Faith, Trust, and Being Lawful

The answer, which seems obvious now that I think about it, is to have faith; Faith in God, and faith in my judgement of the nature of God. God is good and completely trustworthy. I can and should trust Him with my entire life and even a behavioral blank check. And if He ever turns out to be secretly evil, which He won't, because He isn't, that'll be an interesting day. It'll never happen, but if it does, I guess I'll have to make my ultimate stand then. But until then, I'm going to try to trust God completely enough to obey all of His current and future commandments, no matter what.

I don't suppose any of you would be surprised to learn that my decision to trust God completely was largely influenced by my understanding of what a Paladin would do. Paladins are not only Good, they are Lawful Good, which means that they respect authority, keep their promises, and obey the rules. Just yesterday, I was riding my bike and I violated a traffic law. I did so safely, but another biker called me out on it. At first, I was angry at the other biker for being judgmental, but then I had to acknowledge, if only to myself, that I was in the wrong. I want to be a Paladin, and Paladins obey the law. If that's not enough reason to stop for Stop signs, stay off the sidewalk, and only ride on the right (or correct) side of the street, I need only remind myself of the 12th Article of Faith.

Of course, things get interesting for Paladins when the authorities turn out to be tyrants and those to whom they made promises had tricked them into promises that, for moral reasons, the Paladin couldn't keep, but Paladins are more committed to Goodness than to Lawfulness. A Paladin cannot commit an evil act and remain a Paladin. If a Paladin does something evil, he will lose his Paladinic blessings and must seek Atonement to regain them. However, no such restrictions or penalties apply to doing something chaotic. A Paladin must be Lawful, but there are cases in which a Paladin may break the law, or even their own word. Such circumstances are extremely rare, and might only occur when the authorities are completely evil or when their God turns out to be. Such events are highly unlikely, and most of the time, a Paladin would consider them unthinkable. Paladins trust their religious leaders, and so should I. I may not know all the reasons a particular commandment was given, but I know who it came from, and I know that I can trust Him.