It really has gotten late...

This essay was originally written a number of years ago -- note the reference to the 55 MPH national speed limit. I found it in a pile of my old papers, and needing a filler for this blog, decided to go ahead and publish it, warts and all. It needs a good bit of polishing yet.

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The western world has adopted the belief that social injustice should be resisted with non-violent disobedience to authority. About the time political action to change social deficiencies became fashionable, a new leaf budded on the philosophical twig : the concept that no civil or criminal consequences should accrue to those who violate the law in defense of a cause or belief.

If democratic response is the measure of the "rightness" or "wrongness" of a policy, the debate over the 55 MPH speed limit was a good example of the modern view of civil disobedience -- the view that a law is wrong or unjust in proportion to the number of violators. There were Senators and Congressmen who stated publicly that the 55 MPH limit should be removed because nobody was obeying it. That logic would produce some interesting results if applied to Federal income tax laws.

There can be no doubt that certain laws are created by the stupidity ( otherwise known as political expediency ) of lawmakers. In any republic, however, the law must be considered supreme until it is changed or abolished. The penalties for violation of a law were put in place as deterrents to lawbreakers. If the law is broken, the deterrent will only continue to deter to the extent that punitive action is taken. Respect for law in general declines when citizens are allowed to break even one law with impunity.

Those who laid the foundation for our system of law and order realized that if they were guilty of disobeying an unjust law on the basis of conscience, they were also obligated to pay the penalty decreed by those who derived their authority from the very God they worshipped. They understood fully that the law, in itself, was only symbolic of the chain of authority that extended downward from their God. They lived their lives in an arena that was far larger than just this world; their appeal to the verdict would be decided in Eternity.

To deliberately break any man-made law requires a measure of disrespect for the author(s) of the law, and, ultimately, for the God who sets up and takes down governments. To preserve our freedom for generations to come, we must realize that the only legitimate excuse for violation of a man-made law is to keep from violating a higher, divine law -- "...it is better to obey God than men..." We need to realize that if we are unwilling to die for our beliefs, we have no good reason to defy those who are in authority over us. Disagreement with authority, by and in itself, is no excuse for lawlessness.

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There really isn't much difference between a tossed salad and a compost pile. The ingredients are basically the same. It is only the passing of time that differentiates food from garbage.

I think I need to get some sleep.