Why I am Afraid of The President?

The most ancient questions ought to be asked to the most modern generation. So it is no surprise that one of the most relevant questions for our time was already asked by a man from Tarsus twenty centuries ago: "Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority?" Two personal experiences should be enough to show the relevance of this question for our time. The first occurred one morning as I was driving to my office from my house. Further up the road I saw a police check point, and as I got closer, one of the uniformed officers signaled for me to pull over. As he checked the credentials of my car, a second officer was also gearing up to stop another car that was driving up to that junction from another direction. But instead of pulling over for an examination, the driver switched gears and started reversing away from the check point at an alarming speed. Upon seeing the car speeding away, the two officers both asked to commandeer my car, and when I obliged, they both jumped into my car and urged me to put my foot on the gas (fuel was readily available back then) and go in pursuit of the speeding car. The chase was exhilarating, but neither my car nor my skills behind the wheel were good enough to catch the assailants. In this instance, the Police's motivation for the chase was authority, namely the authority the Law gives them to investigate and arrest those suspected of breaking the established law of the land. This kind of authority is obviously a real cause of fear only to those that are breaking the law, a fear that I on this occasion did not experience. I knew that these officers had the best kind of authority; a form of authority that Scripture says comes from God himself, the authority to punish wrongdoing. According to Scripture, God has sanctioned governments to use this kind of authority to commend those who do what is right and punish those who do what is wrong. In other words, the exercise of this authority is dictated by what is right and what is wrong, or dictated by law, not men. Thus in submitting myself to this authority by obeying the just laws it is based on and by subjecting myself to its open and public inspection, I found myself freed from any fear of the one in authority. And I am pleased to find that this is precisely what Scripture says I should expect: "Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended." The second experience happened recently as I was sitting in my car waiting in line for fuel at a gas station that had no fuel. Though at no point in my life did I ever think that I'd find it normal to get in line for fuel at a gas station that had none, most gas stations in the city have had no fuel for days, and cars just wait in line in hope that any day now someone whose job it is to bring fuel into the country will either come back from their two-year holiday or get fired. On this particular day, there were also many people whose cars were either already out of fuel or in such short supply that they could not drive to the filling station to fill up, and so had to buy fuel in Jerrycans, popularly and affectionately called zigubu. A few hours of waiting was all it took for half a dozen police to show up in an armored vehicle. They proceeded to confiscate all the jerrycans that had queued for fuel, and doing so without discrimination or explanation. When they had collected all the jerrycans they had found at that filling station, they jumped back into their car and drove off. Now the law allows people to buy fuel in jerrycans IF they have a permit to do so, but these uniformed police officers did not even bother to check who did or did not have a permit to buy fuel in a jerrycan. Of course I have no doubt that not everyone with a jerrycan had a permit that day, but even in that case, a person without a permit ONLY breaks the law when they actually buy the fuel. It is not against any law of this land or any conceivable just law in the conscience of good men either to own an empty jerrycan or to stand in a line with other empty jerrycans. In addition, for the past two years in which fuel shortages have been most acute, many people have been buying fuel in jerrycans without permits and under the supervision of the same police officers who are now suddenly anti-jerrycan! Clearly in this instant, the police officers' actions were not motivated by the authority that comes from the established laws of the land or the universal just laws of conscience. This was an authority of a different kind, not the sort that comes from God or is dictated by laws of right and wrong. This was an authority dictated by men, not laws, and it brings fear even to those that keep the law. The man from Tarsus says: "Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right!" Where the State commends right doing and punishes wrong doing according to the dictates of the law, doing what is right means keeping the law and subjecting yourself to its public inspection. Where the State punishes the law keepers along with the law breakers according to the private dictates of men, doing what is right means refusing to obey any law whose keeping does not protect you from the weapons of law enforcers, and refusing to be inspected and punished anywhere that is not a public court of law. For the law is there to tell us the bad things men are capable of doing when they show no regard for the law, and the law employs the police to protect us from such men; but when the men who show no regard for the law are police officers themselves, then the laws of conscience must employ the people to protect themselves. For anyone in uniform who shows no regard for the law is no longer a law enforcer but a criminal, and any ruler who gives them a directive to act without regard to the law is no longer a ruler but a gang lord. And if breaking the law makes you afraid of police officers, it is because those officers are under the authority of a ruler who upholds the law. But if keeping the law does not make your fear go away, it is because those officers are under the authority of a ruler who only cares about God and his laws if the god in question is the ruler himself! Half of my nation has believed the lie that doing and saying nothing will free us from fear of the one in authority. The other half has believed the lie that doing harm to the one in authority will free us from fear of him. But the truth is that doing what is right is the only way I will ever find freedom from fear of the one in authority, and doing what is right begins with saying what is being done wrong, saying it humbly, publicly, and openly.