Skip to main content

God's Servants

             This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. (Romans 13:6-7)

Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. (Hebrews 13:2)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (Preamble to the Declaration of Independence)

This isn’t one of my favorite passages. I don’t consider myself good at most “people things,” and honor and respect are people things. I find it difficult to use honorifics. I’ll gladly refer to Mr. Trump, but struggle with President Trump. It has nothing to do with the sort of job he’s doing, because it was Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama, too. I think those who refer to them by just their last names (Trump, Biden, Obama) as rude, though I admit, I tend to think in terms of Lincoln, Washington, Hitler, and MLK. If Pastors are called “Pastor,” it’s because it’s become part of his first name, or perhaps his whole first name.

Other folks don’t have it any better. I spend a great deal of my life among nameless people – and I’m not talking about strangers I pass on the street. I can spend years working with people for whom I have no name other than (for example) the name of their department. When I first started spending winters in Florida, I made a habit of praying for my neighbors. If they had a name sign out, I  prayed by name. I could tell you who lived in many of the units, but if I saw the owners in a group with others, or saw them outside the park, I couldn’t tell you their names. Maybe this isn’t unusual, but I notice it in myself.

The point, however, is that I don’t “people” well. It doesn’t help that I have the American attitude mentioned in the quote from the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. Or that I’ve worked with people in authority and know that they are not necessarily any more intelligent, wise, educated, moral, good, etc. than anyone else. On the other hand, I tend to hold some folks who would be described as “nobodies” in comparatively high honor because they have either demonstrated expertise or good character.

 But, we have today’s passage, and the one from Hebrews, both of which tell us that our honor, respect, etc., should be given whether or not we agree with or like the authority or not. God referred to people we could consider tyrants, monsters, or world-class jerks as “My servant.” And this is an area in which I need work – even just to be more aware of people as people.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Virgin?

           Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)           This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:18)           But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”            “How will this be,” Mary asked the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Higher Thoughts

  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the  Lord . “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)           The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,   for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord      so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (I Corinthians 2:15-16) If you read about the ancient gods of the various peoples, you’ll find that they think just like people. In fact, they think just like the sort of people we really wouldn’t want to be around. They think like the most corrupt Hollywood producer or, like hormone overloaded teens with no upbringing.   It’s embarrassing to read. I have a friend who argues that because God is not just like us, He is so vastly dif...
2 comments
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more