We are back again with John Piper and a podcast listener named Kevin writes in to ask this.

Pastor John, in light of everything happening with Planned Parenthood, how do I faithfully

give to Caesar what is Caesar's when that money is clearly being used to kill babies?

We make our disapproval known by speaking out and calling for the end of abortion, but

what about our tax dollars that continue to fund abortion?

Pastor John, how do you guide Kevin in thinking through this?

They mention a principle that guides me and then secondly my practice and why and third

an uncertainty that I have.

The principle is that responsibility for sharing in another person's sin like the government

rises and falls with how much we know and intend to be part of the cause of that sin.

So if you're a janitor in a giant corporation of 10,000 employees and the CEO in the upper

level management team have been found to have cheated customers for the last five years

in an elaborate scheme of deception, then you in your role as janitor would I think

not bear any guilt for that action, even though you are contributing to the existence of

that company.

But if you're an administrative assistant to one of those upper level managers and you

figured out what they were doing along the way and said nothing, you'd be guilty.

The Bible makes a distinction, I think, between intentional evil and accidental or unknowing

participation in evil.

For example, Moses writes about these refugee cities, the city's refuge, he says if anyone

kills his neighbor unintentionally without having hated him in the past, as when someone

goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood and his hand swings the axe to cut

...