The historical context for this was the belief that those in positions of authority were put there by God's will. And so to question the rightness of them being

The historical context for this was the belief that those in positions of authority were put there by God's will. And so to question the rightness of them being placed over you was to question God. With the most extreme form of this being the idea of divine right of kings. Because kings were given the most extreme authority, they must have the strongest sanction of God supporting them. It would be a mistake to think of this as a purely Christian notion, either. Divine right very closely parallels the Chinese notion of the Mandate of Heaven for the emperor. And Christian notions owe a lot to Plato. In particularly the Neoplatonic idea of the Great Chain of Being. Which (though the phrase has a separate history) can be summed up with, "As above, so below." So we are reflections of our rulers. If our rulers are just, we will be. If our rulers are unjust, we will also be unjust. If we upset the natural order by overthrowing our rulers, chaos will descend upon the land. Shakespeare did a great job of capturing the mindset in The Tempest.