As a pastor, I pay twice what most of you pay in Social Security. Unless you're self-employed, your employer pays the other half of your S.S. obligation. While the IRS treats pastors as employees for income tax purposes, they treat pastors as self-employed for Social Security tax purposes.
It's a big bite of my income that I'd love to avoid. And I had a choice to "opt out" of paying Social Security at the start of my ministry years. Ministers can do so only if they have a religious opposition to the program. Its like conscientious objectors being allowed to opt out of a military draft. Moore, writing to a young minister who wants to opt out, says:
As you make this decision, ask yourself whether you plan to preach and teach your people that participating in Social Security (as payer or recipient) is a sin against God. If the “opt out” provision were revoked, would you willingly go to prison rather than pay the tax? And, would your prison time be because you saw the choice as between Christianity and idolatry?
If the answer to these questions is “no” (as it seems from your question), then you are not a conscientious objector to Social Security taxes. To then “opt out” of paying them would be to refuse to do precisely what Jesus commands us to do: pay taxes. It would also give reason for offense to the mission field you’re attempting to engage with the gospel. And, by turning a protection of conscience into a political statement or a pragmatic economic benefit, it would imperil religious liberty provisions for your brothers and sisters in Christ.
Social Security may or may not be around when you retire. I don’t know. I do know this: your money definitely won’t be around when you’re dead. So why waste your religious liberty on holding on to a little bit more of it for a little while longer?
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