The advent of autumn always stirs in me nostalgia for summer. One of my favorite ways to spend a lazy summer day when I was a kid was to hike down the railroad tracks beside the Allegheny River. Often as we trudged along the sun-baked ties and the gritty roadbed ballast, we’d engage in a game of Lava — a simple race, with a bit of a twist. Mounting the parallel rails, contestants would speed down the steel tightropes across from each another. If either lost his balance, he would plunge into the imaginary lava pit from which the game derived its name. (Volcanic action being rare in western Pennsylvania, the contestants were spared an actual fiery death. The fallen one was, however, required to count backwards 10 railroad ties before resuming his progress.)

I thought of all this because of another race playing out before us these days, one with much higher stakes. The presidential campaign now entering its final weeks is of great interest to us all. But it should lead followers of Jesus Christ to reexamine our relationships with the state. In that light, it seems to me, we find that we can fall off either side of the rail of obedience to our Lord Jesus. In fact (contrary to our Lava games of old), our fallen natures even make it possible for us to fall off both sides at once!

The believer’s error on one side is a casual disregard for the government’s laws. The Bible lays down a clear warning against such: “Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God. So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished” (Romans 13:1-2 NLT).

Amazingly absent from Saint Paul’s admonition there is any qualification concerning which governing authorities we must obey. Paul simply commands us as Christians to be subject to all of them. Even a Roman empire that would engage in brutal persecution of the church. Even a far-from-perfect modern-day American government. Paul’s justification for that mandate is strikingly simple: We must obey all governing authorities because our sovereign God has ordained them, and to flaunt their laws is to rebel against the Creator Himself.

Keep that in mind the next time you’re working on your taxes, and considering cutting a corner or two. Keep it in mind if you tool down the interstate well over the posted speed limit.

The error on the other side of the rail is, if anything, arguably even worse. It’s “statism,” a form of the mother of all sins, idolatry. We bow before an idol any time we give first place in our lives to anyone or anything other than God. Idolatry is trickiest when we allow ourselves to worship that which is good in and of itself: family, country — even religion! (Witness any of Jesus’ run-ins with the Pharisees, the most “religious” folk of His day.)

Scripture repeatedly condemns this evil as well. For example, we read: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15 ESV). A misguided patriotism is dangerous, because it threatens what must always be our first love: that for God. The sad reality is that we’re all such practiced hypocrites that we can succumb to that very temptation, even as we fall off the other side of the rail in excusing ourselves for breaking this law or that!

Our only hope is, of course, our only Hope. It is Christ who obeyed His Father’s law perfectly as He died to save us; Christ who calls us to follow in His footsteps, willingly submitting to the authority of the state; He who gives the Spirit to help us grow steadily in that direction. Let us seek ever, by His grace, to maintain our balance, obeying always the civil magistrate, but bowing only before our eternal King.

The Rev. John Culp is pastor of Tower Presbyterian Church, Grove City.