It is the nature of any written revelation from God that words alone cannot portray the fullness of truth. In other words, there is no such thing as propositional truth as far as God is concerned. The only truth is the mystical divine Presence in your soul.
Furthermore, every law covenant in Scripture holds forth the demand that humans live by their hearts, hearts committed to obeying revelation, not by their intellects and reason. We can hold forth that demand, and require that people who review any Law Covenant approach it with a flexible intellect that bows the knee to the moral discernment of the heart. So every written statement of covenant law is always just a verbal approximation, limited to the context. God demands that you obey Him personally, not pick at His revelation in legalism.
So what follows is that same kind of approximation. It’s a contextual statement meant to portray in some limited fashion what’s in my heart. That’s because in God’s eyes, the ultimate lawful authority in this fallen world is your heart. There is no higher authority to which He holds you accountable. The closest any human can possibly come to God’s own voice of authority is within their own hearts.
In Esther 3 we see that Mordecai would not bow to any ruler on earth the same way he would bow to God. The text refers to a Persian practice of having men lie face down with their palms upraised in supplication. It’s the problem with the palms, not the prostration. That was an act of worship in every civilization across the Ancient Near East. Yet we have this often misquoted passage in Romans 13 about being subject to earthly authorities. The problem is that you and I are individually accountable to God to discern within the context what constitutes proper subjection, without going too far and infringing on God’s prerogatives.
Everyone knows that Jesus said our whole obligation to God can be summed in two commandments. First is that we love the Lord unreservedly as the true Master of all Creation, the one true authority to whom we owe love and devotion. Second is that we love our covenant family as we would ourselves. Most people miss that part about what constitutes a “neighbor” and they mess up His explanation of it. People who obey the covenant are covenant brothers and sisters, not the people who claim the covenant and don’t obey it.
So Paul later in that same Romans 13 says that this kind of love Jesus described is the ultimate duty to all human authority. Whatever we do in love to God and to our covenant family, that fulfills everything anyone can demand of us on this earth. No one can justly demand more. Mordecai was faithful to that understanding of Law.
Technically speaking, this makes us superficially anarchists. We aren’t activists who reject all human law and authority, but we simply remain cynical so long as the authority in question doesn’t adhere to the Covenant of Noah. Keep in mind that we are standing together on the teaching that there is a continuum between law and faith, that every covenant points to faith as the end product. People who come to faith still need to study the Law Covenants to understand what faith demands. People who aren’t walking in faith still need to bow the knee to the applicable Law Covenant, and right now for this earth, that’s the Covenant of Noah. As long as no government professes Noah, they are invalid governments in God’s eyes.
However, God has warned us to avoid needless conflict with human governments. Some governments, as with the case of Mordecai, will demand too much and we must refuse to obey. Some are such a major issue that we need to consider the extreme measures of folks like Ehud the Left-handed (Judges 3:12-30). You are also obliged to pray as you study those examples and ensure your heart-led convictions demands such action, but the option is there. Still, we mostly look for ways to avoid any such conflict and stay below the radar.
I find the US Government is not valid by this standard, nor is any lower echelon of state and local governments. But all of them serve a divine purpose in my life, and I must consider what His glory demands of me in choosing mostly to cooperate with those governments. They already demand things I could not do, but the conflict has never come to a head. Eventually it will, and I’ll have to be ready to hear from my own heart what the Lord requires of me.
Unlike folks who profess “Zero Aggression” principles, I tend to detect threats a lot farther out on my radar. But because I’m a Christian Mystic, I’m unlikely to care much about the worldly aspect of whatever harm they might do. I don’t believe in God-given rights, because God’s revelation denies such a thing exists. Rather, we all have a calling and mission that is highly variable from person to person. I also believe in miracles that can change the context, and that dying is hardly a tragedy. I believe prayer changes things. I believe my adherence to the Covenant of Christ grants me special privileges other folks don’t get.
Most of all, I am utterly certain our Creator speaks through my heart, and that His voice trumps all human authority.
