1 Pet 2:13,14 - For the Lord's sake accept the authority of every human institution, whether of the emperor as supreme, or of governors, as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right.
Rom 13:1-4 - Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God's servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.
You hear a lot of talk like this these days, from supporters of the Bush administration. When the news came out that President Bush had authorized wiretaps of US citizens by the NSA without bothering to get those pansy old warrants, there was a lot of consternation all around. After all, this certainly looked like a breach of the law, and having a President that breaks the law is a no-no. At least, you'd tend to think so...
But what I found most significant in all the defenses that came out was the ones based on the Biblical premises listed above. "So what if I get wiretapped?" some folks say. "I only talk on the phone about legal things, so I have nothing to fear!" Never mind that past presidents have been known to target political enemies for wiretapping, in order to "dig up dirt" on those enemies. Never mind that law enforcement spies have been known to target anti-war groups. Never mind an awful lot of things.
This sort of attitude is one of the things that reminds me that the Christian religion is a perfectly-honed tool for keeping the masses in their place and those in power in their positions of privilege. This was originally a religion born among the poor and barely literate of the Middle East. Even Paul, the central figure of the church's early changes toward universalism, had a pretty tenuous, quirky grasp of logic, philosophy and human psychology. But all of that changed forever when in the 4th Century, the emperor Constantine figured out that this religion would work well to help him hold his struggling empire together. He claimed that he had a dream that told him he would conquer if he put crosses on his soldiers' shields, and the rest of European history has been centered on the relationship between the Christian church and the state.
With quotes like the ones above, it must have been dead easy for the priests to convince peasants that no matter what their kings did, God approved of it. Today, we see a President, who has sworn twice in public to defend the Constitution, being defended in ignoring that constitution using these same arguments.
But these folks seem to be completely missing the point. America was the first country to build upon the idea that we would be a nation governed primarily by laws, and that every member of the society, rich or poor, powerful or insignificant, would be equally subject to those laws. We wanted no truck with that Napoleonic BS of "L'etat, c'est moi!" Yet here we are, over 2 centuries later with a president that appears to think he has the right to destroy the Constitution in order to save it. And we have a veritable army of people in this country who think the he was placed in the White House by divine providence, and therefore is doing God's will, no matter what the details might be.
There's mortal danger in this situation, folks. The Roman Empire was born on top of the moldering carcass of the Roman Republic, at least in part because of the weakness of the people in the Senate in dealing with the likes of Julius and Augustus. History might not actually repeat itself, but it does have an annoying way of rhyming an awful lot of the time.
