In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus denounced the use of force--even in self-defense.  He also vividly stated that a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.  Thus, in accordance with Jesus' principles, taxes, which depend on force for their collection, cannot produce anything good.

Some will protest, "But taxes go to feed the hungry, succor the poor, and what's more, America could never have put a man on the moon or developed the Internet without taxes.  Besides who, if not government, will build and maintain the roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and other critical components of modern society's infrastructure?"

Answer: If mankind's ability to think is so limited as to be unable to create such "goods" without resorting to force (viz., taxation), then either Jesus didn't know what he was taking about, or we aren't worthy of the redeeming principles for living that he preached.  This "who-but-government" mind set is a form of idolatry.  It is the worship of state force. One of the greatest minds of the twentieth century dubbed it "statolatry."

The abominable lie that there is a moral or religious duty to pay taxes to the state most likely first emanated from the unholy alliance of the Christian church and the Roman empire.  After that church-state merger, Bible scholars who were financially supported by government taxes interpolated words of praise for taxes and the state into the mouth of Jesus where they had never before been uttered. Now, seventeen-hundred years later, it is time to rescue Jesus' reputation from the minions of the church-state conspiracy, who to this day have the temerity to claim that Jesus endorsed paying taxes.  He did not!  In fact it is likely that Jesus was crucified for opposing the payment of taxes to Caesar and influencing others not to pay.

The man who executed Jesus was a Roman procurator (or prefect) of imperial taxes for Judea, which is the equivalent of an IRS district director of taxation for an area of the United States.  Mr. District Director Pontius Pilate had Jesus brutally flogged and mocked and hung on a cross in a form of death reserved for those who dared to threaten Rome's tax-funded hegemony over its vassal territories.  The sanction of taxation attributed to Jesus by many church-state scholars would sound plausible if attributed to Pontius Pilate, but would never have been uttered by Jesus.

The purpose of this website and the essay, Jesus of Nazareth, Illegal-Tax Protester, is to repair the damage done to Jesus' reputation by orthodox Christian exegetes, and to reveal what Jesus truly taught about taxes by his own words and deeds, to wit: TAXING VIOLATES GOD'S LAW, 'THOU SHALT NOT STEAL!"  NOT ONLY IS IT SINFUL TO COLLECT OR RECEIVE TAXES, IT IS ALSO SINFUL TO WILLINGLY PAY TAXES!  That is not our opinion.  That is what Jesus taught.