A simple question for theists

[Drich]

Here's the thing sport.

God told us not to follow any new or direct revelations if the contradict how we are told to live in the bible.

If God told one of us to kill someone period apart from what the rule of law is willing t support, then what that person is talking to is not God.

But that doesn't really make sense when you think about it:

If you live in a democracy then you have some say, directly or indirectly, over the laws of the land. For instance, given that there are some American states with the death penalty and some without, that shows that it is not an absolute... it is arbitrary... and whether it exists in a given state or not presumably comes down to the electorate, either directly - eg if there was a referendum on it - or indirectly by electing a government sympathetic or unsympathetic to it.

Whereas if you don't live in a democracy, then it is just completely arbitrary from your perspective... up to the whims of a ruler.

In either case, even if you didn't directly or indirectly influence the law, you could hypothetically move to a jurisdiction with laws sympathetic to your stance. An extreme example of that would be in one of the Purge films where there are 'killing tourists' who come from all over the world to take part in the legitimised killing on Purge night.

So I don't see how you can ensure the legitimacy of that rule of law when in all cases it is arbitrary and given that you are either indirectly or directly complicit in it or, in the case where you have no say, you have to make a subjective judgment about the validity of it, in order to determine whether you resist or comply with it, and where your own stance can influence your decision in that regard.

And if you argue that you would only recognise a government with Christian values as legitimate in that regard, there's a problem there too because it's still arbitrary... different in different times and places... I'm sure the Spanish Inquisition thought they were doing God's will with their killings. As is always the case, there are always many different interpretations of Christianity, so again there seems to be no way of ensuring - with certainty - the legitimacy of government sanctioned killing without coming back to subjective opinion.

The reason it doesn't make sense is because I was not referring to the rule that govern countries, but individuals.

Men's laws are arbitrary at best. which is why we can free move away from those who do not wish to live as we do.