George explores some passages in Romans 13 about governing authorities being established by God and why that might create challenges for us. God may grant and establish authority but that doesn't mean he approves of how it's being used.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
No good comes to the cause of the gospel is we are regarded as crazy dissidents who won’t co-cooperate with the most basic of social mechanisms. They are indeed a revolutionary community, but if they go for the normal type of violent revolution they will just be playing the empire back at its own game. They will almost certainly lose, and, much worse, the gospel itself will lose with them.
—N.T. Wright, Romans For Everyone
We need to relativize all authority, subjecting it to the God of Jesus the Messiah, and by subjecting all law to the law of love. There is another law that is above all law. According to this law, the only thing that we most profoundly owe to one another is love. All laws are judged by this law of love. If love is the fulfilling of the law, then any laws that call us to anything short of love, are judged by the law of love as null and void.
—Keesmaat/Walsh, Romans Disarmed: Targum of Romans 13
Relationships move at the speed of trust: social change moves at the speed of relationships.
—Rev. Jennifer Bailey
