Jesus held a coin struck with the face of the Emperor and an impossible questions from the good church folks, who knew that whatever he answered would get him in trouble: either with the the crowds who resented spending a dime in taxes to their Roman oppressors, or with the Roman authority who made it very clear that they expected people to pay them whether they wanted to or not.
Paul found himself in the mountains for what may have been an attempt to relax, but unable to do so, preached so powerfully that people began to believe in Jesus before the locals tossed him out.
Like the coin in Jesus' hand, there are lots of competing forces that brought it into being, but our task as people who follow Jesus is to identify whose minting truly defines us.