Sunday, October 21, 2012

A Right View of Rights


Who has the right to define our rights?

If left to individuals we may expect chaos, if to government, abuse.
We look to the Founders, but they never assigned themselves such authority.
Instead, they recognized pre-established rights, authored by Someone greater.
They credited the basis of these rights to certain truths;
truths they simply, yet boldly, called “self-evident.”

When it comes to rights, the Founders got it right!

The Declaration of Independence--brilliant.
Doesn’t much of its brilliance shine from its simple reliance on truth?
Jefferson, committee, and Congress, however disparate in theology and philosophy, nonetheless agreed on specific predicating truths in their argument for a new nation. Not stopping there, they and other colleagues used the same truths as foundation and anchor for our actual government.

What truths?
A deliberate reading of the first two paragraphs of the Declaration reveals no less than five: 1) the existence of God, 2) the supreme authority of God’s laws (natural and otherwise), 3) man’s creation by God, 4) the equality of men (humans) by virtue of their creation as equals, 5) the existence of “unalienable” rights, endowed by God.
The obvious point, which drives the claim for independence, is that
God is the source of basic rights,
which neither king, decree, nor institution have any authority to take away.
The Founders saw firsthand the unjust denial of people’s rights, but knew that such denial does not destroy those rights, it instead calls for rectification and liberation. In that sense, the Founders were not only justified,
but even obliged to do what they did.

To re-define rights is simply not right.

In the construction of a great edifice, though it may span 2 ½ centuries and undergo various corrections and revisions, the weight of the building must be kept on its foundation.
Though the truths cited are timeless, and cemented in our founding documents,
there’s a problem.
The rights resting on those truths must be properly understood and applied to public policy. This must be done by humans, sometimes elected, sometimes appointed, always fallible, and often corrupt.

Corrupt officials, legislators and judges have often hidden their corruption
by evasion and deception, violating the rights of others in the process.
Now a broadside is underway against the integrity of the whole system.
Junior tyrants in Washington, taking advantage of a largely uninformed/misinformed public, are pushing destructive policy based on a re-interpretation or distortion of American rights.

Members of the Supreme Court suddenly endowed a previously unknown “right of privacy” with sufficient authority to unseat the longstanding right to life of the youngest Americans. With such precedent and logic, how long can we uphold the safety of the oldest Americans? Or the weakest Americans?

A supposed set of “reproductive rights” excuses and accommodates the immorality of some, while violating the time-honored right of conscience of others: employers, caregivers, churches, landlords, taxpayers, and again, the unborn.

Society is currently being molested by the sudden campaign for a re-definition of marriage. An aggressive minority demands so-called “gay marriage,” which is neither, and which implies that little human demagogues can unseat God as the Author of human rights, and the Judge of what’s right.
In the face of these assaults on our wonderful form of government and our great nation,

The time is right for a defense of true rights.


It's important to remember that as great as our nation is and has been, it is a temporal entity.
In the words of Scripture, "We have here no continuing city, but we seek one to come" Hebrews 13:14.
But temporal things do matter. They can reflect the character, and advance the cause of eternal things; for good or for evil. For those of us who are Christians, may our prayer be that America as an institution should halt its slide toward the latter, and return to the former.

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