Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.
1 Peter 2:16-17
It's almost awkward to read this at first. It was written almost 2,000 years ago, yet it almost looks like it could start with "Americans."
How relevant is this for us today? Look around.
You see people all over facebook lashing out and disrespecting our leadership, whether it is our job, our city, our state, our country, etc....people are trashing our leadership. When questioned, what do they say? They justify their actions by simply saying "I have a right to free speech."
Is this the way God wants us to live? When we trash our leadership on social media, is that what God wants? After you're done writing a novel on facebook publicly destroying and disrespecting someone in authority, do you really think God is looking down on you saying: "good job! you got that one right!!" No!!!!
Even though I really don't think it is necessary, I'm going to paraphrase this verse just a little bit to help us understand it better in our culture:
Americans, live as free people, but don't use your freedom of speech as an excuse to go onto facebook or go out into the streets to disrespect the authority that God has allowed to be in those positions. Instead, show respect to your leaders, support other believers, fear God, and honor your president.
Today, before we think about logging into social media to say something that cuts someone else down, or disrespects our leaders, let's remember what the Bible says here, and let's remember that our leaders are in place because God allowed them to be in place. Therefore, for us to show disrespect to our leadership is to disrespect God Himself.
