while working and raising a family.

I have never stopped learning since.

I am convinced that the foundation for all my graduate and post-graduate training, my brief career as a college professor , the books I have written – everything I have done professionally for over thirty years – all have their roots in the mitzvot I assumed that day I opened the box of books from Book of the Month Club.

A mitzvot, undertaken joyfully (and carried through until its mentoring role is complete) is transformational.

After seeing Julie and Julia, I have been wondering: what would happen if hundreds of people in our church would carefully chose a mitzvot for 2010? What if we would chose some challenging but doable task, commit to that task for the specified amount of time, make ourselves accountable to a friend or group of friends, give continual reports of our progress, and persevere through the inevitable boredom and ‘I-want-to-give-up times” until it is finished.

What would that do?

I think we should find out.

We have several months to choose a good mitzvot. Each of us can think of something we have always wanted to do, something we have intended to learn, some way we have planned to serve, some action that is deeply connected to our passion for life. We keep putting it on hold.

But why not this year? Why don’t we do it this year?!

Give it a date to begin, tell our friends – so they know what to get us for Christmas – and just do it, finally!

What’s in it for me?

Well, I was thinking; perhaps someone will chose to work their way through a cookbook and ask me over several times a month.

The Tragedy of Lawlessness

“Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God.” - St. Paul

One of the most common errors of human life is becoming so fearful of extreme vice or radical philosophy, that one falls into the arms of the opposite. People who are running from lust can become cold and inhuman. Those running from laziness can become workaholics. When we run from intellectual arrogance we often embrace stupidity.

Running from tyranny we can become slaves of anarchy.

Many good people in our nation – Christians, in fact -- are falling into the pit of lawlessness. In the name of preserving freedom, they are running headlong into varieties of libertarianism and antinomianism. (The latter is what the Bible calls “the spirit of the anti-Christ.”)

Lately, I hear believers saying the most hateful things about our nation’s leaders and our structures of government. Evidently people making these statements have no understanding about how the Bible forbids such attitudes towards human government, parents, policeman, pastors – toward anyone in authority.

Certainly, we are not obliged to agree with (or in extreme cases, even obey) those in authority. As Gandhi once said, “there are unjust laws just as there are unjust men.”

True.

But what does a Christian do about unjust laws?

Well, a Christian exposes the errors of those laws and tries to offer to the rulers of his nation a better way. However, a Christian never rails against his rulers. He never forgets that human government represents God. Law does this imperfectly, of course; for alas, we are fallen creatures. Get millions of us together in one place and then create structures of governance to order our social life...then our collective fallenness become immediately apparent!

Government’s flaws are an easy target but they are merely the multiplied faults of its citizens. A little mole on a beautiful face doesn’t bother us. Put the same mole on a big screen and it becomes unavoidable. An angry boss is upsetting to a few; an angry judge or president can be dangerous to millions.

Schools, hospitals, churches and religious denominations are no different, by the way. They too are human institutions and they are ruled by fallen human beings.

Having worked in churches all my life, I can’t imagine a more horrible idea than asking church leaders to rule a state. We tried that once or twice; it never turns out right.

When Roman Catholics ruled Europe, it was not a pleasant place for Baptists, Calvinists or Lutherans.

When Calvinists ruled Geneva, it was a downright hellish place for the likes of Servetus.

When the Puritans ruled England (and New England), it was a hostile place for Christmas, art, music, leisure, laughter, romance, or any kind of Christianity other than Puritanism.

As it turns out, we Christians are fallen creatures too. We have a very difficult time extending liberty to those who differ from us when we are responsible for justice. Put us in charge of a state and sooner or later we will outlaw everything we don’t like. At least, that is what we have done whenever we have had the chance.

Law is a messy business. That’s because humans are messy creatures, including Christian ones.

The unavoidable messiness of humanity is the reason God established different realms of authority for the leaders of family, church, and state. American believers seem to have momentarily forgotten this. The Protestant Reformers were the ones that insisted upon separating religious authority from political power. The separation of church from state, then, was not the product of politicians who were afraid of pastors; it was the product of pastors who were afraid of politicians—especially of politicians who were also pastors.

Not only that, the Protestants insisted on a separation of power within government. We derived our three branches of government from the doctrine of the Trinity, for example. (“One government in three branches, so to speak; “neither dividing the substance nor confusing the branches.”) Protestantism both honored and distrusted authority. They wanted to submit to authority while limiting its reach.

In the view of the reformers, parents were to govern their families. Churches were to govern their disciples. The state was to govern the civic life of its citizens. Each type of authority had its proper realm of governance, and each served as a structure of accountability to protect its people against the usurpation of power by any of the other authorities.

This is a biblical view of law and authority. Libertarianism, on the other hand, is resentment (and a type of rebellion) against authority. It is forbidden by scripture.

Consider this quote from my son-in-law, Austin Cagle, in his commentary on James, chapter 5:

“We Christians are called to proclaim justice and to suffer at the hands of those for whom the structures of injustice are profitable. We are not called to establish justice by force. Rather, God asks us to wait patiently for justice, as a farmer waits for the harvest. Proclaiming justice is the responsibility of the church. Establishing justice is the responsibility of the state.”

(A policeman pulled him over on the way home from preaching this sermon by the way, while he was waxing eloquent to his mother about the biblical foundations of governmental authority!)

The state then does not exist merely to protect the citizens “from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” God appoints government to do what our constitution fathers articulated as “provide for the general welfare, and establish domestic tranquility.”

Streets, roads, sewerage, mass transit systems, parks, education, a trusteeship of a nation’s arts and cultural gifts, a humane concern for the physical health of the citizenry, the encouragement of commerce and the economic well being of the nation, the protection of the powerless against the caprice of the powerful – justice! – is the proper and biblical role of human government.

The Ann Rynd, Friedrich Nietzsche, every-man-for-himself-as-the-suckers-perish kinds of philosophies are simply incompatible with Christian faith. And believe me, if you don’t know who these people are and what they stood for, then you need to know. Their disciples are catechizing Americans daily. If you don’t want catechized by their ideas, you had better learn how to recognize them.

Marxism usurped the authority of both the family and the church. It appointed itself to a messianic role. In so doing, the peoples of the world have justifiably thrown it into the waste can of history.

So if you are running away from Marxism, let me join you. Marx made an idol of government and the sovereign God destroyed it. Only a few miserable and crotchety old professors at Berkley are still grieving about that. However, while you are running from Marxism, don’t forget to watch where you’re going. Otherwise you might fall into the ditch of Cain, who had no allegiance or obligation to anyone.

That ditch is the disastrous and culturally devastating philosophy and attitude of lawlessness, the resentment and disrespect for government and human authority. Fall into that ditch and you will soon become Godless.

St. Paul said all this a long time ago, in Romans, Chapter 13:

“Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God.
2 So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished.
3 For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong. Would you like to live without fear of the authorities? Do what is right, and they will honor you.
4 The authorities are God’s servants, sent for your good. But if you are doing wrong, of course you should be afraid, for they have the power to punish you. They are God’s servants, sent for the very purpose of punishing those who do what is wrong.
5 So you must submit to them, not only to avoid punishment, but also to keep a clear conscience.
6 Pay your taxes, too, for these same reasons. For government workers need to be paid. They are serving God in what they do.
7 Give to everyone what you owe them: Pay your taxes and government fees to those who collect them, and give respect and honor to those who are in authority.