Jesus and the Government

Today was one of those days when a certain topic came up so often it was a little scary. I thought maybe God was telling me to tell you all about it (the three of you who read this). I was having a wonderful discussion through instant message with an old friend of mine who I went to high school with and who served our country in Iraq. Now even though I am against war of any kind I have a lot of respect for him and what he went through during this war. I know that I would never want to be put in that situation. Anyway we were talking about our differing views on what is written in the Bible and we started talking about the government and how much involvement Christians should have in the government and whatnot. My friend quoted to me Romans 13:1-7 which I scrambled to look up and only read the first verse before I replied:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

You can look up the rest if you are interested but I just don't feel like typing it all. He was saying that God put the ones who run this country in power. Which I disagreed and said that the people of this country put them in power. Ultimately our government was established by humans and there is no way that our founding fathers could have known what the perfect government in God's eyes would be. In the end we agreed to disagree.
Not long after I got off of the computer I went to meet with Jeff for a one on one meeting. Jeff along with his wife Cathrine sort of run the LA Catholic Worker. We were going over the values and beliefs of the Catholic Worker (since I am new we meet weekly to go over different things about the community). As I looked over the list Jeff asked me which ones I had questions about. I came across "Biblical Anarchy" which is two words you would not expect to be next to each other at any point for your standard American Christian.
So I asked him what exactly that meant. He talked a lot about how in the bible God's people were always apposed to the state. The authorities were always after Jesus. Even from the moment that he was born kings wanted to kill him. How he didn't pay taxes and instead just pulled money out of a fish's mouth. He also talked about how God's people in the Old Testament were always asking for a king so that they could be like the other nations. They were never satisfied with being ruled by God alone. He also talked about the Israelites having a sabbath year every seven years when no one would harvest their crops so that the poor among them could eat. And the year of Jubilee every 49 years when people would return to their own property and debts would be forgiven. They were also slaves in Egypt.
Now I thought that that made a lot of sense and we moved on with our meeting.
Shortly after that I sat down to read the book that I am currently reading called "Jesus for President" and this is the first page that I read:

A curious politics is emerging here: the early Christians weren't trying to overthrow or even reform the empire, but also weren't going along with it. They were not reformists offering the world a better Rome. They offered the dissatisfied masses not a better government but another world altogether. In a world gone respectively insane, Christians, as they lived God's kingdom, embodied revolutionary subordination toward the kingdoms of the world, exemplified in the suffering humiliation of the crucified messiah, the slaughtered lamb who exposed the greed and violence of the world as he died naked on the cross.
One way the church stated its relationship to the powers was, "We must obey God rather than human beings!" (Acts 5:29). Maybe this is what St. Augustine was getting at when he said, "An unjust law is no law at all." But the attitude of Jesus and the church ran deeper than the usual Christian politics-that you obey the authorities when they are doing good and disobey them when they are doing bad. Rather, the church was always revolutionary through its subordination (just like carrying the pack two miles).
Very few Scriptures can be construed to say that we are unquestioningly to follow whatever kings and presidents dictate, no matter how out of line they seem to be. But some writings, like Romans 13, often surface as justification for such servitude. Nazi Germany, however, caused Christians to rethink blind obedience to the authorities. The church could not help but wonder, "When the bible says 'be subject,' either the Bible must not have thought that one through (and it is wrong), or we really are supposed to go along with the Nazis as God's will. Or...maybe there is something deeper going on here."
When we are careful to situate Paul's writing in the context and culture in which he wrote, we find that Paul offered a biting critique of power and a creative path of revolutionary love. We might remember Paul urging his friend Philemon to illegally welcome back home a fugitive slave, Onesimus, as a brother, instead of killing him for running away. This is a scandalous subversion of Roman hierarchy. Paul was just as radical as Jesus. Remember that the Paul who wrote "be subject to the authorities" is the same Paul who was stoned, exiled, jailed, and beaten for subverting the authorities (See Acts 17:6-8 for an example of how Paul's sermons were heard). This could explain why Paul used the same word for authorities when he said in Ephesians, "We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against the authorities [exousia] of this dark world."
Is it possible to submit and to subvert? Paul's life gives a clear yes, as does Jesus' crucifixion. Paul points out that the very act of submission is what "disarms the powers" by making a spectacle of their evil:
For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. 10We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! 11To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. 12We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; 13when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.
1 Cor. 4:9-13
Scum of the earth...this is Paul's snapshot of the early Jesus movement. Do we have the courage to follow?
-Jesus for president pg. 160&161
So that was the topic of pretty much all of my conversations today and I thought that maybe God was telling me something. And maybe I was wrong and maybe I am wrong in my views. And maybe what I am doing here in LA is wrong but it makes sense and I am going to continue doing it.