Here is a letter that I wrote to Senator Roy Herron, my state senator in Tennessee pertaining to the business license. It goes along with the upcoming post.
The Tennessee General Assembly authorizes counties and municipalities to levy a privilege tax, that is, a tax for the privilege of operating a business in their jurisdictions. All counties with the exception of Clay, Morgan and Macon levy the tax. Incorporated cities can also impose the tax. This tax is based on a percentage of sales or gross receipts in succeeding years. If your company operates in several different cities or counties, you would be liable to each city or county based on sales or receipts accumulated in each location.[1]
Senator Herron,
I have met you on one occasion in the past and admired your candor and desire to hear the voice of your constituents. I was also given the impression that you are a Christian man and well respected in many places. I believe that it would be safe to assume that being a Christian, you are aware of your position of authority that God Almighty has placed you. So it is with great respect and expectations that I appeal to you for your fervent consideration in the matter before you. The people of this district have entrusted their liberties to you and you being “God’s minister for the good of the people” have the lawful duty to execute justice when enacting laws and to put down all forms of tyranny and injustice by repealing laws. I do not say this with a mindset that you are ignorant of this truth, but only to establish it between us. I would hope that this appeal is received with all of the respect due to you and that I address you as God’s minister for good. It is also my prayer that God will direct your steps and that His Word will be instructive in your position as lawgiver.
I do not think that there are many people in this state that are aware of the implications of the above stated “law.” Upon receiving a letter from the state of Tennessee instructing me to get a business license, I was somewhat confused. I did not understand the necessity of this. I had in an instant gone from employee to self-employed and did not see really any distinction in the two. Upon studying the matter more closely, I was in disbelief that Tennessee legislators believed that it actually is a “privilege” to “make profitable use of one’s self” (self employment). I do not want to be presumptuous and making flying accusations that the state had a need of more revenue and thus enacted this legislation, but I can think of no other reason to license a man’s labor even labeling it a revenue tax. I am sure, Mr. Herron that you had no part in this because I believe that this was enacted before you had occasion to vote against it. I do not believe any godly man would ever enact this legislation.
Firstly, it is against liberty altogether to insist that self employment is a privilege as opposed to a right or a duty. Men are commanded by God to work, to take dominion over the earth by using their labor for the building of God’s kingdom. Theologians call it the Dominion Mandate. Thus, there is a mandate by God requiring us to be industrious. This is the Lord’s authority. It cannot be said however at this point that we can be industrious as long as we are all employees, because the scenario is impossible unless the state becomes the employer for all. Without the self employed there is no employee. The employee relies on the self employed always. The inverse is not necessarily true for the self employed may or may not employ other’s labor. So in this first case the legislators that enacted this have “licensed” something that is not in their honorable power to license, that being a duty commanded by God.
Secondly, it is a great injustice to levy taxes on one certain group of people, their labor, and their property. Am I less of a citizen than the employee or the vagrant even? I think humbly that you would say emphatically, “NO!” Jesus asked Simon, ‘“What do you think Simon? From whom do the kings of earth take customs or taxes, from their sons or from strangers?’ Peter said to Him, ‘From strangers.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Then the sons are free.’ ”[2] Taxation of a certain group is a confirmation of their position in society. What reasoning did the legislators have in enacting a law so repugnant to equality of citizens?
Thirdly, to expect the godly citizen to recognize the state as the provider of such “privilege,” is to ask Daniel to bow before the golden idol. Daniel refused to recognize the king’s authority over what God has claimed for Himself. By asking the state for permission to be industrious a man is admitting the authority of the state in such matters. God has claimed this authority and though He has given us lawful authority to minister to us (civil magistrates), it is God who determines what is Caesar’s and what is His. Christians are to be subject to all lawful authorities.[3]
“But in that obedience which we have shown to be due the authority of rulers, we are always to make this exception, indeed, to observe it as primary, that such obedience is never to lead us away from obedience to Him, to whose will the desires of kings ought to be subject, to whose decrees their commands ought to yield, to whose majesty their scepters ought to be submitted. And how absurd would it be that in satisfying men [we] should incur the displeasure of Him for whose sake [we] obey men themselves! The lord, therefore, is the King of kings, who, when He has opened His sacred mouth, must alone be heard, before all and above all men, next to Him we are subject to those men who are in authority over us, but only in Him. If they command anything against Him, let it go unesteemed.”[4]
This is not to say that the Christian may revolt from any authority that infringes upon Christian liberty, but that at the point in which he must acknowledge the state as having authority that God has not given the state, he be compelled by God to humbly disobey.
Fourthly, that the state constitution has forbidden enacting of such laws in two sections. Article 1, Section 8 states, “No man to be disturbed but by law.--That no man shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold, liberties or privileges, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any manner destroyed or deprived of his life, liberty or property, but by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land.” This section presupposes that the law cannot abrogate our inalienable rights to life , liberty, or property (or privileges). Except by proven guilt of law breaking can any of these rights be destroyed. The presupposition is that the legislation (whether state or local) cannot make a law that voids any of these. Given that employing oneself to the end of prosperity, charity, etc. is commanded by God and is an unalienable right, not only does the state not have the authority to make laws that infringe on this right, but it does not have the authority to redefine the duty in terms of a privilege granted by the state. This is the point at which the state has trampled its own constitution and worse claimed what is God’s. It would be no different than imposing a license for life and enforcing it by death.
It would be absurd to allow this to mean that the future law can be construed as to ruin liberty. This section is to secure against all courts, laws, and authorities and citizens the people’s liberty except in such cases that a person forfeits his liberty through crime. To make liberty a crime, though, subject to ruin for the breaking of that very “crime” (liberty) is preposterous.
Article I Section 3 says, “Freedom of worship.--That all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience; that no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship, or to maintain any minister against his consent; that no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience; and that no preference shall ever by given, by law, to any religious establishment or mode of worship.”
I call attention to first our right to worship God Almighty and further that in the worship of Him, “that no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience.” It should be against every Christians’ conscience to acknowledge the state as the authority by which we derive our mandate to work and prosper. It is emphatically against my conscience and that of my fellow churchmen alike.
I do not have any desire to make any brawl out of this. I would at one instance rather submit and go on living peaceably, but the Lord corrects me in this. I acknowledge God Almighty alone in my duty to be industrious. I beg of you your consideration in this matter and that your instruction would be from God’s word and that the Lord would give you wisdom. I know that this is no small thing to bring before the House as a repeal item, but you have been called to a great task in that you are a “lawgiver,” a minister of God. To neglect this issue is to stand firm behind the state’s claim that it creates law apart from God thus bringing judgment upon yourself and the land. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.”[5] It is God who says what is His and what He entrusts to the civil magistrate. I pray that I am faithful in obeying Him in this. It is with a humble character that I lay these things before you in hopes that they will be faithfully considered by a Christian man and I thank you for your meditation on these things.
Damon Crowe
I do not have any desire to make any brawl out of this. I would at one instance rather submit and go on living peaceably, but the Lord corrects me in this. I acknowledge God Almighty alone in my duty to be industrious. I beg of you your consideration in this matter and that your instruction would be from God’s word and that the Lord would give you wisdom. I know that this is no small thing to bring before the House as a repeal item, but you have been called to a great task in that you are a “lawgiver,” a minister of God. To neglect this issue is to stand firm behind the state’s claim that it creates law apart from God thus bringing judgment upon yourself and the land. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.”[5] It is God who says what is His and what He entrusts to the civil magistrate. I pray that I am faithful in obeying Him in this. It is with a humble character that I lay these things before you in hopes that they will be faithfully considered by a Christian man and I thank you for your meditation on these things.
Damon Crowe
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