Great article! I agree that Believers are too quick to jump on the old R13 train and passively submit to anything. Yeah, the passage says government ordained by God is for our good, but what do you do when the government makes you culpable in criminal and immoral deeds? For instance, I live in the U.S. and my income is garnished by the government and used to fund wars of aggression overseas. I can't imagine Jesus being okay with that, but He seemingly endorsed paying the Romans taxes and they for sure killed people...
I think the point of the passage is that Christians aren't supposed to get hung up in fighting civil authority, but should instead be focused on the true mission, which is to represent Him here on Earth.
Now, what's more interesting to me is the question of who actually has authority in the U.S. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are the founding documents of this country, and are supposed to be the law of the land. Therefore, if the "government" is acting outside the bounds of their Constitutional authority, are Christians living in the U.S. bound by those laws? For instance, the income tax was never properly ratified so should we pay it? The government isn't supposed to be able to go to war without a declaration from Congress but we've been "at war with terror" for decades now. Laws in some places restrict rain water collection, is that legitimate?
Some people just have to have a list of rules to follow, but I don't think that's what the Bible is all about. The Old Covenant was a list of rules, and it didn't work. In the New Covenant we shouldn't be looking for a list of approved behavior but should instead we should try to act out of love for God and each other. Paul's writings in the New Testament were TO specific people, in a SPECIFIC time period. His concerns were pastoral in that they dealt with how the people he wrote to were to address their specific daily problems. IMHO a better approach is to try to understand the writings in their original context and apply the underlying principle to our lives.