Death and Taxes

For the past few months, we have been participating in a book club at the home of Mikey and Lindsay Hannon, where we have had the great fortune of getting to know Shelly Douglass.  Shelly is wonderful, a bona fide hippie who has spent her life trying to live a life consistent with her reading of the New Testament - sharing what she has with those who need it, loving her neighbor as herself and going to jail for protesting nuclear weapons.  Shelly and her husband, Jim, run a Catholic Worker hospitality house in Ensley, Alabama called Mary's House.

In a couple of weeks, Rachel and I will participate in Mary's House Lenten Retreat.  Shane Claiborne is the guest speaker, and he will be talking about The Gospel in the Empire: Consistent Living in the Belly of the Beast (As you can probably guess from the title, Shane's reading of Revelation most likely does not line up with that of John Hagee or Tim LaHaye).



Anyway, I didn't know much about Shane Claiborne before I heard about the retreat, but recently I have read a little bit of his stuff, and he seems pretty smart.  He's a staunch opponent of what he would call an empire characterized by an ethic of death.  He's not wild about military spending, and he is advocating this year for Christians to engage in civil disobedience on one of the two sure things (taxes) in response to it's role in precipitating the other (death).  You can read his interesting post here.

As a good hippie, our friend Shelly and her husband intentionally make just below the taxable income so that they don't contribute to the military industrial complex.  Given that you (like me) are not interested in cutting income to below that of the poverty line, what do you think?  How do you feel about withholding from the government a small amount in protest of their use of your funds?  As tax day approaches (April 18, for those who share my gift for tardiness) and in the wake of the most recent US military action in Libya, would you be willing to engage in what he calls the "third way?"