Texto: Mateus 17:24-27; 22:17-22 Material: Uma moeda de um centavo
Resumo: Jesus pagou seus impostos e nos dá um exemplo de como obedecer às leis. Podemos confiar que Jesus nos dará o que precisamos.
Então deem a César o que é de César e a Deus o que é de Deus. – Mateus 22:21
(Leia Mateus 17:24-27)
Os cobradores de impostos foram até Pedro e perguntaram se Jesus iria ou não pagar seus impostos. Isso deve ter deixado Pedro preocupado. Jesus e os discípulos estavam sempre ajudando tantas outras pessoas que eu não imagino que Pedro tivesse muito dinheiro. Agora chegava a hora de ele pagar seus impostos. Ele deve ter se perguntado o que faria para arrumar dinheiro para pagar.
Quando ele voltou para casa onde estavam ficando, Jesus já sabia o que Pedro iria perguntar. Então Jesus perguntou a Pedro se os reis faziam seus próprios filhos pagarem impostos ou se eles cobravam esse imposto dos outros. Pedro sabia a resposta: cobravam dos outros. Jesus não disse para Pedro pagar a menos ou para não pagar os impostos. Em vez disse, Ele disse que Deus daria o necessário para pagar. Ele falou para Pedro que pagariam os impostos para não ofenderem aqueles que esperavam que eles pagassem.
O que Jesus disse para Pedro em seguida deve ter sido uma surpresa. Pedro estava tão preocupado, Jesus disse para ele tirar um dia de folga e ir pescar! Lembre-se, Pedro havia parado de pescar para seguir Jesus. Agora Jesus estava dizendo para ele ir fazer o que amava, para relaxar e descansar. Pescar! Foi realmente um ato de fé quando Pedro fez o que Jesus mandou. E quando ele pegou o primeiro peixe, abrindo sua boca ele viu que havia uma moeda! Era exatamente a quantia necessária para pagar os impostos para Pedro e Jesus. Deus realizou um grande milagre!
Conforme o contado pelo Reverendo Lewis Shaffer, Son Shine Ministries International Inc. Utilizado com permissão.
As an information junkie, I definitely have benefitted a lot personally from the free availability of information on the Web. As in introvert with a small number of specialized interests, I have found and gotten involved in social networks of like minded people that I would not have either found or been in involved with face to face. These are especially good things for people with a niche like mine, so I strongly appreciate the positives of Web technology and the Internet backbone. Web tech is also a big part of my profession as a consultant. On the other hand, as a reader and lifetime student, I also note with some dismay the downplaying of depth of individual learning and the cultivation of the individual mind and responsibility for individual development as the focus shifts more to “crowdsourcing” and “collaborating” through skimming and accumulating the easiest information available rather than digging into the hard parts of learning and mastering them. The part that I fear about the cultural shift toward increasingly exclusively networked culture is not the melting of our brain (and that really seems like a straw man target to me sometimes) it is the increasingly taking more for granted the kind and amount of work required for people to think for themselves with deep expertise in particular domains. We are replacing our shared conceptual model of what it means to be smart, and I think that involves a serious tradeoff that people who should know better really aren’t taking seriously enough because they get “bored” withe overdramatized or straw man brain melting arguments.I don’t think deep study will go away … because people motivated to be really good thinkers will still use web technology the way they traditionally used books and will naturally be motivated to dig into the hard parts. But the prevailing cultural support for digging in to really understand the hard parts, aspects of the metacognitive and logistical support of serious scholarship, seems to be gradually fading so it seems like the trend is for it to become more and more the province of more and more speciallized thinkers rather than a broadening of knowledge. That’s the crux of the tradeoff to me. In science writing I’m seeing less and less really serious depth accounts by people who truly know things and more and more nice summaries that appeal to a broad audience and can be best formatted for an e-book. This results from a mixture of popular culture and changes to the publishing industry. We are more and more concerned with combatting superstition of various kinds, at a time when we should in theory need to worry less and less about that sort of thing. Even the good thinkers are relying more and more on mediocre easily available sources. That improves their speed and breadth of learning but sacrifices depth.Just my own impression as both an avid netizen and an avid old school book reader.