It seems like almost every time I discuss what Christians should be doing about the terrible state of our country, they whip out the ridiculous interpretation of Romans 13 card.  You can see a few examples here, and here (where a pastor comes out saying that Romans 13 means they must rent their parking lot to the cops) as just a couple examples.

This is another egregious example from a conversation on Facebook. I posted a reasoned response to his original post, and his comeback is to type “Romans 13”. He didn’t offer any sort of interpretation. He just expects that Romans 13 just so obviously teaches blind obedience to government that just its mere utterance is adequate to win a debate, as if I’ve never read that before. It’s kind of funny, so I thought I’d post a picture of the conversation with the names removed.

I’ve written about the proper interpretation of Romans 13 before, but here are some more thoughts.

Colossians 3:20 says, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.”

Ephesians 5:24 says, “But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.”

As you can see, children should obey their parents, without exception. Wives should submit to their husbands without exception.  No Christians take these verses to mean that children and wives obey no matter what. If a mother tells her kids to rob a convenience store, they should disobey. If a husband tells his wife to murder someone, she should disobey.

Those verses place no qualifications on the obedience of children and wives, but we still realize they’re not absolute. Romans 13 places qualifications on obedience to government (saying magistrates are ministers of God, and telling us their role is to punish evil), but so many Christians say we should shut up and obey.

And in case you think you should obey the government unless it tells you to sin, you’re being naive.