Romans 13 and Boomerism

It’s no secret that the boomers raised their gen X children to be antiauthoritarian, rebellious, and disenfranchised. They did this in multiple ways, from the media they created or let us watch, to ditching us to fend for ourselves while they worked and/or followed careers. Far too many gen Xers were left to their own devices, ready to follow their own ways, march to their own tunes. Now that it’s come back to bite the boomers, they aren’t very happy. But at the same time, I see no indication that they recognize the part they played in this.

I began thinking about this while at the store the other day, where there was a plethora of boomers all masked up. I happen to live in a town that determined it would pay no heed to mask mandates any longer. Almost nobody wears them anywhere. That’s why these elders stuck out to me, their shifty, side-eyed glances from the top of their masks. Their eyes are shifty because they love mandates. They love big government bringing the hammer down on citizens. They are the generation, for the most part, who are making these authoritarian rules (e.g. Bush and the Patriot Act). Recall, this is the same generation that made flipping off their superiors and burning flags and bras popular.

Part of this, I’m sure, is youth versus old age. And yet, do most generations go to such extremes? It’s almost as if their intense authoritarian nature came out as a response to their own inability to reel themselves in from immoral destruction. As for my generation, I see less inclination with age to follow absurd rules. Life’s too short to waste it standing huddled on a yellow circle, equidistance from the next person huddled on a yellow circle.

Of course, masks are simply an outward symbol of what’s going on internally. That’s why people who refuse to wear them have so much vitriol for them. For those people, they aren’t just a “cloth on the face;” they’re an outward symbol that government can control our society down to the Nth degree. For my part, the only place I’ve conceded to wearing a mask in quite some time is at church. I generally respect church authority; I cannot and will not give this same respect to government, no matter how many boomers unpack Romans 13 to try to force it on me.

If you are the type of person — I don’t care what generation you’re from — who likes to unpack Romans 13 in order to force Christians to comply, I would just ask that you give it a little more thought. If Romans 13 means we have to follow every petty, unjust, or immoral rule brought to us by our authoritarian overlords, then this country we live in is operating off a bed of sin. That is the foundation, the zeitgeist, the raison d’etre of the United States: saying no to tyrants. This country would not exist if we had all just genuflected and chanted Romans 13 at each other.

We need to do a little self-examination, don’t you think? Should we be doing all these when our authorities tell us to: closing our businesses, ceasing our church services, donning our masks, getting our vaccines, handing over our suitcases and removing our clothes to be searched, teaching our children whatever our Department of Education tells us to? Yes? Then we should also repent of the American Revolution and beg the Queen’s forgiveness and ask her to be our leader once more. Either it is a sin — or it’s not — to throw their tea in the sea. If it’s a sin, then we had better humble ourselves as a nation right now. Unfortunately, we might not like the results. But, hey, at least our souls will be clean.