unanswered question

pre-script: as i was writing this, i had the subtle feeling of repetition. as such, a previous post of mine linked here may serve well as "required reading." to a lesser extent, another of my posts came to mind, linked here, relevant by means of expressing many questions which consistently fill my mind.

i have vivid memory of an instance in college where a professor taught me a general truth: if you have a question, ask it. chances are, he explained, someone else shares the question but is afraid to speak up. i believe that has changed my experience in every conversation i'd ever held since.
outside of the collegiate education system, however, it has caused confrontation where it will. my wife would complain that i ask too many questions, and i would respond that i don't get enough answers. often, it is a case of not leaving sleeping dogs to lie, which i admit is something i struggle to see as proper course; other times--and i should note i am not just speaking within my marital relationship--i have been met with hostility because my questioning was taken to be in jest. indeed, having a question asked often invokes many presuppositions of "why" before one is willing to yield the honest answer.
to relate this, an apologetic theologian has pointedly noted that our Savior regularly responded to the questions given him with other questions:

"For example, when they look at Jesus and say, 'To whom should we give our taxes?' Jesus looks at a coin and says, 'Whose picture is there?' Another occasion, they look at Jesus and say, 'Whose authority are you speaking from?' Jesus looks at them and says, 'Whose authority is John speaking from?' What Jesus is really doing is saying, "...You're really not looking for an answer, and until you're looking for an answer, I'm gonna keep pegging you with question after question after question, till you believe your own questions.'"
-Ravi Zacharias

i am using this aside to build my argument: some questions are dishonest, and so some questions are undeserving of honest, or direct, answers. the gospels record for us that the lawyers of Jesus's day asked him questions for the express purpose of trapping him in his responses (Mark 12.13, Luke 11.53-54, John 8.6a, 10.24; 33). this is why Jesus called them hypocrites, six times, yea, seven; this is why he roused sleeping dogs: because their beliefs about the law they were charged to defend became for them blinders regarding the Christ's testimony within that law. as is often the attack of the modern world against organized religion, what they followed was "made up only of rules taught by men" (Isaiah 29.13-14 NIV 1984). and there is prescribed the reason for Jesus's ministry: since they did not believe on the law, they ought to believe on his miracles (John 10.37-38).
now, without following this tangent further--as righteous a topic as it is--lately i have been privately questioning human relation to law, within the world rather than within the church. my thoughts have remained private because, spiritually speaking, i believe that the revelations of Scripture are more succinct than many people argue. what i mean here is this: what Scripture doesn't say about a topic doesn't need knowing, or to put it another way, isn't worth knowing. so, i can argue against my case, and often do within my thoughts, that these things which do not make sense to me? do not need to make sense to me.
to first return to my initial point, my questions are sincere. i do not understand certain things and do wish to grasp them. this is the basis of education in all its forms: to learn, one must admit ignorance. and with the hope that someone holds the obvious answer, i feel pulled to ask. generally speaking, the history of my honest questioning within the world--i.e., outside of school and church--has often brought out arrogant responses. course curriculum, at least, holds a structure within which it would be foolish to jump ahead without first being taught the basics. but within the world, or "the real world" as scholastic terminology puts it, if one doesn't know something, few respond with the qualifications to teach it; that is to say, most reserve the answer. which then begs the question if it's even so commonly known.

as i said, that is the general side of the issue. now, to make it quite so specific, i am honestly curious how people discern which laws are worth following and which ought to be ignored. because it seems, from my standpoint, that a large population of people have come to agreement that certain laws are optional, or to be blunt, shouldn't even be opted into, as though the choice exists.
i have known someone who believed--at the time we spoke--that since he had made no conscious decision to submit to government, such as sign a contract, etc., he didn't feel bound by it. whereas, my understanding holds a Monty-Python vibe: "You don't vote for kings."
joking aside, i view government as an institution set to keep peace. note the punctuation. people are born under it, i understand, by nature of factors beyonds their control. the only choice to adhere to a certain government or another, i believe, resides in choosing to live within the jurisdiction of one such or outside of it.
but to go further, i see people choosing laws to break and others to grant them rights. it is one thing to set laws into place or demolish others for the purpose of reaping benefits, so this is not a question of politics. instead, i cannot understand the nature of the human mind which--to pick a word whose root is so applicable--bastardizes freedom to justify breaking laws. on a personal note, and only slightly satirically, i wonder how i have missed out on this freedom which so many others around me exercise. certainly, if the freedom exists to choose to break a law, the same level of freedom exists to choose to follow it; by such a definition, at least, that is my understanding of that. but, no, i cannot express how many times i have felt condemned, not by government, but by citizens, for making a conscious decision to follow a law which, as it is, limits their own, equally opposite decision.