A while ago I was reading a book where the following was recounted, in more detail: a man is preaching about Jesus to a group of people who’ve gathered to listen. Another man shows up and tells him to stop. He ignores the man telling him to stop until he notices that the man is a police officer, at which point he perceives his demands to be authoritative and complies. I don’t wish to criticize the individual in question. I don’t know the particulars of the situation; maybe he was blocking a route and it really was appropriate for him to move. What really bothered me about the story was actually where and how the writer told it; he was using it to illustrate the weight of authority. As such, it is singularly unhelpful and even harmful. Of course, I suspect the writer was taught to see police officers as necessarily carrying some kind of authority and so isn’t really at fault. The belief is, however, seriously mistaken. Police officers are men and, like most men, many of them are at enmity with God. Sometimes, they tell you to do what God forbids or not to do what God commands. When they do this, they have no more authority than any other human being, whether or not they have more power. When the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Israel, told the Apostles to stop teaching in the Name of Jesus, they said, “We must obey God rather than man.”