Suprised by Independence Day
Last month during a Men’s Bible Study conversation, we were reading Ephesians 6 – namely, the text discussing, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” We asked, “who exactly are these rulers of the darkness of this world” and the response ranged from government officials to any persons in authority, including church authorities. A few comments were made on the American tendency to call all authority figures principalities and powers out of our need to be autonomous individuals, living under no one’s control. In response, and much to my surprise, I invited the men to turn to Romans 13 to test our ideas about government and ecclesial authorities as “rulers of the darkness of this world.” (I rarely go to this text because it too easily ordains all government authorities, blindly). We read the text and questioned how this text reads the Ephesians