pondering the revolution

I wrote this elsewhere, as part of a discussion with other Christians about Jeffersonian ideals about the right of the citizenry to overthrow a government they consider unjust, such as with the American Revolution. I'm reposting it, primarily because I think it's an interesting line of thought.

Paul writes in his epistles that everyone should be subject to the authorities, for there is no authority that God did not establish. (Standard exceptions of conscience, although it's understood when the time comes to face the consequences for that defiance, there's a Christlike surrender.)

Paul wasn't talking about a democratic government with duly elected representatives, a Bill of Rights and trial lawyers to see that your rights were protected. He was talking about the Roman Empire, one of the greatest and sometimes most brutal empires in history.

The Roman Empire had a state religion, although it allowed people to practice other religions that had received state approval.

The Roman Empire through conquest and colonization had annexed most of Europe, along with parts of Africa and parts of Asia. (Evidence has been found of a Roman presence in North America, but we'll assume that was fluke rather than imperial policy.) It didn't care much for provinces that resisted their rule, as Judea discovered in AD 70 under Titus Vespasian, and again under Marcus Aurelius in the third century.

The Roman Empire also had some of the cruelest, most capricious and depraved emperors in history. Tiberius was a monster; Caligula, utterly insane, married his sister Drusilla, declared himself to be Jupiter, and when he bankrupted the empire's coffers, he refilled them by killing whomever he wanted and taking their property; Claudius was mentally retarded and while he was emperor, the empire was run through him by his wives and various advisers, who often worked to their own interests at the expense of Rome and its empire; Nero was as monstrous as the previous three put together, and then some; Domitian was well known for his persecution of Christians; Commodus was a sadist who enjoyed torturing people in the gladiator pit; and you had other emperors like Vespasian and Marcus Aurelius, who saw nothing wrong with destroying cities that were difficult to rule.

We all complain about taxes, but the tax system in Rome was horribly corrupt. Tax collectors were told to get a certain amount of money, and Rome didn't care how much else they got or how they got it, as long as Rome got its share.

We also complain about the justice system nowadays. In Rome, thieves were crucified -- the cruelest and most painful means of execution ever developed, and one which the Romans refined for further pain. This was a fate also used for murderers, brigands and runaway slaves. In fact, at the time Paul was alive, the Roman Senate ordered something like 700 slaves executed because *one* of them had killed their master in his sleep.

Freedom of speech? Forget it. People who criticized the empire disappeared. I read about one fellow who was locked in a cell and driven to such hunger that he ate his mattress before he finally hanged himself. Augustus, generally regarded as the best of Rome's emperors, banned men of noble birth from the stage and had one actor sent into exile because he had given the audience the finger after being booed for a lousy performance.

Rome was a fascist state, and yet Paul told people to submit to it.

Are you so sure it would be a good idea to rise up against the American government if it became what Jefferson feared it might?