Obey for the health of your conscience

 This week's verses are Romans 13:1-7:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except by God’s appointment, and the authorities that exist have been instituted by God. So the person who resists such authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will incur judgment (for rulers cause no fear for good conduct but for bad). Do you desire not to fear authority? Do good and you will receive its commendation because it is God’s servant for your well-being. But be afraid if you do wrong because government does not bear the sword for nothing. It is God’s servant to administer punishment on the person who does wrong. Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of the wrath of the authorities but also because of your conscience. For this reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants devoted to governing. Pay everyone what is owed: taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

  These verses are famous words from Saint Paul on the importance of obeying the laws of the country you live in. Obviously if there is a conflict between what the Bible says and what the local authorities say, you should do what God has commanded you. If your local authorities are telling you to commit genocide or to worship demons, for instance, you should not go along with that. For everything else that does not conflict with what God has commanded us, we should do as we are asked.

This is particularly difficult when we don't want to do what the law says we have to do. Nobody wants to pay oppressive taxes, for instance. We don't want to wait at a red crossing light when nobody is on the road. Or maybe we have political beliefs that we hold in a higher place than the laws of the land our brothers and sisters have voted for. There are always reasons to disobey that seem right to us, and Paul here warns us against falling for them.

When we disobey the authorities, we become a law unto ourselves. We tag "if I want to" or "if the person who made the law is part of my political party" or "if it isn't inconvenient" onto every law in the books. We replace obedience with a kind of superficial counterfeit of it. But effectively this makes rebellion our law. We become agents of chaos and divisiveness. Just like Satan.

Paul's position is simple: God knows who is in power. Maybe they are good, maybe they are not so good, but if they were an obstacle to what God wanted to accomplish on Earth, they wouldn't be there for very long. Like with all people, just or unjust, we should give them respect and do what we can to serve them.

If we won't obey our local authorities by reason of our self-appointed exceptions and a refusal to be inconvenienced, chances are we won't obey God either. If your character tolerates rebellion in one area of your life, it isn't magically going to be rebellion-free in the other areas, especially areas that are much more hidden from scrutiny than something like lawfulness.

This is why it is important not to tolerate arbitrary disobedience. It will creep into your walk with God. If you place your needs and your own personal beliefs over others, it will erode your character and your conscience will suffer.

It will also damage your witness. Imagine if the prophet Daniel had been generally disobedient to the authorities. When he asked for an exception for diet or when he refused to worship the idol, would it have had the same impact if he was just arbitrarily making his own rules anyway? If the only time you break the rules is when it conflicts with what God has demanded of you, it is clear that God is exceptional, rather than you being the exception when the rule breaking is your personal choice.

 When we obey laws we don't like, it puts the flesh to death. Our comfort is no longer the highest authority in our lives. We practice suffering and putting others higher than ourselves. We allow someone other than us to determine the order of the world around us and to judge right from wrong. We are reminded that we are not the center of the universe.

 So whether you're refusing to recycle or whether you're actively blocking police officers from doing their jobs, you should consider what your motivations are. There will always be a noble excuse to do what you want, but most likely it is rooted in an attitude that will put you in opposition to God. It's better to give our authorities the benefit of the doubt, like Paul did, than to cultivate an attitude of rebellion that could damage your soul.