#virtie

Oh I promise, I’ll finish it! I have ~5,000 words written and growing, I just haven’t found a good rhythm yet so I’ve held off posting for the past 1-2 weeks. 

(Originally published on The Trenchcoat Introspective)

In our discussion of Virtue, we come to one of the hardest to reconcile with our willful human nature: Obedience.

There are several levels of Obedience, and all are important (I will discuss them here in ascending order).

When we are young, we are taught Obedience to our parents and guardians. We learn quickly that some orders we are given are meant to protect us. We hold daddy’s hand crossing the street so that we are kept safe from cars, for example. Other rules are in place so that we learn how to grow into functioning adults. When mommy tells us to pick up our toys or clean our rooms (an order I frequently rebelled from, and it shows), it is not because she is too lazy to do it, but because she wants us to learn the importance of being organized so we don’t grow into that one guy in the office whose desk looks like a war zone and whose person smells ever so faintly of cheese.

It is to learn these early forms of Obedience that we are told in the Ten Commandments to honor our father and mother. As our caretakers, they deserve to be respected — and when we are grown — treated with honor and protected by us. (I will discuss this further in a later post.)

But it is not only our parents that we are to be obedient to. We are also called to be obedient to the Law of our Motherland (and really any other nation in which we find ourselves. Prison is prison, no matter the place, and not all of them have wifi). This means that, even when we disagree with a law, and even when it inconveniences us, we have a sacred duty to respect temporal authority.

St. Paul puts it thus:

“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience.” (Romans 13:1-5, RSV)

Ok. You can’t really argue with that. We must be obedient to those in authority over us because God has put them there. It’s in the Bible and everything.

(This also applies to Church authority. We Catholics have a hierarchy within our Church, and each of us are called to be obedient to the one directly above us in this chain of spiritual command. The laypeople are subject to their priests. The priests are subject to their bishops. The bishops are subject to the Pope. And the Pope is subject to God, who placed him in authority over us. This is why we must be obedient to the teaching of the Church.)

But what happens when civil authorities pass unjust laws — say, regulations that limit religious freedom. . . you know, hypothetically? Are we still called to be obedient to them?

Well, yes and no. We are to be obedient to the Just Laws of our homeland. But not the unjust laws. We cannot suddenly go on a murder spree, for instance, just because our government has decided to violate our freedom of conscience. And we cannot seek to divide our nation through secession or other forms of open rebellion that cause strife and suffering to the innocents we are meant to protect. Then we are compounding crime upon crime.

The difference here is that Just Laws are not from the power of civil authority, but are handed down to civil authority by God. It is God’s Law, above all else, that we are to be obedient to. And when our leaders break God’s Law, we are NOT required to follow them off that cliff. Nor are we allowed to stay silent. We must first and foremost remain obedient to the Creator, then to just civil authority, and then to our familial authorities.