The clerk's disobedience

If there had been income tax back then, Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) would not have paid it. And seeing as he had no property to speak of, he could not very well decline to pay property tax either. So the bard of Walden Pond on the outskirts of Concord, Mass., refused to pay the only tax he could refuse: the poll tax. Conscience would not allow the New England naturalist to support either the Mexican-American War or slavery. Unfortunately (as he saw it), a relative in town went to the taxing authority and satisfied the debt, and a disgruntled Thoreau was released from jail after only a night, in July 1846.

Apparently, the sleepover behind bars was long enough for a visit by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who, upon seeing his friend in the stone cell, asked, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” Thoreau replied, “Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?”

The question is still a good one and getting more poignant all the time. What is the proper posture of a Christian (though Thoreau was not a Christian) vis-à-vis government and conscience? A county clerk in Rowan County, Ky., citing Christian conscience, continues to defy mounting federal court orders to license homosexual unions. Is she wrong on the grounds of Romans 13? Or is she right on the grounds of Acts 4?

On the one hand, the Apostle Paul writes:

“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment” (Romans 13:1–2, ESV).

On the other hand, when the government orders the apostles Peter and John not to preach about Jesus, they answer:

“Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20, ESV).

Thoreau asks in his essay Resistance to Civil Government:

“Must the citizen ever for a moment or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then?”

The day may come for each of us in an America where law and courts are increasingly anti-biblical to deal with the question not as theoretical but urgent. What I have settled on for myself is that it is right to disobey government when government forces me to act against Christ and conscience—as long as I am prepared to also accept the results of my choice, including jail time or job loss. Happily ever after is for the world to come and not the present one.