Hey everyone:

Here is the discusssion for this week…and welcome to the first week of this series, “God’s Politics” Here is a little disclaimer for this series:

Politics for some reason brings out the best and worst in us. And sadly some people are more passionate about politics than they are their faith. But, it is important to attempt to think higher than just the presidential political race that we find ourselves in currently. The purpose of this series hopes to inform all of our decisions in all the areas of our lives and that includes our choice of voting, but the high goal of this series is to challenge every person in the gathering to compare how Christ and Christians should understand how he interacted and lived in a political empire with a Caesar, and then to challenge us to see how we are to live and interact in a political democracy with a president, but all the while knowing that Christians have chosen to ultimately pledge all of who they are to a King and a Kingdom that is above any government found in this world.

Please refrain from any discussion about political parties, presidential, or vice presidential candidates.

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OK here is the text:

Matthew 22:15-22

Then the Pharisees went and plotted how they might trap him into saying the wrong thing. They sent their followers to him with the Herodians.
‘Teacher,’ they said, ‘we know that you are truthful and that you teach God’s way truthfully. You don’t care what anyone thinks about you, because you don’t try to flatter people or favor them. So tell us what you think. Is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar, or not?’
Jesus knew their evil intentions.
‘Why are you trying to trick me, you hypocrites?’ he said.
‘Show me the tribute coin.’ They brought him a dinar.
‘This…image,’ said Jesus, ‘and this…inscription. Who do they belong to?’
‘Caesar,’ they said.
‘Well then,’ said Jesus, ‘you’d better give Caesar what belongs to Caesar! And away– give God what belongs to God!’
When they heard that they were astonished. They left him and went away.

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Have fun, and remember you can dissect a topic as much as you like in the discussion, but you may not cut on any one person in the gathering.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 10:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.