I had to confiscate a phone today. In Texas, there is a new law that says students are not allowed to have their phones at all during the school day. If they are, we as teachers are required to take the phone and turn it in to the office. A girl in my 5th period was on her phone, so I had to take it. After class, she begged me not to turn it in. She knows the rules; she knows what I'm required to do, and she knows I’m not going to change my mind. But she kept asking—over and over again—for me not to turn it in. After telling her repeatedly that my hands were tied, I finally had to tell her to stop asking—I wasn't going to break the law for her.
I was initially upset with the expectation of mercy—the idea that she thought she shouldn’t have to suffer any consequences for breaking a law, and she wanted me to be the one who gave her that mercy. Then I started thinking about how so many of my students beg for mercy—for their grades, for me to not take late points off, to go to the restroom when they aren’t allowed. Students ask me to turn a blind eye to their misconduct all the time. It begs a deeper question: Why do we resist authority when the answer isn’t what we want?
I was initially upset with the expectation of mercy—the idea that she thought she shouldn’t have to suffer any consequences for breaking a law, and she wanted me to be the one who gave her that mercy. Then I started thinking about how so many of my students beg for mercy—for their grades, for me to not take late points off, to go to the restroom when they aren’t allowed. Students ask me to turn a blind eye to their misconduct all the time. It begs a deeper question: Why do we resist authority when the answer isn’t what we want?
When we don’t get the answer we want from an authority, we have a tendency to try to negotiate in order to make the outcome more favorable. We ask over and over again, or we try to bargain to get out of trouble. We make promises, and we give a lot of “ifs.” However, that continued negotiation is actually disobedience.
We tend to think of disobedience as open rebellion, hostility, or outright refusal to do something. However, sometimes disobedience looks much quieter than that. It sometimes looks like continuing to push after the answer has already been given, or repeatedly asking in hopes that persistence will somehow change the outcome. The issue with the phone today was never that my student didn’t understand me. My answer was clear the first time. She knew the rule, she knew the consequences, and she knew I was required to follow through. Continuing to ask wasn’t clarification—it was resistance. She didn’t like the answer I gave her, so she continued trying to negotiate it. The more that these types of interactions happen, the more I have come to realize how often we do the same thing with God.
There are times in our lives when God gives us an answer that we do not want. Many times, instead of accepting it, we continue pushing against it. We keep asking because we hope the answer will eventually change, or because we believe that if we explain ourselves enough, justify ourselves enough, or persist long enough, somehow the boundary will move. At a certain point, though, continued negotiation becomes an unwillingness to submit. We do not always recognize it as disobedience because it does not feel openly rebellious. It feels like persistence, reasoning, or pleading our case, but underneath all of that is a refusal to accept an answer we do not like.
We see this pattern in scripture when God called Moses to go to Egypt in Exodus 3–4. Moses did not openly rebel against God, but he continued trying to negotiate his way out of what God had already made clear. God answered every objection Moses raised, yet Moses kept coming back with another reason why he should not have to do what God asked him to do. “Who am I?” “What if they don’t believe me?” “I’m not eloquent.” “Please send someone else.” The issue was never that God had failed to answer Moses, but rather that Moses didn’t like the answer he had been given. At a certain point, continued negotiation becomes resistance to God’s authority. We see this in Exodus because obedience required something Moses did not want to give.
One of the biggest reasons we struggle with submission is because we often assume that if we do not fully understand or agree with an authority, then that authority somehow loses legitimacy. We say phrases like, “My boss is an idiot,” “Cops are just out to get me,” “My teacher hates me,” or “Trump is a racist.” We live in a culture that constantly encourages us to question, challenge, debate, and push back against any and all authority.
While there are certainly times when questioning authority is appropriate, many people have lost the ability to simply accept an answer they do not like, and we are teaching our children that they don’t have to. We treat boundaries as suggestions, consequences as negotiable, and authority as something that only deserves our submission when we personally agree with it.
The problem with that mindset is that God has established authority structures all throughout our lives. Children submit to parents, students submit to teachers and administrators, employees submit to employers, citizens submit to laws, and Christians ultimately submit to God. I am not saying that every authority figure is perfect, nor am I suggesting blind allegiance or unquestioning obedience to sinful demands. Human authority is flawed because humans are flawed. However, there is a difference between recognizing that an authority is imperfect and believing that we should be able to negotiate our way out of anything that feels uncomfortable, inconvenient, or undesirable.
Scripture repeatedly calls us to submission—not only to God, but also to the authority structures He has placed around us. In Romans 13:1, Paul writes, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God.” Likewise, children are instructed to obey their parents, and Christians are called to submit to spiritual authority. I want to be clear that I’m not advocating for people to violate God’s law in our quest for submission to human authority—there is a time and a place for civil disobedience. What I am talking about here is when our governing authorities do things we simply don’t like or agree with. However, scripture does make it clear that submission matters to God, and I think part of spiritual maturity is learning to accept answers we do not like without trying to negotiate our way around them. Sometimes obedience simply looks like accepting that the answer is no, trusting that we do not always see the full picture, and understanding that discomfort does not automatically mean an authority is wrong.
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