When Disobedience is Righteous
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘(15) The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, (16) “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” (17) The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.’ (Exodus 1:15-17)
The context of Exodus 1 is the fear the Egyptians had of their growing Jewish populace, and that it was starting to outpace them; the Egyptians believed they would soon be the minority in their own land and thus the Pharaoh had an edict to first kill all Hebrew males at birth. When the midwives disobeyed this edict, the Pharoah then ordered infant and toddler Hebrew males be fed to the crocodiles of the Nile. This led (in Exodus 2) to Moses, upon birth, to be placed in a floating bassinet and sent afloat down the Nile River, where the Pharoah’s sister found him and adopted Moses as her own child.
Jesus says to obey governments; he made this clear in Matthew 22:21 by telling His disciples to ‘pay your taxes’ to Caesar. Paul makes this clear as well in Romans 13 and several other of his Epistles, as does Peter. In the case of the US citizen, our government by comparison to the Romans or the Egyptians is very tame. However, as time goes by, with the increase in globalism, extreme environmentalism, and trends in socialism, we find ourselves in increasing disagreement with it. As the impending shutdown looms, we see these disagreements come to light internally to the government. Half the government believes we need to spend more (despite debt being at an all-time high) while the other half what to cut spending by considerable levels.
Other current disagreements are in the inalienable rights of Americans. We have historically unfettered rights to speech, worship, arms, privacy, and others that have been increasingly challenged. We find growing encouragement for what was considered sinful and growing restrictions for what was considered proper. Laws on ‘hate speech’ like commenting against LGBTQ items or illegal immigration, and the crackdown on what was legal assembly and free speech and expression on conservative and religious-leaning policies and beliefs have been implemented to some degree and are increasing.
There is a line that if crossed allows for Righteous disobedience of government actions. The example of Exodus 1 is an extreme one; obviously state-mandated murder is one that should not be obeyed. In Scripture, we find other examples of Righteous disobedience; Obadiah hid 100 prophets from Jezebel’s persecution of God’s people (1 Kings 18), Daniel & the ‘Pep Boys’ (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) refusing to eat ‘non-kosher’ food and worshipping Neb and Neb’s idol throughout Daniel, and the Apostles’ refusal to stop proclaiming Jesus as Lord in Acts. Where the government begins to intrude upon God’s domain is the line of demarcation.
When that line is crossed, we can either put forth the effort to change the laws or disobey the laws. The examples in Scriptures are almost all in disobedience. However, most governments discussed in the Bible were authoritarian in nature. The US government is not yet there, so we can ‘fight city hall’ with petition (attempt to influence our representatives to see things our way, including voting) or election (run and win appointment to a government office). Only as an extreme and very last resort should a ‘2nd American Revolution’ be necessary. If it comes to that, I will say we failed in exercising our petition and election. God has blessed Americans with a representative democratic republic that we as citizens can participate in, and it is our civic duty to do so.
