April 16, 2009
Income Tax
I don’t feel like my New Year really gets underway until after I’ve filed my Income Tax for the previous year. For some reason it’s like a dark ominous cloud hanging over my head until it’s finally in the mail. I wonder if the Israelites felt something similar when they had to go up to Jerusalem every year to offer sacrifices. I suppose they must have felt refreshed, renewed and relieved by having their sins rolled back for another year.
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Gail;
-----I relate to your analogy of the income tax process to the Jewish sacrificial laws of going up to Jerusalem. They both occur once a year, and they are both very difficult. Most people file simple tax returns, at least from my perspective, and do not realize how deeply cumbersome the law is for those whose tax situations are truly complex. Neither do we fully appreciate how taxing it would be to have to select a perfect lamb from the flock and travel to Washington. But the difficulty of the requirement upon the Israelite was for a good purpose. The benefit was not merely to roll the year’s sins forward. It was even more about all the thought and personal investment given to the selection of that lamb, then to the travel time, to the fellowship that happened in what would be a horrendous waiting line, then to the ceremony itself, and finally to all the reflections while returning home. Indeed it all summed up to a significant piece of thinking and feeling being focused around God and relationship.
-----Too bad income tax does not produce the same benefit. Had our country stayed the course of a Republic instead of walking the folly of a Democracy maybe it would. But since it has not, we can not feel good about the shameful waste of our money being made by politicians feeding ineffective and often downright detrimental programs to merely appease popular sentiment. And it is especially disgusting because that popular sentiment has been neither well trimmed by wise education in government schools nor well groomed by wise images from mass news and entertainment industries. Both the government school system and the media have fed so much foolishness and ignorance to the populace that it now calls out for the degrading governance we see made by simply pitiful, opportunistic politicians. Then the two propel each other into a symbiotic relationship that uses our tax dollar to support shameful policies as atrocious as the legal murder of forty million fellow Americans before they have even been born! And call it choice! That is what we have to think about while we sign our names to tax returns prepared in fear and sweat.
-----Had we maintained our country as a Republic the Constitution would be given the respect of the law. Reading it would draw the framework in which the interpretation of it would fall. Politicians, judges, and citizens alike would obey it. The government would govern within its chartered authority and would dare not step outside that authority for fear of penalty, just like we citizens must live. Popular sentiment would be only sentiment, for the Constitution would remain the law. Then the spending of our tax dollars would be for the security of our country’s sovereignty and the protection of our civil order and personal freedoms. I would reflect deeply upon my country while preparing my tax return if such were real. And I would sign that return with honor.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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