"Obeying, Honoring, and Sustaining the Law"

There's an interesting (and important, practically speaking) conflict that comes up at times:

"We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law" (Articles of Faith 1:12).

"Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).

Clearly we are required, as a part of our religion, to "render unto Caesar" a certain degree of respect and obedience. Yet we also believe, under certain circumstances at least, in civil disobedience. If you doubt it, consider the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, which is a prime example of the practice: they willfully refuse to obey a law, accepting the consequences, because their moral values could not abide it. And their stance clearly was not frowned upon by God, judging by His miraculously delivering them.

So there is a time for obeying the law, and there is a time for disobeying it on moral principle. The question of where, exactly, to put the line of demarcation between the cases in which we should obey it and those in which we should defy it is what remains to us. To determine this, the above quotes may well give us what we need to know:

• Generally speaking, we believe in obeying the law. So in most cases, we should obey the law.
• However, "We ought to obey God rather than men." God's laws supersede man's. If obedience to a human law directly contradicts a moral law, we ought to follow God first.

In other words, God wins over country, but the law of the land should be respected in cases where it can possibly be accommodated. This also hints at one of the qualifications of a just law, which I should consider in more detail at another point: a just law should not attempt to compel people to act contrary to their conscience, and should maximally provide exemptions for matters of conscience. For example, the idea of the conscientious objector to a draft is one which must be strongly upheld.